Within its first half hour the sparkling, if somewhat message heavy, “Roseanne” reboot touches on every major social problem in America today, including the one resulting from the recent presidential election. Their election choices have caused a furious dispute between Roseanne ( Roseanne Barr ), a Trump voter, and her sister, Jackie ( Laurie Metcalf ), who chose Green Party star Jill Stein. This, it turns out, is the easiest solved of the thorny issues up for discussion in the packed Conner household. The sisters forgive one another, grudgingly. What they don’t do—as is true of most people who’ve experienced ruptured relationships as a result of that election—is forget.
Roseanne
Begins Tuesday, 8 p.m., ABC
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Other matters are more complicated. Daughter Becky (Lecy Goranson) is looking forward to becoming a surrogate mother for a payoff of $50,000. Daughter Darlene ( Sara Gilbert ), now jobless, has moved back in with her parents. She brings with her two children, one of whom, the prepubescent Mark ( Ames McNamara )—a boy who takes care not to smudge his freshly applied nail polish—is a committed cross-dresser with a dazzling taste in scarves and skirts. It’s explained that Mark is undergoing a process—he’s searching. The show’s creators were apparently impelled, in honor of current orthodoxy, to include a young character of uncertain sexual identity. All would have worked far better if Mark, a 9-year-old, weren’t so impossibly perfect, so serenely confident about his special tastes and their importance. Better still if the producers had managed to imagine a character bearing some resemblance to an actual child.
There’s a drug problem in the family too, and the addict in question is Roseanne, caught by husband Dan ( John Goodman ) stocking pain medication from illicit sources. It’s a situation given a tone of great seriousness—unlike a much earlier scene, a foreshadowing of sorts, in which Dan and Roseanne dive into a huge pile of their medications and trade pills: an exchange they play for comedy, and genuine comedy it is.
Much the same can be said about most of the episodes available for review. The writing is sharp, the performances skilled. Ms. Barr and Mr. Goodman are their splendidly seasoned comic selves, and that’s more than enough reason to welcome the return of “Roseanne.”