<i>Roseanne</i> vs. the 'Nasty Woman'

“We’re not going to talk about who the Conners are going to vote for. I think people would turn us off real quick.”

That was Roseanne Barr, talking with the Los Angeles Times about the politics of the original version of her hit ABC sitcom. It was 1992: The American presidential campaign, Bill Clinton versus George H. W. Bush versus Ross Perot, was being waged. Dan Quayle was arguing about family values with a fictional journalist. Roseanne, though—the producer, the character, the star—was insisting that her TV family transcended both the vagaries of political partisanship and the messiness of the culture wars themselves. The Conners are “somewhere in the middle of it all,” Barr said, “not knowing what anything stands for anymore. So really what they do is go to work and come home to be with their family, and try to make do.”

Well. Times haven’t merely changed; they have been thoroughly made over., rebooting after a decades-long hiatus and premiering on Tuesday, has an invisible guest star—, actually. “What’s up, deplorable?,” Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) says to Roseanne (Barr), when the sisters are reunited after a yearlong estrangement following the election. (Jackie is wearing, as she does so, a bright-pink T-shirt with written on the front and a “pussy hat” to match.) Roseanne, later, informs a member of her now-large brood, “Aunt Jackie thinks every girl should grow up and be president, even if they’re a liar, liar, pantsuit on fire.”