Roseanne - The Complete First Season (1988)

one of the best tv shows

I absolutely love this show. This is basically a lower middle working class family. Also, you know when tv shows get released on dvd, they usually change some background music or cut out a little bit of the show. Not this case. I watched the shows on Nick At Nite, and after I watched this on dvd, on each episode, I noticed they had a little bit more on the show. Also, usually on the last disc, you have a couple of the cast members talk about the show. George Clooney has a guest staring role on the majority of the shows August 23, 2008

Roseanne

love watching the conner's family
it's cool.

I like all the people that made a
good sitcom and made me laugh

thank's again May 27, 2008

Beware: edited episodes, otherwise it's cool

Pay regular price for a season of edited, not uncut episodes of a popular series? I don't know; I'd rather get uncut versions if I can, so I'd been holding out for either when it's on sale at a very low price or when it's re-released in an uncut edition. I found out unexpectedly that it's on sale with a price so low I decided to order it. This set arrived within days, all ready to play. I enjoyed the episodes, all under 22 minutes each, especially one I don't ever remember seeing before: 'Father's Day' (ep. 14 on disc 2).

It's true that all episodes here are edited similar to what's been shown in syndication. There's a scene I remember in the one with Darlene finding her newspaper job more than she can handle that was omitted ('The Monday Thru Friday Show', ep. 12 on disc 2): if I remember right, after the commercial fadeout midway through, Darlene reports to her boss for not delivering all the newspapers. The boss goes into lecture mode, but before he's finished Darlene interrupts him and asks him point-blank if she's fired. The boss says yes... Anyway, I don't remember everything from this season as I wasn't into back then. Nonetheless, I got to see everything and enjoyed it.

Box art dressed in McDonald's colors look nice. I like the trivia questions listed inside the cases. Ditto for the extras included. Not just that but the extras as well as the commentaries are closed-captioned (no subtitles). Most other shows on DVD can't claim this fact. Thank you, Roseanne and everyone responsible for putting it together.

Would I recommend this product? Yes, but considering the edited content you might want to wait until it's on sale or when it's re-released in uncut form. Don't know about the latter, but at least it's an idea. Enjoy... May 21, 2008

LOVE the show - HATE the editing.

Syndicated cuts make this NOT a "complete season".

It's still funny, but it's only worth 90% of the price you pay. Even if it's $9.99, it's still worth only $8.99.

Shame.
March 30, 2008

And the best sitcom in TV history is....

Ahh Roseanne, quite easily the greatest sitcom in TV history (sorry Seinfeld [overrated and repetitive] and move over MASH). For a great many Americans, Roseanne was the ONLY sitcom depicting house life that even remotely approached ringing true. My wife and I are both such big fans that we periodically watch the show from beginning to end (yes, all the episodes), something made easy by the fact that we never watch TV, only DVDs (greater freedom, no commercials). As I do in many of my reviews I will try to offer a few observations that other reviews haven't already made.

The show was serendipitously blessed by its cast, the best any sitcom has ever enjoyed. The comic timing between Roseanne and John Goodman was not only flawless, but their chemistry rang so true that they really did seem like they were married. The show was lucky to cast both Goodman and Metcalf, two actors whose performances really raised the entire show up another level.

The show starts off wonderfully, portraying a blue-collar family that not only seems real, but is real funny (and that says a lot--most sitcoms are not actually all that funny, and, believe it or not, studies show that people are not actually laughing at the jokes [which suck] but because they hear the sound of other people laughing). This in-and-of-itself had a lot to do with the show's immediate appeal: finally here was a family most Americans could actually relate to. Forget the Cosby family (the No. 1 show at the time).

Though the scenes at the plastic factory are pretty flat (which Roseanne was aware of--she joked that the set was built over a burial ground and cursed), the rest of season one is dynamite. In season two the show peters out with a few episodes that are actually quite boring and stupid. Many people say the show got worse in later seasons, I actually think (excepting the last season) that some of season two's episodes are the worst the show ever saw. In fact, in my opinion, the season two episode Sweet Dreams is the worst episode in the entire show's run. Other than this it's still excellent. Seasons three, four, and five are all great, maintaining the show's high standard. At times more episodes focus on incidences outside the Conner residence, which to me is unfortunate as the shows staying inside the house (especially the kitchen) and focusing on the whole family together are the ones that really shine. Thus, when a season focused too much on Roseanne at work (such as endlessly boring scenes of Roseanne at the beauty salon or in the mall's café) it really detracted from the humor.

With season six Sarah Chalke was devastatingly miscast as Becky. It really didn't matter that she didn't at all look like Lecy Goranson, the problem was that the performance she turned in was of an entirely different character (and it was quite a bad performance at that). Sure, other characters changed as the show progressed, but this was ridiculous. Roseanne, for instance, becomes more sarcastic and bitchy as the show progresses, but as my wife pointed out to me, if you revisit season one you'll see that she didn't at all start out that way (in fact she was quite the loving mother at first). And yes, her appearance constantly changed as she lost weight, tanned and had surgeries. Jackie's character changes too, dramatically, as many others have noted here. Many here say that season seven or eight is the beginning of the end of the show. I however think that the beginning of the end was Roseanne's real-life marriage to show producer Tom Arnold. After that fiasco, if I recall, Roseanne went kind of nuts in real life, becoming all new agey and crap, and it started to show in the show. Though the show's very last episode tried to bring things home a little bit, the debacle that was season nine needs a lot of explaining. How did they EVER think that having the Conners win the lottery was in ANY WAY a good idea? Was Roseanne trying to give a comic blue-collar commentary on the wealthy? I don't know, but that simply didn't work.

Some trivia and observations (and feel free to discuss some of this by leaving comments, and by all means, explain the reasoning behind season nine): Lanford Illinois does not really exist. The footage is from Evansville Indiana. Most if not all of Dan's comic mannerisms John Goodman seems to have borrowed from Curly (The Three Stooges), which he justified by making the character of Dan a big fan. When the Conners are watching TV, from the sound of it they are usually watching old movies, especially old B horror movies, sci fi and westerns. The coffee table is almost always covered with comic books. Season one disappointingly does not have a Halloween episode, but Nightmare on Oak Street kind of counts, starting off with a great Halloween feel to it. There are, throughout the first three or four seasons, a great many references to corn and creamed corn (can somebody please explain the significance of this in-joke?) In the pilot Dan tries to make a giant can of corn for dinner. In other episodes Roseanne is called the corn goddess, we see decorative corn hanging on the wall, Dan jokes that he's afraid that aliens are after their creamed corn, and, in the worst episode in the history of Roseanne, Dan's method of execution is to be boiled in creamed corn.

On a side note, it's amusing that Anchor Bay's disclaimer of the "Roseanne trivia" that laces the inside of every jacket reads that they in no way guarantee the accuracy of the information provided. It's a good thing too, because quite a few of their answers are wrong! Examples: In the fourth Halloween episode Roseanne does not dress up as "the goddess of gore," but as the Statue of Liberty. It's not Roseanne who refuses to serve Loretta Lynn, but Darlene.
March 24, 2008

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