Roseanne: Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do

Another crazy Jackie outfit

Roseanne: Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do
ABC
February 18, 1992
Sitcom
DVD
A-

Jennifer Heath wrote the first Roseanne episode I fell in love with.  And it's about love and relationships, of all sorts.  The break-up of the title is Becky's with Mark, after 73 weeks.  Roseanne is happy but also sad, since Becky is so upset.  Dan continues to employ Mark, who's a good mechanic, but Becky is angry about this.  And then she brings home a football player named Dean (David Donah, who would return in the role, with a last name, a couple years later), and Dan is so fond of him he says, "I want to date him!"  He's very disappointed to hear that Dean is only the transition boyfriend.  Mark shows up while Becky's gone and Roseanne tells him off, which backfires on her later when Mark sends flowers to Becky for Valentine's Day.  And in the tag, Donah makes a plea that Dean become a recurring character, but he makes the mistake of mouthing off to Barr, so we get a memorial montage for "Dean, 1992 to 1992."

Not only is this episode hilarious, but it's humor that comes out of the characters, with an undercurrent of seriousness and reality, even in Becky and Darlene's exchange that goes something like this--
Darlene: Are you going to have sex with Dean?
Becky: Of course, Darlene.  I'm going to have sex with every guy I meet from now on.
Darlene:  And Dean is OK with this?
The other sister-pair is great here, too, from them mocking Crystal in her absence to them mocking Dan when he tries to understand how dating works from the female point of view.  We can see even "Old Stupid's" (Darlene's nickname of course) viewpoint, in Mark's arguments with Becky and Roseanne.  He may be a "jerk" sometimes (Becky's word), but he has his own feelings.  I especially appreciate that the episode ricochets off other episodes, like the Thanksgiving one and the Pill one.

Anyway, fantastic, near perfect, definitely a show at its best.