Roseanne: All About Rosey

Roseanne: All About Rosey
ABC
March 1, 1995
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Ulin & Sandaas wrote the frame for this hour-long clip show, which I might've given a B- if they could've kept the same frame throughout.  Things start out well in 1965, when Roseanne (played screechingly by Fishman) and Jackie (Metcalf's approximately eleven-year-old daughter Zoe Perry, quite good as approximately nine-year-old Jackie, her second time in the role after being in the '92 Halloween episode) visit a female fortune-teller, played by Goodman.  For $1, he can show them Roseanne's life from '88 to '94.  And then we get opening credits that splice together the various credit sequences, a bit like the morphing credits in Season Eight or Nine.  Certainly, the episode is propelled by nostalgia, although as always when a clip show runs late in a series, especially a series in decline like this one, there's going to be regret that things aren't as good as they used to be.  (Even the Darlene-teasing-D.J.-about-masturbation-at-the-dinner-table sequence from Season Six already looks classic compared to Season Seven.)

In the next frame, set in 2025, a Bev-looking Jackie takes D.J. to a Psychiatrist played by Eric Christmas (many, many credits, including both Harold and Maude and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes).  Goodman plays middle-aged D.J., who's traumatized by the Becky switch.  And then in the final frame, covering about half the episode, Roseanne is visited by other TV Moms:

• Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver;
• Pat Crowley as perhaps the most obscure TV mom, Joan Nash from Please Don't Eat the Daisies;
• June Lockhart as Lassie's Ruth Martin (not looking much different than she did on It's Garry Shandling's Show eight years earlier);
• Alley Mills as Norma Arnold from The Wonder Years;
• and Isabel Sanford (who hasn't been heard on one of my shows since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home) as Louise Jefferson.

You can see from that odd assortment that, with the exception of Billingsley and Lockhart, these aren't the classic TV Moms that would've been thought of even in the '90s.  Yes, Sanford is a TV icon, but we remember her marriage to George much more than her motherhood of Lionel.  (And even Lockhart is associated more with the dog than her son.)  It gives the episode a feeling of being thrown together, and the contrasts of old-fashioned TV with Roseanne feel a little forced.  I'd much rather have had them stick with the first frame throughout.

Bob Telford appears as Bill in archival footage.