Roseanne is the rare revival that works because it embraces how much has changed

UPROXX

The Roseanne revival is unlike the first season of The X-Files revival, which came back as if nothing had changed and as if its characters hadn't aged. As Alan Sepinwall notes, "great TV shows tend to be the product of a specific time in the lives of three groups: the characters on the show, the people making it, and the people watching it. When shows get brought back from the dead years later, one or more of those groups is different, yet too many shows in the recent flood of revivals try to go about business as usual, assuming the old material will work no matter the context, when instead the new episodes at best come across as pale imitations of what these shows used to be. The handful of revivals that have creatively justified their existence have tended to be the ones that acknowledge those changes." A Roseanne revival looked the most likely to be out of step because so much has changed in 21 years. "Wonderful as so much of ’80s and ’90s Roseanne was, few revivals have had higher potential for feeling wildly out of step in the current environment," says Sepinwall. "Instead, the three episodes ABC gave to critics ... smartly lean into everything that’s different from when we last left the Conners, much less from when we first met them. It’s the rare revival that not only justifies its existence, but draws most of its strength from how much time has passed and what’s happened in the interim."

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