Via The New Yorker:
n the third episode of "Roseanne," on ABC, Roseanne Conner and her husband, Dan, wake up on their iconic sofa, in Lanford, Illinois. "It's eleven o'clock," Roseanne says. "We slept from 'Wheel' to 'Kimmel.' " Dan replies, "We missed all the shows about black and Asian families." Roseanne squawks, "They're just like us!" Then, sardonically, "There, now you're all caught up."
Take Roseanne's joke. The jab was clearly aimed at "black-ish" and "Fresh Off the Boat," comedies that share ABC's Tuesday schedule with "Roseanne." The line establishes a few things. One is that the Conners don't live in the same America as the Johnsons, from "black-ish," or the Huangs, from "Fresh Off the Boat." There will never be a crossover episode—no fun clash, say, between an aging Jessica Huang and Roseanne, on a Conner trip to Florida. Instead, the Conners are themselvesbored, alienated ABC viewers, unable even to remember titles, just that these are the "black and Asian" shows.
If you read the Hollywood trades, you might sense an unsettling frame to that joke, too: ABC is owned by Disney, which is seeking to buy Fox, a merger that could be scuttled by Trump, who has a habit of threatening media corporations that cross him. And Trump has opinions about "black-ish." When the series débuted, in 2014, he tweeted, "How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled 'Blackish'? Can you imagine the furor of a show, 'Whiteish'! Racism at highest level?" The month before "Roseanne" premièred, ABC pulled an episode of "black-ish": in it, Dre Johnson tells his baby son a bedtime story about race in America. Buh-leeve me, no punch line appears on ABC without getting O.K.'d all the way to the top.
Of course, Roseanne Conner didn't make the crude joke that Trump made—so far, at least, the show doesn't traffic in any heavy clash of perspectives, as in Lear's shows from the seventies, in which Maude Findlay and George Jefferson held their own against Archie Bunker. No one on "Roseanne" has used the word "racist," let alone lobbed a slur; instead, the show relies on code, such as when Roseanne snarks that Jackie might want to "take a knee," even as her black granddaughter, Mary (Jayden Ray), sits nearby, an irony no one remarks on. The missing jokes are the show's "tell": when Jackie fights Roseanne, she takes no real shots at Trump, narrowing the debate to jobs and Hillary, as if the two of them were guests on Hannity. The show's repeated theme is always that Roseanne is not that kind of Trump voter: she's sweet to Mary; she defends Mark against homophobic bullies. You might see this as complexity or as spin. If you're in a darker mood, you might call it propaganda.
So, instead of a straight shot, Roseanne and Dan take a sideways jab at their ABC slot-mates: they're old news. They're everywhere—an irritant, a snooze. But Dan couldn't be referring to any other network sitcoms about black and Asian families, because none exist. That's true even on ABC, which just a few years ago was branding itself "the diversity network," sparked by the success of Shonda Rhimes. (And, maybe, by the presence of President Obama.) "Black-ish" is the first black network family sitcom since 2006, when "The Bernie Mac Show" ended its run on Fox. "Fresh Off the Boat" is the first Asian-family show in history, not counting "All-American Girl," in 1994, which ended after one season. They're fragile phenomena. After the success of Lear and then of Bill Cosby, there were brief, exciting vogues for "ethnic comedy." But, year by year, those shows got gentrified off the comedy block, from NBC to Fox to the WB, UPN, BET. That's how change often works in mass culture: in waves that recede.
Emily Nussbaum on point. Roseanne isn't about bridging a divide. It's about taking pots shots at things they don't like or agree with and going "lol jokes!". There's more at the link above.The other thing Roseanne doesn't mention is that there are two other ABC sitcoms about families "just like them": "The Middle" (which also airs on Tuesday) and "Speechless." Both shows, like "Roseanne," portray white lower-middle-class couples, weighed down by credit-card debt and living with disabled family members in messy homes they can't afford to fix. "The Middle" is currently limping toward its series finale, but it spent eight seasons delivering a smart, salty portrait of blue-collar life in Indiana. Roseanne and Dan aren't watching "The Middle," however. They don't make a meta-joke about how it was created by two writers who worked on the original "Roseanne." "The Middle" can't exist if "Roseanne" wants to strike that primal chord of white resentment: that more (or any!) black or brown faces mean less room for white people. This useful amnesia is also what enabled ABC to use the slogan "A Family That Looks Like Us" when selling "Roseanne" to advertisers, a dog whistle so strong that it might have brought Lassie back from the dead.
