Roseanne: A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Roseanne: A Bitter Pill to Swallow
ABC
September 17, 1991
Sitcom
DVD
B

So Roseanne moved over to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. (in the old Three's Company slot as it happens) and would be #2 in its fourth season.  (For continuity though, they kept the Season Three opening credits, even though the kids will look increasingly too young in it, even D.J.)  The focus in this Sherman & Heath opener is on the family, although that now includes Crystal and Ed's new baby, Little Ed.  Yeah, you might've expected there to be a birth episode, but this is hardly the last pregnancy on this soap-operatic show.*  The next one won't be Becky's, since she tells her mother that she wants to go on the Pill.  Roseanne and Dan have trouble accepting this, especially with their dislike of Mark, although Dan is trying to accept him and even has him working at the bike shop.  If it feels like we're missing a couple episodes, I guess the writers figured we had enough set-up and let's just pick things up a few months later, like we're catching up with old friends, which we sort of are.  Note that Darlene is hostile to Mark on the phone and I continue to be baffled why they're SPOILER paired off in the series finale.  Yeah, I can't wait to see the retcon with the reboot.

Getting back to '91, Becky is now 17 and admits to her mother that she and Mark already had sex, using a condom.  I can't think of a similar situation on any sitcom of that time or earlier.  I mean, as far as we know Mallory Keaton was still a virgin after dating Nick for years.  (Unless I missed that Very Special Episode of Family Ties.)  And the Brady girls were never even shown kissing until they were engaged.  It's going to be a very interesting season, for a lot of reasons.


*Andrew D. Weyman directs his first of an impressive (especially for a revolving-door show like this) forty-five episodes, and guess what he got his start with?  Search for Tomorrow in 1951!  (Followed by some other soaps before drifting over to sitcoms.)