Roseanne

5 Pages 1289 Words

'Roseanne' is the story of a lower class family in Lanford, IL struggling with life's essential problems: Marriage, Children, Money and Parent's in Law. As a classic sitcom, the story circles around the Connor family - DJ, Darlene, Becky, Roseanne and Dan. Dan does dry-wall for a living but eventually owns his own motorcycle shop while Roseanne is a waitress at a diner in the mall and later on works at a hair salon. Roseanne is accompanied in her quest to keep the family together by her sister Jackie and various friends over the years. This essay will focus on the struggle with money that the Connor family encountered in almost every episode.
‘Roseanne’ takes on a whole new look about how families should be portrayed on television. Families were finally represented as they were. Most families aren’t the perfect ‘Leave it to Beaver’ family, and not even close to the not-so-ordinary ‘Brady Bunch’ family. All of those families have one thing in common, they never worried about money. They were mainly middle to upper-class families. While it was kept secret what Mr. Cleaver did for a living, most speculate an executive for an architecture firm or an accountant, whereas Mr. Brady is an architect. ‘Roseanne,’ unlike ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and the ‘Brady Bunch’, represents the blue collar working families all across America. Television started showing black families and broken home families but never before did they broadcast the average family that worried about money while their kids were growing up at the same time. For instance, their daughter Becky wants to go to college, but since the Connor family can’t afford to put her through school, she has to settle for community college.
This show can be seen in a controversial light because it makes the upper class uncomfortable about addressing the issue of economic equality. What rich person would want to watch a television show that made them f...