In a much more surprising twist than John Goodman’s Dan Conner not actually dying of a heart attack in Roseanne’s bizarre ninth season, ABC’s 2018 revival of the show has now become one of the biggest debuts in recent TV history. Tuesday night’s premiere, which featured two episodes, drew over 18 million viewers and, according to ABC, brought the highest ratings for a comedy since the Season 8 premiere of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory in September 2014.
Roseanne’s mega-debut is the continuation of a trend in which reboots premiere to massive audiences. The premiere of NBC’s Will & Grace revival drew around 10 million viewers back in September 2017. American Idol returned this month and is already providing stiff competition to The Voice. These shows have had good ratings—for Will & Grace, already good enough for a two-season renewal—but they’re pennies compared to Roseanne. That familiar, reverberating cackle you hear is Roseanne Barr laughing all the way to the bank.
The total success of the return of Roseanne could be a reflection of the show’s unique place in the television landscape and the way it was able to appeal to both sides of the political aisle. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Roseanne was lauded for its progressivism through the perspective of a working-class family in small-town Illinois—characters whose experiences hew closer to those of many voters that Donald Trump swayed and whose support took him all the way to the White House. In Roseanne’s fifth season, recurring character Nancy came out as gay—which was a landmark achievement for a show in 1992 (and was one of a few coming-out story lines on the show). These ideas are front and center in the revival’s first two installments: Roseanne’s son D.J. has a biracial daughter, while her daughter Darlene has a tween son, Mark, who has a penchant for wearing colorful clothes and painting his nails. Roseanne and Dan, while not understanding Mark’s behavior, ultimately come to support it and Darlene’s parenting.
On the other side is Roseanne the person. Barr is one of very few big-time celebrities who is an avowed Donald Trump supporter, and has made her personal stance very clear while promoting the show. Barr has incorporated those conservative ideals into her character: It’s revealed in the premiere that she hasn’t spoken with Aunt Jackie (the great, Oscar-deprived Laurie Metcalf) since the 2016 election. And in case it wasn’t clear who voted for which candidate, Jackie shows up at the door with a pink pussy bow hat and a “Nasty Woman” T-shirt, making as much noise with a scowl as most characters do with a monologue.
It’s extremely rare to see a show with a conservative protagonist—let alone a Trump supporter—on network television: Just ask Tim Allen. But the cocktail of Roseanne’s progressivism and Barr’s personal beliefs might’ve prompted passionate interest from audiences on both sides and aided this ratings bonanza. The show is inspiring a discussion that transcends the bubbles to which liberal or conservative discourse are often confined—as Kevin Fallon put it in The Daily Beast, maybe the Roseanne revival’s mission will be to “Make America Talk Again.” (Preferably, not on Twitter.)
Roseanne’s ratings speak to television’s recent pining for nostalgia, and given the ratings boon of shows like Roseanne and Will & Grace, networks are likely to green-light more of these shows. Even though another iteration of The Office is few people’s idea of a good time, there has been evidence that rebooting the show would make business sense for NBC. It’s quite likely that an Office revival would premiere with stellar ratings, too, even if it’s terrible.
This trend isn’t exclusive to network television, either. Netflix has already rebooted The Magic School Bus, is bringing Lost in Space back next month, and is planning to reboot Carmen Sandiego with Gina Rodriguez. The list goes on. Television revivals and reboots are becoming a much bigger slice of the ever-growing pie that is Peak TV.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For all the blandness that is Netflix’s Fuller House, the company’s Latino-infused update to Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time is beloved enough by critics that they were willing to do their own small part in campaigning for its third-season renewal (which did end up happening!). David Lynch revisited the haunting Douglas firs of Twin Peaks for Showtime last year and produced one of the most captivating, surrealist sensory overloads in the history of the medium.
There isn’t a key to cracking nostalgia, just as there isn’t always a surefire formula for ratings giants. Shows can be critically acclaimed (The Americans, Halt and Catch Fire) and watched by nobody. And shows generally ignored by critical tastemakers (The Big Bang Theory, NCIS) can nevertheless be watched by millions.
However, the key to a good reboot’s lasting power in the zeitgeist is doing more than just replaying the show’s greatest hits. Can Roseanne keep anywhere close to the 18 million viewers of Week 1, or will it lose some viewers who either find the show too progressive—or too conservative? Probably the latter. But the new Roseanne is doing something different, merely through the passage of time.
Roseanne’s daughters, Darlene and Becky, are no longer sassy kids: Darlene is a single parent who recently lost her job and is raising two kids, while Becky is trying to make money as a surrogate. By virtue of these characters moving from adolescence to adulthood—and adding their own kids to the mix, as well as D.J.’s—there are new stories for Roseanne to tell.
Not all shows will be on hiatus long enough for such drastic changes—Twin Peaks is the rare exception with decades between seasons, but Lynch’s show was overtly anti-nostalgia. But presenting new scenarios—new stages of life—is paramount. By undoing its previous series finale and playing it off as a weird dream, Will & Grace reverted back to square one, with its titular characters once again sharing an apartment. It quickly became apparent that the show was nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. That’s not good enough, and it’s why Will & Grace’s ratings have dropped precipitously.
Roseanne is set to be on the air for only seven more episodes, but the premiere ratings alone should elicit calls for a renewal by ABC. A second season may be on the way. That possibility might inspire instinctual eyerolls, but if the show continues to connect with this many people, while also doing and saying new things about the world and country we live in, why shouldn’t it stay on the air even longer?
