Roseanne: Lies My Father Told Me

Roseanne: Lies My Father Told Me
ABC
March 29, 1994
Sitcom
DVD
B

While there are good things about this episode, whose story is by Rob Ulin and whose teleplay is by Eric Gilliland, I don't feel that the tonal shifts are as well handled as they would've been in Season Five or even Season Four, keeping this from a B+ or even A-.  At the end of the previous episode, Dan came home from committing his mother, Audrey, to a mental institution.  In this episode, he blames his father and even gets drunk so he can tell his dad off, but Ed isn't home, so Dan ends up wrecking the living room and scaring Crysal and Lonnie (Kristopher Kent Hill in his last appearance).  Crystal later tells Roseanne in an offscreen phone call that Audrey's mental issues predate her marriage.  It's difficult and painful for Dan to accept the truth, but he goes to talk to his father and they make up.  Unfortunately, this is the last we'll see of Ed, and I'm going to miss how Beatty and Goodman act so well together.  Meanwhile, the older kids' attempts to make D.J. think he's going crazy like Grandma Conner are funny, but I'm not sure how well they work as comic relief, coming across as overly tasteless under the circumstances.

I'm reluctantly omitting Estelle Parsons from the overcrowded tags.