3
"Roseanne" exploded
TV stereotypes about
blue-collar America.

"Roseanne" premiered in 1988 at the tail end of Reaganomics, when the bottom was falling out for previously middle-class families across America. But the show -- and Roseanne -- didn't really find their political footing, or nervy comedic edge, until midway through the Bush era. No other sitcom articulated blue-collar cynicism, frustration and exhaustion so well, or so sharply depicted an economy on the skids. Roseanne and Dan both worked, but they could never seem to gain any ground; they were always a paycheck away from disaster. They'd never attended college, but they were smart (too smart for some of the brain-sucking jobs they got stuck with), culturally and politically aware and open-minded. While TV had mostly portrayed blue-collar Americans as Archie Bunker conservatives, "Roseanne" charted the rise of a new kind of working class -- the old weed-smoking, hell-raising, counter-culture boomers who had found, to their dismay, that they were never going to have a better life than their parents. The Conners frequently joked that they didn't even know what class they belonged to anymore. And hitting the lottery this season didn't provide any easy answers. As pioneers in a new socioeconomic frontier, the Conners turned cultural perceptions inside out with punky, contemptuous humor. They left the Christmas lights up till July, worked on motorcycles in the driveway and greeted the news of Darlene's unwed pregnancy by cheering their official entrance into white trashdom. There was always something pathetic about how on "All in the Family" and "The Honeymooners," being blue-collar was equated with personal failure. "Roseanne" was the first blue-collar sitcom to say, "We're OK -- it's you rich people who've got the problem!" 4. "Roseanne" raised the stakes for the family sitcom.