Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Conners season 5, episodes 11 and 12.
While The Conners season 5 can bring back Roseanne characters for cameos, the sitcom spinoff doesn’t need this gimmick to remember its former star’s legacy. The Conners had an uneasy beginning. The spinoff only came into existence because Roseanne Barr was fired from 2017’s Roseanne revival, leaving the show’s creators with the unenviable task of making a show that amounted to Roseanne sans Roseanne herself. Roseanne was swiftly killed off offscreen, but the impact of her death went on to shape the character dynamics of The Conners.
Although The Conners season 5 jokes about Roseanne, for its first few seasons, the spinoff awkwardly avoided mentioning her unless absolutely necessary. This made the tone of The Conners strange, as the series bounced between broad, madcap sitcom comedy and moments of grief whenever the show’s former heroine was mentioned. Fortunately, between The Conners seasons 4 and 5, the spinoff got a lot better at addressing her absence. That said, The Conners episodes that discuss Roseanne without bringing back characters from the earlier show tend to work better than those that recruit former stars for cameos, as these appearances can be surprisingly distracting and unnecessary.
The Conners’ Roseanne Cameos Can Be Distracting
For its first few seasons, The Conners didn’t know how to reference Roseanne's canon and avoided bringing back characters from the earlier series as a result. The Conners season 5 uses Roseanne right, allowing the family’s grief over their loss to inform their actions without letting the character's legacy overshadow the show’s current lineup. However, while seeing Chuckie Mitchell occasionally appear in The Conners makes sense since he is a big part of Dan’s life, seeing Bobo (a one-off supporting star from a Roseanne season 1 episode) crop up in The Conners season 5 is a pointless gimmick as it doesn’t tell viewers anything they don’t know about the Conner clan or Roseanne.
The point of cameos from returning Roseanne stars is, theoretically, to remind viewers of Roseanne’s memory and fill in plot holes left open by the earlier series. For example, Roseanne’s mother Beverly returned for The Conners season 5’s most brutally ironic story, as Jackie confronted her mother only to discover she was suffering from late-stage dementia. Seeing Jackie forgive her mother’s mistakes and care for her ailing abuser was a strong storyline in its own right that also benefited from the memory of how Roseanne and Beverly also never saw eye to eye. However, this cameo was only successful because it was rooted in a compelling story, unlike Bobo’s return.
The Conners Can Address Roseanne’s Legacy Without Cameos
As proven by The Conners season 5, episode 12, “Stuck in the Middle and Stuck in the Past,” The Conners can address Roseanne’s legacy without the aid of appearances from Roseanne characters. That outing saw Dan and Jackie try to recall the contents of the family’s old home video collection, setting up a tragic twist as Dan realized he was struggling with his memory, not unlike Beverly. This storyline followed Jackie and Dan as they reflected on their differing memories of Roseanne and, despite not featuring any appearances from Roseanne characters, this plot both touched on the memory of Dan’s late wife and fleshed out Dan and Jackie’s dynamic further.
Why The Conners Season 5 Shouldn’t Focus On Roseanne Cameos
The Conners season 5 should not focus on Roseanne cast cameos as this draws attention and story focus away from the existing cast. Nostalgic throwbacks to the older series get more attention than the main characters of the spinoff, leaving the stories of The Conners season 5 in limbo as viewers await the next Roseanne reference. While The Conners season 5’s Shameless reunion was a fun one-off gag, it didn’t result in the show grinding to a halt as it focused on another earlier family comedy. Similarly, The Conners season 5’s Roseanne cast cameos can’t come at the expense of stories that focus on the lives of the titular family.
Luckily, the creators of The Conners season 5 appear to have recognized this. Only one episode after Bobo’s guest appearance, The Conners season 5 focused a storyline on Ben and Darlene. The couple has been criminally underutilized since their season 4 finale wedding, and season 5 fixed this issue by putting their relationship front and center. Admittedly, all the bitter bickering between them still made it feel like Ben and Darlene are wasted by season 5, but The Conners can address this by focusing on them in more depth. This, however, will mean fewer Roseanne character cameos for The Conners season 5, which would not be a bad thing for the spinoff.
New episodes of The Conners air Wednesdays on ABC