By Andrew Sanford | News | January 28, 2025 |
There wasn’t a time in my life when I didn’t know who Roseanne was. My mom loved her eponymous show, and we would watch it often. While I credit The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror specials for contributing to my love of Halloween, I have to admit that Roseanne’s Halloween episodes did the same. It was a good show! And that was thanks to its brash, hilarious lead and creator, Roseanne Barr. However, over the years, Roseanne’s in-your-face attitude has morphed into disgusting hatred.
The former TV star has said and done so many awful things at this point that refreshing my memory of certain events was difficult. I remember when she tweeted racist s*** about Valerie Jarrett, which resulted in her getting (justifiably) booted from a reboot of her show on ABC. What I didn’t remember was her dressing as Hitler (at her suggestion) for a photo shoot in 2009. Nor did I recall her going on an insanely antisemitic rant on a podcast almost two years ago. There is hatred in Roseanne, and she wants to bring it back to television!
Roseanne has written a show with Allan Stephan, who used to write for Roseanne’s show, and Arli$$. Y’all, I need to take a moment because every version of this story I’ve seen connects Stephan to Arli$$ and every time I see that name I get whiplash. It is one of Stephan’s biggest credits, as well as Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl, which was a great special on HBO that, like Arli$$, I assure you exists. But Arli$$! Working on any TV show is something to be proud of (very excited for people to quote that and tell me shows people should not be proud of) but reading Arli$$ in the year of our lord 2025 almost made me crumble to dust!
Arli$$!!!
Anyway, Roseanne and Allan Stephan’s new show sounds like it is headed straight to DailyWire+, so make sure your subscriptions are up to date! “It’s silly and out there,” Barr explained to Variety, and that’s a promising start! We like silly stuff. Hopefully, she stopped there and— “[It will contain] very offensive ideas and a lot of swearing. I live with my daughter and her husband and their six children on a farm. And they have goats running through their house and stuff. It’s based on my life as a farmer in Hawaii. They save America with guns, the Bible, petty crime, and alcoholism. It’s kind of like the Coen brothers thing.” Oh! I… woof!
Something about seeing “the Bible” and “petty crime” lumped together feels off, but what do I know?! Maybe saving America is harder than I thought! More likely, the show is just a hodgepodge of Roseanne’s grievances. Given her recent “comedy special,” I’d bet money that there will be a scene where she hits one of her grandchildren and convinces their parents that it was the right thing to do. Along with rampant antisemitism, those are the kinds of ideas Roseanne is rocking these days. Arli$$ would never.