Roseanne Makes The Conners Joke About Dan’s Pills Secretly Tragic
Warning: Contains spoilers for The Conners season 4 episode 14.
There was plenty of tragedy inThe Conners season 4’s shooting episode, but one of the saddest parts of the Roseanne spinoff outing came in an early throwaway line. The Conners season 4 finally brought back Katey Sagal’s Louise in episode 14 after a long absence. However, there was little opportunity for the show’s cast to celebrate the return of Dan’s wife since her arrival was soon overshadowed by a local shooting and subsequent neighborhood lockdown.
Although the titular family emerged physically unharmed, The Conners episode still ended up being an atypically serious outing due to its sensitive subject matter. Ben and Darlene’s struggles and Darlene’s ongoing season 4 feud with Harris were both put on the back burner as the sitcom focused on the realities of what it is like to live through a tragedy. This makes it somewhat surprising that one of the episode’s saddest lines arrived before the characters even heard about the shooting, at the tail end of the episode’s cold open.
Related: The Conners: Becky’s Professor Davis Plan Can’t Work Out
In The Conners “Triggered” (season 4, episode 14), Louise’s arrival prompts Becky, Jackie, and Darlene to warn Dan’s new wife about the realities of living with him. During the scene where the trio warns Louise that Dan has a bad habit of not taking his pills, the line seems like just another throwaway joke. However, many viewers of Roseanne could tellThe Conners gag masked a dark hidden meaning. When Jackie mentioned that she has caught Dan taking a couple of Good & Plenty candies in place of his prescribed medicine, the Roseanne spinoff subtly reminded viewers that his first wife died of an overdose of prescription
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