If they could turn back time
Roseanne, Will & Grace reboots reverse major storylines from original series
As Roseanne gears up for its return to television after more than two decades off the air, its creators are opting to pretend a plot line in the original series’ finale never happened. It’s a tactic seen in other shows, too, such as the upcoming Will & Grace.
In the case of Roseanne, producers will resurrect a popular character killed off in the previous incarnation of the show.
With the upcoming Will & Grace, characters who had children when the show ended in 2006 will carry on as if they never had kids.
As networks and streaming services race to revive old shows — as evidenced by Twin Peaks, Fuller House, The X-Files, 24 and Arrested Development, among others — the challenge of building on established canons will likely become increasingly common.
WILL & GRACE
Will & Grace will return to NBC on Sept. 24 (it will also air on Global in Canada). But a few characters will be missing.
The show was four single people: two gay men named Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes) and their platonic female friends Grace (Debra Messing) and Karen (Megan Mullally).
But the finale gave Will a husband and a son, and Grace a daughter and a husband.
In the new series, the creators will just pretend the marriages and children never happened.
“That finale really caused us a lot of grief,” the show’s co-creator Max Mutchnick told Entertainment Weekly. “You write a finale because a show is over. You never think that it’s coming back again.”
“When the decision was made to bring the series back, we were like, well, we left them with kids, right?” co-creator David Kohan added. “And if they have children, then it has to be about them being parents, ‘cause presumably it would be a priority in their lives. And if it wasn’t a priority in their lives, then they’re still parents, they’re just bad parents, right? We frankly did not want to see them being either good parents or bad parents. We wanted them to be Will and Grace.”
It helps that these are sitcoms, in which the plots aren’t nearly as important as the laughs they produce. Realism isn’t nearly as vital as it is for dramas.
ROSEANNE
ABC recently announced an eightepisode reboot of the popular sitcom, which ran for nine seasons from 1988 to 1997. (In Canada, the reboot will also air on CTV.) John Goodman is slated to reprise his role as Roseanne’s husband, Dan Conner, despite the fact that his character died in the original series.
In the original show’s final season, the blue-collar couple appeared to find luck after eight seasons of perpetual struggle. Dan survived the heart attack he suffered at the end of season 8, and the family won $108 million in the Illinois State Lottery.
Life for the Conners was good. Or so it seemed.
The devastating series finale ripped that happiness away in its final few minutes, when Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) revealed that the family never won the lottery. Nor did Dan survive — the heart attack killed him.
Everything that occurred in that last season was fantasy, all written by Roseanne Conner (the character) as a means of coping with her husband’s death.
The ending was praised by some critics and fans, hated by others. One thing was certain: It was noticed, ending up on various Top 10 lists featuring the best, worst and most controversial finales.
But now the show is returning in 2018, with Goodman back in the cast as Dan, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey confirmed.
“I don’t want to talk too specifically, but I wouldn’t say we’ll ignore the events of the finale,” Dungey told reporters at a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to Entertainment Weekly. “Dan is definitely still alive.”
Aspects of the finale remain. For example, the Conners will not have won the lottery.
Instead, the family “will continue to deal with the economic challenges of living paycheque to paycheque in 2018,” as Deadline reported.
Rabid fans of the show might not be shocked by the return of Dan, given that Barr wrote a blog post in 2009 outlining what eventually happened to all the characters from her show, according to Deadline.
Dan, she wrote, faked his own death and reappeared alive.