Why is Conners so risky for ABC?



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Roseanne is dead. Long life The conners?

That's what ABC hopes after Roseanne BarrTwitter's antics effectively erased the channel's biggest hit on the last television season, leaving leaders, producers, and the rest of the stars in the series – anyone in the forefront who was not Roseanne Barr – to struggling to find a solution that would allow for a number of people employed and an on-air hearing rating without keeping the toxic star on TV.

The compromise? The above The conners, a re-tooling of the show, revived after 11 years off the air, this is essentially Roseanne without Roseanne. In the early evening, the re-titled series follows the clans of Dan, Jackie, Darlene and Roseanne as they are "forced to face the daily struggles of life in Lanford as they never did" after " a sudden change of heart. What turn of events, ask yourself? You will need to log in to find out. (Although Barr thinks she knows and does not care to spoil him.)

Saying that what ABC is trying to achieve here – the extraction of its most famous and most vocal star (and its character) from one of its greatest successes in years, of honest and realistic way and not only damnable what goes out of the door is risky is a euphemism in its purest form. It's like doing a tightrope without a safety net on a pool of hungry sharks. A wrong move and you are buddy.

"We want people to watch the show and see what's going on and how we're doing [wrote Roseanne off]," executive producer Bruce Rasmussen told Variety about the top secret resolution in the glaring absence of the series. "You do not want to be fictitious about how you do this – many people care about that character and are distinct from their feelings about the person, their political views, and the things they've said. that character, people can have their opinions after that. "

Oh, and they will.

We saw two of The connerThe new episodes, including the premiere tonight, and, without revealing anything, we can safely say that everything you liked Roseanne is almost intact and nothing is weighed down by the intense baggage that accompanied Barr to the show. John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf are still the incomparable pros that they have always been. And without Barr suck all the air out of the room, they, along with Sara Gilbert, Lecy Goranson and in a lesser extent, Michael Fishman, really succeed in shining with a fleshy material that lives perfectly in this space where sarcastic comedy meets the tragedy of the working class, a space that Roseanne everything but perfected at its peak.

"Very few shows were organized after the departure of the main character, so part of it was how to make a show that works without this central character?" It was a little surprising to me that it was so easy that to go ahead without this character, but the other characters are more present, "Rasmussen told the publication about the latest iteration of the series." We will get more involved in life personal characters this year. That's really where are they in their life now and what does it mean and what are they going to face? "

However, the notion of what will do The conners a success is hard to pin down. Admittedly, the material we were able to preview artistically, but it's show business and, ultimately, ABC wants this company, as noble as it is, to be profitable. It would be incredibly naive to expect the show, even with the curiosity put to work, to return to the 18.44 million viewers who listened to the first episode of the March recovery. But what about the 10.58 million who were still watching at the end of the season? It's hard to say if Barr's thirsty fans will want to have anything to do with the show. Ditto for those who have been so repelled by Barr's behavior that they have already escaped from last season and have no intention of coming back.

"There were a lot of risks involved," said Metcalf, who won an Emmy nomination this year for his outstanding work in the Renaissance, People. "But we all decided as a group to take the risk, knowing that we could be judged by deciding to come back."

This raises the question: what will be the reward for all these risks? Certainly, keeping hundreds of people is nice and, despite the fact that it is his own impetuous behavior that has put everything at risk, it can not be denied that Barr agrees to give up any financial and creative way to keep a semblance of the series on the airwaves. But we can not exclude the fact that if / when The conners returns to low numbers, it will be like a catweed for the old stormy and sour star and the trolls she counts as fans.

So this judgment? It happens. Hope this will have been worth it.

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