Roseanne: Lanford's Elite

Roseanne: Lanford's Elite
ABC
February 4, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
C+

This episode manages to be both a little slow-moving and a bit forced, although it's only when we see two clips from the season-one-closer that it's evident how much of the raw energy has gone from the show.  (I tagged Natalie West, even though Crystal doesn't have any lines.)  At the Lanford Country Club, Roseanne meets Edward Wellman, Jr. (James Brolin in the first of two cameos), son of the Wellman family who owned the plastics factory that Roseanne and Jackie used to work for.  He convinces her to buy the factory for $1 million, and then she'll turn it over to the workers.  Richard Paul makes his first of two appearances as an apparently nameless character and doesn't look much different than he did in the early '80s on Match Game.  Allan Stephan wrote the story, but the teleplay is the first of two Roseanne writing gigs for Richard Whitley, while Whitley's partner on the teleplay, Bob Rubin, had played an Audience Member earlier in the season.