Roseanne Reacts to Last Episode of ‘The Conners’
The one person in America who didn’t realize The Conners was ending? That was Roseanne Barr, according to her son and representative Jake Pentland.
Neither Barr nor her family watched a minute of the series after it rebranded from Roseanne to The Conners, Pentland told TMZ. That’s why the original sitcom’s titular star had no idea the series was coming to a close after seven seasons. “We don’t care about cheap knockoffs,” Pentland told Us Weekly. “We support the real brands. We only pay attention to things that matter to the American people.”
Roseanne still believes she got screwed when she was fired for her controversial social media activity (she tweeted that Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett was the offspring of Muslims and the Planet of the Apes). But Pentland says there is a silver lining: The comedian and her family are happy that crew members on The Conners got seven years of work out of her misfortune.
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While her son claims Roseanne ignored the show because it’s an off-brand imitation, the comedian gave a different reason for not watching The Conners back in 2023. “I just can’t bear it,” she told The Los Angeles Times. “When they killed my character off, that was a message to me, knowing that I’m mentally ill or have mental health issues, that they did want me to commit suicide.”
“They killed my character,” she continued. “And all of that was to say thank you for bringing 28 million viewers, which they never had before and will never see again. Because they can kiss my ass.”
Even Barr’s rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, was pissed off that ABC killed off her character. “That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show,” Boteach and Roseanne said in a statement to Us Weekly back in 2018. (Er, an otherwise happy family show? No sitcom wallowed in misery like Roseanne and its successor, The Conners. But it’s still understandable why Barr didn’t want to see her fictional counterpart bite the dust.)
Assuming Pentland is telling the truth about the family’s viewing habits, we’ll never know what Barr thought of The Conners finale since she didn’t watch it and isn’t planning a binge anytime soon. But he says there was one good thing about the final episode — it means that chapter of Barr’s life has officially come to a close.
