Roseanne: Arsenic and Old Mom

Roseanne: Arsenic and Old Mom

ABC

May 13, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
D-

Time has not made this episode any less painful.  In fact, knowing that Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds would die so close together makes this collaboration even more of a waste.  It ties for my least favorite episode of the series, with the spa episode. 

Dan's mother Audrey (played here by Reynolds) is released from "the hospital," supposedly all well, as long as she takes her meds.  She doesn't and decides to kill Dan for institutionalizing her, twenty years ago!  The script is by Fisher and I can't help wishing that a more realistic, funnier, and sweeter story could've been submitted instead.  Why drag Goodman back, when his performance shows how little he wants to be doing this story?  And there's even a gratuitous joke about D.J. lusting after Princess Leia, just so Grandma can hit him for it, which is even less funny considering who wrote the joke.  This episode is to be avoided by all but the masochistic and/or completist.  (So of course it gets high ratings on IMDB.)

Heather Matarazzo makes her last appearance as Heather.  Staff writer Lawrence Broch plays the Doctor.  This is a rare episode without Laurie Metcalf.

Ellen: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

Ellen: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah
ABC
May 7, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
B+

While this is less famous than the previous episode, it's still a very good and very important one.  Ellen comes out to her parents and surprisingly it's her father who has more of a problem with it.  Not that her mother is ready to give up on the hope of Ellen meeting Mr. Right, but her father doesn't even want to talk about her orientation.  They both come around in the end again of course, but along the way there is more pain and sadness than is typical for this series.  The scene with her father's "Morganville" train set is funny but also makes some points.  And of course her mother wants to fix her up with a single female doctor.

Juliana Morgan, here the Lesbian's Daughter, earlier was a Latte Customer.  Waiter James Hong looks much the same as he did as a nameless Man on The Bob Newhart Show a quarter century earlier; he was also Peking Tom on Soap (the character name typical of the lame humor of that series' last season) and Thomas Ping on Who's the Boss?  (But he must've been the only Asian-American actor of that era not on M*A*S*H.)  Laraine Newman is instantly recognizable as the Over-Supportive Parent, but I didn't realize till the credits that the moderator was a still female-identified Chastity (later Chaz) Bono.  Joan Jett rocks out in the title sequence.  Jan Nash, the writer of this episode, didn't work on any other of my shows.

Ellen: The Puppy Episode

Ellen: The Puppy Episode
ABC
April 30, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
A-

Ellen DeGeneres's story was turned into a teleplay by staff writers Driscoll, Newman, Savel, and Stark.  It would win an Emmy and change television forever.  Forty-two million people tuned in.  For a couple weeks I decided I was a lesbian.  (Then I became deeply infatuated with a man and went back to identifying as bisexual, like I had since I was a preschooler.)

But is it still entertaining?  Heck yeah!  It is sharp, hilarious, joyous, and a little bit heartbreaking.  Even things like Ellen's awkwardness and babbling fit remarkably well, as she struggles through her sexual identity and her feelings for a woman named Susan (Laura Dern, just right).  Here it was, twenty years after Jodie on Soap, and it was a struggle to even get the story on the air, and that comes through even now, in the performances of the cast, including Oprah Winfrey as the wise and dry-humored therapist, and in the obviously thrilled studio audience.  OK, the celebrity cameos aren't all as obvious as they were then, although it's still a delight to hear Melissa Etheridge serenade a blushing Ellen for her bravery, or to watch K. D. Lang play a waitress.

The episode is of course mostly about Ellen, and those friends of hers are featured less, but they all have their moments (yes, even Spence), like Audrey's enthusiastic literal and figurative embrace of Ellen, and of course Peter's joy at Ellen telling him first (not counting Susan, the therapist, and the people at the airport).  It's an hour-long episode so I could go on and on, but I just want to mention three things, two of them related to the photos I've chosen.  The other is a moment where the therapist compares the prejudice that Ellen fears to what blacks underwent before the Civil Rights Movement.  In the hands of lesser writers, or lesser performers, this could be awkward and/or heavy-handed, but the moment makes its point with a light touch.  (One shudders to imagine how this would've gone on Roseanne in the last couple seasons.)

When Ellen finds the courage to first speak the words, "I'm gay," it's accidentally into the airport p.a. system.  This is another moment that might not have worked, but it does, helped partly by the visible relief of Ellen (Morgan and DeGeneres) afterwards, and the hug Susan gives her.  Note that this scene, just as much as some of the airport scenes on Who's the Boss? five or more years earlier, looks surreal after 9/11.  You simply can't go up and hug someone about to board a plane, as Ellen does.  (I haven't mentioned Ellen's date with her old friend Richard, but there are some laughs from that in the first half of the episode.)

Susan has a seemingly throwaway line about failing to "recruit" Ellen and thus losing a chance at a toaster oven.  Then we get the tag scene that pays off from that, with Etheridge enthusiastically stamping Ellen's application (and the clipboard).  "Toaster oven" would become (if it wasn't already) an LGBT (not yet Q or A) semi-in-joke for the next few years, and the scene is funny in of itself.  Just an all around wonderful episode.  (But, no, not an A or A+.  I don't think TV can achieve that like books or movies can.)

Waiter Patrick Harrigan had previously been Customer No. 1.  Kathy Najimy makes her third and last appearance on the show, in the very small role of a Woman in Gay Bar (technically a coffeehouse).  This time DeGeneres's mother Betty is a Woman at Airport.

Ellen: The Clip Show Patient

Ellen: The Clip Show Patient
ABC
April 8, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
C

Ellen volunteers at the hospital and meets the title character (Michael Des Barres in his second Ellen role), who's English.  (Get it?  Ha ha.)  She babbles and reminisces, sometimes merely on things like getting water.  The only entertaining things here are the disco music and outfits at the beginning and end of the episode.  Still, it's our last glimpse of pre-coming-out Ellen Morgan.  (Well, unless you count the first part of the next episode.)

Everett Greenbaum, who wrote 24 M*A*S*H episodes, plays the Older Man.  Various people appear in the clips, but most of them don't have lines.  DeGeneres's brother Vance wrote this story with David Walpert, whose middle of five this is.

Roseanne: The Truth Be Told

Roseanne: The Truth Be Told
ABC
March 18, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
C+

This Broch & Winchell story is never anywhere near as sharply satirical as it thinks it is, but there are some pretty good moments.  Roseanne gets a chance to sell her life story to network TV-- ABX-- and to the Home Movie Channel (HMC).  Meanwhile, Bev and Leon tell embarrassing stories about the Conners to a reporter from the tabloids, and unless we think they're very drunk and/or stupid, we have to assume that they're passive-aggressively seeking to embarrass Roseanne.

Ruta Lee returns as Bev's girlfriend Joyce.  Bob Fuller makes his final Roseanne appearance as the Clothing Salesman, while this time Johnny Dark is Frank Andrews.  Goodman's voice is heard offscreen, presumably prerecorded.

Ellen: Reversal of Misfortune

Ellen: Reversal of Misfortune
ABC
March 4, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Matt Goldman wrote this story where Ellen encourages her almost divorced parents to get out and socialize (with her), only to have them decide they don't want to get divorced.  The separation was really a McGuffin anyway, just an excuse by the writers to get her into therapy and slowly prep us for her eventual coming out.  Not that I (or you) knew that at the time.

Clive Rosengren, who was a Plumber on Who's the Boss?, is Mitch here.  Then 70-year-old Jean Speegle Howard, who had been playing sweet old ladies since the '60s (e.g. the Widow Douglas in a 1975 TV-Movie of Huckleberry Finn) was Irene Cornelli on Roseanne and here is Bernadette.

Roseanne: Roseanne-Feld

More bad advice about girls from Mark

Roseanne: Roseanne-Feld
ABC
March 4, 1997
Sitcom
DVD
C+

This episode doesn't really go anywhere with its three main threads and, unlike the first season or two, this is not just slice-of-life stuff, albeit more plausible than much of this season.  In one thread, Mark and Jackie go to see wrestling and she's invited onstage to participate, while he wishes he could join in.  Meanwhile, D.J. and his still relatively new girlfriend Heather (Matarazzo again) finally kiss and then consider having sex, with condoms, but he decides he'd rather masturbate in his room (yes, of course offscreen) with his dad's old picture of Julie Newmar (pronounced with the accent on "Mar").  And Leon and Scott meet Bev's new girlfriend, Lanford chanteuse Joyce (sixty-one-year-old Ruta Lee, recognizable for, among many TV roles, Lisa on Mork & Mindy, and Mrs. Dawson and Marsha Whitewood on Three's Company), and the four of them have a great time hanging out.  Writers Whitley & Winchell apparently don't know, have forgotten, or don't care that both Leon and Bev were established as alcoholics (I think the previous season or two), and have them get drunk without their partners being concerned.  But the show tunes are nice.

Spice Williams, who was Mosquito Woman on Out of This World, is Cincinnati Patti here.