'Roseanne': The Original Modern Family

As I lay in bed last night until the wee hours of the morning, I decided to flip through some channels on the T.V. and see what was on. As I flipped through the channels a show that I hadn’t watched since I was a kid caught my eye. The show was ‘Roseanne.’ Yes, that show from the late 80s starring Roseanne Barr and John Goodman as a blue collar working class couple, just trying make ends meet and showing what a real family looked like. A question I had while watching it was, what happened to controversial sitcoms like this? The ones that broke the rules and brought up topic never discussed on television before.

Now like many people out there I am a huge fan of the show ‘Modern Family. It’s considered to be a groundbreaking show but as I watched Roseanne it made me think back to all the episodes of the show and just how groundbreaking this show was.

‘Roseanne’ broke all the rules on television. This wasn’t the stereotypical perfect family that you saw in the 50s like ‘Leave It To Beaver.’ Never had people seen average looking people on television. People that didn’t look like they were right out of an add for ‘J. Crew’ or ‘Life Magazine.’ No, these were regular everyday people, the ones that most of us could relate to in our society.

The main reason this show was so popular was that we the audience could see ourselves in this family and the dysfunction of the family was relatable. We were through with the June Cleavers and Wards out there we wanted real people with real issues and that’s what we got with this show.

Roseanne dealt with taboo topics like, abortion, teen sex, homosexuality, abuse, job harassment and economic hardships. You could watch Roseanne and have a discussion about it the next day. Not only was the show humorous but it was able to deal with controversial issue in such a way that it didn’t make the audience feel uncomfortable but instead it made them think and have discussions that they may not have had with their own family if not for the show.

Roseanne called herself a ‘Domestic Goddess’ and she was. She was a working mother and she was able to show the struggles that working women go through in life. She was either they type of mother most of us had or the type of mother that your mom could relate to. She showed how strong women were and she could show the vulnerability as well and she did it all with a sense of humor.

You don’t see women like Roseanne on Television that much anymore, It seems that we have gone back to the June Cleavers in a way and that’s a shame. We need more strong women on television so that we can show this generation of young girls who and what they can truly be and that they don’t have to bow down to what society expects of them or the images they are shown in the media.

So Although ‘Modern Family’ has definitely become the unconventional family on television, they owe a great deal of gratitude to ‘Roseanne’ which paved the way for a show like this to even be on television, much like ‘Roseanne’ probably owes a great deal to shows like ‘Maude’ and ‘All In The Family’ which came before it.

So if you ever are up in the early morning like I was try surfing through the channels and find ‘Roseanne,' you can still feel the impact of the show even after all this time and that’s why it will continue to be timeless.