So Dumb: ABC Considers Bringing Back Roseanne Without Roseanne
“one option is that the show might be rebranded to focus on the character of Darlene, played by Gilbert”
ABC seems to be realizing that they may have acted too quickly in cancelling the rebooted Roseanne series after the star published an indefensible tweet, despite her apology. The network was praised for acting swiftly but now the cost of the decision is dawning on them.
They are even considering bringing the show back without Roseanne.
Cynthia Littleton reports at Variety:
ABC Considers Plans to Rebrand ‘Roseanne’ Without Controversial Star
Comedy is hard. Just ask ABC. Or CBS, or NBC, or Fox.
The major networks have struggled mightily for a decade to field an unqualified sitcom smash. ABC’s reboot of “Roseanne” was that show — until it all fell apart with the touch of a “Send” button.
ABC took the extraordinary step of canceling “Roseanne” after star Roseanne Barr sent a racist tweet that likened Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape. Barr apologized for what she called a “joke,” but the damage was done. As outrage at the racial slur steamrolled online, ABC and parent company Disney were left with little choice but to sever ties with Barr. It all went down in a matter of hours as the industry was getting back to work after the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The situation was unprecedented, and nothing less than traumatic for ABC insiders. “Roseanne” stunned as it rocketed out of the gate in March with some 22 million viewers…
After the shock of the cancellation wore off, key producers behind the “Roseanne” revival — Tom Werner, Sara Gilbert (who also co-stars) and showrunner Bruce Helford — began the inevitable conversations about the possibility of salvaging the show without Barr’s participation. For instance, one option is that the show might be rebranded to focus on the character of Darlene, played by Gilbert.
This is all about money, ratings and regrets:
Another reason to try to save the show: ABC desperately needed the boost “Roseanne” delivered. The network has fallen behind its Big Four rivals and has had trouble launching successful series.
It’s too late. The viewers who handed ABC those ratings will not come back for Roseanne without Roseanne. It wouldn’t even work as a concept. Roseanne is the center of the show. Her character is the glue that binds the show’s universe together.
The only time this has worked is with “Garfield Minus Garfield” which takes the cartoon cat out of the comic. The only reason this is funny is because it turns the strip into something surreal and completely different in meaning.
Follow @GMinusG now pic.twitter.com/lpkaX8QX6g
— Mr. Steal your hot take (@MattShoNuff) April 3, 2018
Thank you internet, and @GMinusG , for the #existential Garfield parody I never knew I needed. https://t.co/aHQmXCC735 pic.twitter.com/Hr26NrN6L8
— Nathan Margrett (@nathanmargrett) November 3, 2017
Absolute gold. @GMinusG pic.twitter.com/vEAV79new3
— raiah. (@raiahark) May 1, 2017
ABC made their decision. They should live with it, just as Roseanne’s fans are.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I don’t agree the tweet was indefensible. She she didn’t say Jarret was a cross between an *ape* and the Muslim Brotherhood. She said the *movie* Planet of the Apes.
If you said I was the love child of Braveheart and Hezbollah, would that be problematic?
Moreover, if competing a black person to the movie ts such a racist dog whistle, why hasn’t Planet of the Apes been pulled from the shelves?
Comparing, not competing
Ape, not an ape; muslim, not a muslim…
The bottom line is that: ape or not, muslim or not: Valerie Jarrett is a traitor.
If ABC was smart, well they would not have canceled, and after canceling they should be begging Roseanne to come back, with a huge bonus and raise 🙂
Paging Netflix!
…..who just hired the Obamas….. Not.Happening.
Let the stupid Media Complex (Disney,ABC, Netflix, etc.) throw more good money after bad money!
Not to mention that no one of Persian descent has ever been likened to an ape. To agree with the proposition that the comment is racist is to accept the Left’s warped definition of racism.
Now, bring back Lassie without the dog.
Frick without Frack.
If nothing else, liberals are consistent:
The Dems think the voters are stupid.
ABC thinks the fans are stupid.
Let ABC waste their money by looking in a dark room for a black cat that is not there.
ABC will probably find a black trans and try to sell that on the show. The problem is that they will not be able to fill Roseanne’s shoes, and it will flop.
The only reason they want Gilbert to be the star of the show is because she’s gay. Gives Disney a reason to push that agenda some more.
It will flop
That girl is so bland and untalented that it would flop regardless.
She has quite a personal life, 3 wives, or husbands, or whatever and some kids by artificial screwing?
Those who have never seen the Whole Earth Catalog should check it out. Basically it was how to do things yourself. Building, gardening and so on, including details for lesbians to collect sperm and self inseminate with a turkey baster 🙂 I read a few years ago about how the first baby, a girl was now an adult.
Cynthia: Littleton: “Comedy is hard. …Barr likened Valerie Jarrett to an ape.”
Journalism is hard. Barr didn’t liken Jarret to an ape.
…
Cynthia: I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes in theatre sitting next to some African Americans. It made me uncomfortable. Cringe-worthy.
Fen: Why?
Cynthia: well (checks over her shoulder) you know…
Fen: Because seeing inferior subhuman species makes you think of black people?
Cynthia: Its the movie that’s racist, not me!
I love it. I don’t watch tv but was watching some of the episodes online. It was so so, just like the original. Instead of playing up the topic as part of her character.
Nothing like shoot themselves in the foot. Chalk up another one for the Anthem supporters.
Liberalism is a cargo cult.
Great idea, yes let the focus be on the dullest, most unpopular character on the show! Brilliant!
This should surprise no one. ABC had a smash hit, not because it, or Rosanne Barr, were politically correct, but because viewers like the show. In fact, the show was horribly successful AFTER being touted as being “conservative”. So, ABC does the Liberal/Progressive PC crud and deep-sixes the show. They do the L/P PC victory dance. Then reality sets in. Now, ABC not only no longer has the ## most watch show in 2018 [#2 scripted television show] it no longer has ANY money making show to put in its place.As the red ink rises in the Disney/ABC parking lot and begins to threaten the $800 loafers of the execs, while the stockholders are buying torches and pitchforks, the exec’s suddenly swoon. They need Rosanne back. But, they can not simply rehabilitate Barr, which they could easily have done earlier. So, they are desperately trying to revamp the show using other actors. Hollywood has tried keep a show alive after the exit of its star before. But, it only seems to work where the character replaced is not THE show. It was possible to retreadf Darren Stevens in Bewitched, because that character was ao two dimensional that almost anyone could have played the part; and did. But, if Elizabeth Montgomery had left the show, that would have resulted in immediate cancellation. The same is true of Rosanne. Without Barr, the show is DRT. And, so are Disney/ABC’s profits for next season.
Disney has also murdered the Star Wars franchise with their stupid SJW pandering.
Ace of Spades reports the latest one is on track to lose about $800,000,000 I think it was.
I predict it will lose $1 Billion Plus…….
Someone else made the point that the other actors on the show are planets and moons but Roseanne is the Sun that locks it all into place.
Ok….what would you call the Roseanne show without Roseanne ?
How bout:
The Not Roseanne Show!!!
The Ro-sans Show!!! (my favorite)
Sponsors? Near Beer, Splenda, vegie burger…???
To expand what Fen said:
http://www.rodserling.com/potarr.htm
Like Mash was really about the Vietnam War, not the Korean War,
in my youth, we all knew that Planet of the Apes was about racial tension.
Part of the message was that, hey we run things now and abuse apes, but apes will take over and abuse us. So we have to find a way to get along with apes instead of prolonging this cycle.
I used to think this wa too subtle on the part of Rosanne, but hey it was out there and not so subtle when she was a kid.
It just a fancy way of saying Jarret is a race baiter, which she is.
As for ABC, they were embarrassed by the success of Roseanne. In fact I suspect they wanted to show that they were being fair minded, gave conservatives a chance before they had to cancel the show for poor ratings. They were like some lefty being forced to say that Trump did something right.
They used the tweet as an excuse to save face and cancel the show in spite of its tremendous showing.Look at how long it took for them to purge Kathy Griffin, despite the fact that she made what was essentially an ISIS audition tape.
Now they are stuck. They threw away “Last Man Standing”, They threw away this show. I don’t like Shonda Rhymes, but they had some base with her and were at least treading some water. With Roseanne they had accidentally found a way out of their doldrums. In an effort to be politically correct they dug themselves a big hole.
Now in effort to salvage the golden eggs after killing the golden goose, they are trying this. I doubt it will work.
Agreed.
Especially RE: “They used the tweet as an excuse to save face and cancel the show in spite of its tremendous showing.Look at how long it took for them to purge Kathy Griffin, despite the fact that she made what was essentially an ISIS audition tape.”
Have you seen Humans? Just a remake of Planet of the Apes but with AI Robots.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
It seems to me that the real issue wasn’t her tweets, and while they pushed it I still don’t see it as racist, it was her success WITH her being a Trump supporter which had them afraid. The show was apparently a hit, probably because the other shows suck, not because her’s was all that. The network wanted it to bomb, then it didn’t, so they had to figure out a way to let it fail and Rosanne handed them the excuse.
Now they see that they have a big hole in their wallets and viewers are gone. They don’t get it. They need conservative leaning shows, as the people are starved for them. Roseanne never did much for me back when I watched TV. I am no fan of hers, and don’t really care about the show. I’m just laughing at these PC warriors who took a stupid tweet and blew their feet off to appease the Obamanations. The firing of Roseanne was another shot across the bow of the USS Trump. And it is backfiring.
I thought the show was badly acted. Sara Gilbert has to be one of the worst actresses ever, but she is a lesbian so she is immune to criticism.
Obamanations has a nice ring to it. Wasn’t Holder an Obamation? It would be fun to watch him pitch a Hillary like tantrum when he lost an election.
“The Sara Gilbert Show” will last 3 seasons. It will hemorrhage viewers after 3 episodes. It will draw fewer eyes than re-runs of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” and even though the ratings will tank completely ABC will talk about what a cultural phenomenon it was.
I actually don’t see it making it out of production.
Maybe ABC can re-run clips of the NFL National Anthems from last year?
Could it possibly be a part of the script? Roseanne returns having seen the light and is now a climate-change “NeverTrump” person because the President said something mean about gay people? /tinfoil hat
Save the tinfoil, the loons over at Democrat Underground want her diseased and killed off because she didn’t have ObamaCare.
Sarah Gilbert has the acting talent of a piece of wood. I hope they produce this disaster, because it will fail.
As I recall: Roseanne Barr is listed in the credits as the creator of “Roseanne”, so she may possess creative rights. If that is the case can ABC really do a reboot/spin-off without having to pay Barr some kind of buyout? Keep in mind that if Roseanne gets one dime from ABC after all of this virtue-gesturing the resulting nuclear-hot condemnation will make the original food fight over Barr’s tweet look like a love fest.
My guess is that this talk about a Roseanne-less “Roseanne” is just a ruse to generate buzz about a Sara Gilbert-centered show that has nothing to do with “Roseanne”.
iirc wanda sykes was executive producer though so…..bound to be lot of legalities involved.
Why on Earth would you label that tweet indefensible? That’s absurd. Of course it’s defensible, as long as you don’t subjugate yourself to the Left’s warped definition of “racism”. If VJ were black, it would become problematic, but she isn’t; so stop accepting the Left’s control of the debate.
There’s one small hole in your theory BtW…..VJ is black.
The next person who dares whisper, “It’s all about the money,” should be forced to watch wnba for life. They throw away billions with Rosanne but lose millions with virtue signaling.
It’s all about the culture wars kids and we are losing badly.
Well, forksdad….if we’re in a culture war…and Roseanne is on our side…
We are F’n DOOMED!!!! 🙂
Who said she was an ally? She’s a ricochet and Mr bullet has no friends.
Oh oh. I had a thought. They could make Roseanne the next Doctorf who and have her regenerate on the show!
Hey, it worked for the Hogans.
They throw away billions with Rosanne but lose millions with virtue signaling.
Last Man Standing was about the money. ABC would have been on the hook for all the production costs for a seventh season, and it wasn’t pulling in enough ratings for the ensemble cast salaries.
Roseanne might have been about the money, or at least it might have been a factor. Ratings were plummeting after the initial episodes, and when networks are in financial trouble (as ABC is) they’ll do really, really stupid things.
Something else that can’t be discounted is that Roseanne Barr has a lifelong reputation for batsh*t insanity and being impossible to work with, something that tanked the original series. Tom Arnold claims the tweet was a deliberate sabotage attempt by Roseanne because she wasn’t being given enough creative control over the show.
Not so fast. This could be the key to Hollyweird’s creativity slump (30 years of Simpsons? Really?).
They should bring back Peter Gunn without Peter Gunn.
They could bring back The Lone Ranger with just Tonto (Jay Silverheels).
They could even reboot the Cosby show without Cosby.
The possibilities are endless, and mind-numbing.