What I’m Watching: Roseanne

Roseanne: Season 10, Episode 7 “Go Cubs” (B)

This was an undeniably entertaining episode, one that put all of Roseanne’s prejudices towards her Muslim neighbors out in the open. Tackling ignorance, immigration, and all that is especially interesting on a show like this that paints Roseanne as the sympathetic protagonist, similar most to the racist Archie Bunker, endearing despite the horrible things she baselessly thinks about people. Having Jackie there is like the opposite of Karen Waker on “Will and Grace,” a parody representation of what the other side thinks. In this case, Jackie was more than happy to share what they thought their neighbors’ wi-fi password was after Roseanne was managing to be mildly nice to them. You’d think that Samir would realize that ordering tons and tons of fertilizer by clicking too much on Amazon would probably make him look especially suspicious, but no one ever accused this show of being complex in its portrayal of people its main characters judge based on their appearance. Roseanne chewing out the cashier for airing her own discriminatory feelings hardly had the effect it should have since she just moved on to try to use a coupon, with the threat of telling her manager serving as the likely extent of her action. We briefly saw Andy Milder from “Weeds” as Al, who delivered the bad news to Dan that he wouldn’t be using his crew, prompting Dan to lament the use of “illegals,” a term he was warned not to use around anyone concerned with political correctness.