Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Conners season 5, episode 10.While The Conners isn’t usually one of the more controversial shows on television, the Roseanne spinoff did get one season 5 episode banned from reruns due to an ill-conceived joke. The Conners generally does not struggle with censorship. As a family sitcom, the spinoff kept the spiky wit and wry working-class social commentary of its predecessor, Roseanne, alive, but The Conners does not generally feature much in the way of questionable content outside some occasional dark jokes. However, one such joke managed to get a season 5 outing banned from reruns due to its unfortunate real-life relevance.
In The Conners season 5, episode 10, “The Dog Days of Christmas,” Dan meets his mother-in-law Doris (Jane Curtin) for the first time. However, Louise’s long-awaited reunion with her mother soon sours when the flighty Louise reveals that she bought an RV to ferry her musician daughter around America playing gigs. Dan immediately senses that something fishy is going on, but it is his earliest interaction with Curtin’s character that provides the offending exchange that led to “The Dog Days of Christmas” being removed from reruns while the show’s creators issued an apology for the line.
The Conners Referenced A Real Life Tragedy
When the short-sighted Doris first arrives in her oversized RV, Dan sardonically asks whether she drove over any pedestrians or cyclists on her way. While The Conners season 5 Christmas episode features intentionally tragic gags, Doris’s response was an unfortunate one-liner with — likely unintentional — real-world relevance. She announced that she could drive over a marching band in her RV and not notice, a line that can be read as a reference to the 2021 Waukesha Christmas Parade attacks.
During that tragedy, a motorist drove into a crowd of revelers during a parade, killing six people and injuring many more. The tragedy struck Waukesha in late 2021 and, since members of a marching band were badly injured in the event, concerned local citizens understandably felt that the gag was intended to be a tasteless reference to the real-life deaths. This prompted protests and a swift ban from reruns, meaning The Conners’ introduction to Dan’s mother-in-law won’t be available in syndication alongside the rest of the show’s outings.
Why The Conners Episode Was Pulled
Rather than contesting the offending line, the creators of The Conners opted to pull “The Dog Days of Christmas” from reruns immediately. In a statement, the show’s producers said: “On behalf of the entire team at The Conners, we’re deeply sorry and extend our sincere apologies to those who are still reliving the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy.” The response was understandable since, while the joke may have been an unfortunate coincidence, a comedic reference to a motorist driving into a marching band over Christmas was a tremendously unfortunate mistake.
Fortunately for fans, the best Christmas episode of The Conners is still available to stream online. The Conners season 4, episode 8, “Yard Sale, Phone Fail, and A College Betrayal” remains available on platforms since, like most of the sitcom’s outings, the episode did not feature any throwaway jokes that aligned with real-life tragedies. In contrast, “The Dog Days of Christmas” may become hard to track down in years to come since the episode has been pulled from reruns entirely. This is a small price to pay to avoid the Roseanne spinoff bringing up memories of a real-life tragedy that The Conners episode appeared to reference.
Episodes of The Conners air Wednesdays on ABC.