Roseanne: The Last Thursday in November

Roseanne: The Last Thursday in November
ABC
November 21, 1995
Sitcom
DVD
D

Oh, jeez.  I guess we can call this the Shark Jump.  Not that there won't be OK and maybe even good episodes down the line, but I thought this episode was bad at the time and time has not been kind to it.  Briefly, D.J.'s Native American teacher has the kids put on a play where two Pulp-Fictional pilgrims gun down Indians.  The Conners love the play but a prissy mom, Dawn (Colleen Camp, in her middle of three Roseanne cameos), is disgusted.  Then there's a long fantasy sequence where the family is Pilgrims, and then the teacher and his (unintroduced) family show up for Thanksgiving.

On the surface, that's not necessarily a bad idea for an episode, not a good one, but not a bad one.  It's the execution that really stinks.  If the teacher was trying to make a historical point, why the modern touch?  Why does everyone on all the sides of the issue get up on a soapbox, instead of talking like human beings?  (And at one point Darlene is reduced to a pseudo-intellectual college student stereotype, which is very much not who she was.  The Darlene of earlier seasons would've ruthlessly mocked this young woman who uses words like "bourgeois.")  And why is poor Anne-Marie dragged in just for a couple lines?  (OK, her "Excuse me?" in reply to the claim that people came to America for freedom was funny, but it made her character seem like a token when she was given little else to do.)  If recent episodes felt heavy-handed, this one is as heavy as an anchor.  Still, I would've gone with a D+ if the structure of the show wasn't another plotpourri like the Halloween episode.  Thank Mother Earth there was no Christmas episode that year.

Lynn Ann Leveridge, who was Lucy on Roseanne in '91, is an unknown character here.  Ahmad Stoner's third and final appearance on the series is unnamed but is probably the boy who does the Thanksgiving alphabet poem; Jason Davis, also in his third and last Roseanne role, is likely the fat kid who plays a killer in the play.  Diana Theodore is another young teen playing someone unknown and would be a Young Woman on Ellen in '98.  Staff writers Ritch Shydner (who wrote this mess of a script) and Sid Youngers have yet more nameless roles.