Roseanne: Life and Stuff

Roseanne: Life and Stuff
ABC
October 18, 1988
Sitcom
DVD
B

Even though this series originally ran on ABC right after Who's the Boss?, I definitely wasn't watching it the first season.  (And to be honest, what with changes in my life in the late '80s, I wasn't watching WtB that regularly.)  This is the only episode written by co-creator Matt Williams, but it obviously incorporates a lot of Roseanne's stand-up act and persona.  On the other hand, director Ellen Falcon did the majority (fifteen) of the first season episodes.

You know the cast now, but back in '88 no one did, so first of all, Roseanne and her family:

• Roseanne Barr as the Danzaly named Roseanne Conner
• John Goodman as her husband Dan
• Laurie Metcalf as her sister Jackie
• Lecy Goranson as older daughter Becky
• Sara Gilbert as younger daughter Darlene
• and Sal Barone as son D.J. (soon to be replaced because he didn't get along with Gilbert)

Roseanne's coworkers at the factory include Sylvia Foster (Anne Faulkner in her first of nine appearances), Juanita Herrera (Evelina Fernandez, also first of nine), and Vonda Green (Charlayne Woodard, first of five), but they're not given much to do here.  Natalie West as Crystal Anderson, however, would do 83 more episodes, and she is in the opening credits.  (Crystal wishes she could find a husband like Dan, which would later be ironic.)  And, yes, that's 27-year-old George Clooney (post-Facts-of-Life) as Roseanne's boss Booker.

When I watched Season One a few years later, it didn't seem as good as later seasons (except for of course the infamous last season), but this pilot (back when the series was made as Life and Stuff) holds up really well.  Although Barr is not technically an actress at this point, more of a personality, she is laugh-out-loud funny and of course she and Goodman have immediate, believable chemistry.  No one else, not even future Emmy-winner Metcalf, is anywhere near as interesting yet, but they don't have to be.  And, yes, the theme of an imperfect but loving working-class family (not the Cosbys, but not the Bundys either) is here right from the start.