Line #52 Series/TheConners


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/p15661268_b_v8_ab.jpg]]
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3	''The Conners'' is a 2018 DomCom on [[Creator/AmericanBroadcastingCompany ABC]], and an {{Aftershow}} spinoff of the long-running ''Series/{{Roseanne}}''. The series focuses on the Conner family's efforts to get by in the wake of their matriarch Roseanne's death. Most of the remaining cast of the previous series, including Creator/JohnGoodman, Creator/LaurieMetcalf, and Creator/SaraGilbert, return for this continuation, with the notable absence of Creator/RoseanneBarr herself.
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5	The series was ordered by ABC after the previous series was abruptly cancelled following racist remarks made by Barr. As a second/eleventh season of ''Roseanne'' had already been planned and paid for by the network (and valuable ad time - based on the first/tenth season's gangbuster ratings - had already been sold), it was decided to ReTool said season into ''The Conners'', with Barr being paid a one-time fee in exchange for relinquishing any and all ownership of the show and its characters; as a result, the show is being produced without any involvement whatsoever from Barr -- creatively, financially, and otherwise.
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7	The spinoff was [[https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/03/22/entertainment/conners-renewed-season-2/index.html renewed for a second season]] on March 22, 2019. The initial order was for 13 episodes, but all parties agreed to an extension to 19 episodes, nearly a full season's worth; ultimately, 20 episodes would air. (The original ''Roseanne'' averaged 25 episodes per season.) The show was renewed for a sixth season on May 16, 2023, and is set to premiere on February 7, 2024.
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9	This show's character sheet is shared with its predecessor over [[Characters/RoseanneAndTheConners here]].
10	----
11	!!Keep on Tropin'
12	* ActorAllusion: In a season 3 episode, Becky asks Dan why isn't he somewhere scratching his back on a tree while singing "The Bare Necessities", from Creator/{{Disney}}'s classic ''WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book\|1967}}''. Creator/JohnGoodman (Dan) voiced Baloo in the 2003 sequel ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook2''.
13	* {{Aftershow}}: ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'' without Roseanne.
14	* AgeGapRomance: Jackie enters into one with the younger Neville in season 4. They get married in the finale.
15	* TheAlcoholic: Becky slowly realizes she's become one over the course of the first season, starting with when she begins working for Dan's construction company -- Dan chews her out for bringing vodka to their construction site, and she realizes she's gotten to a point where she can't go one day without drinking. Her father gives her six weeks to get over the habit, or she's fired (he ends up firing her anyway due to her pregnancy). Then after she becomes pregnant, she catches herself [[OneDrinkWillKillTheBaby about to drink an alcoholic beverage]] and reacts in horror, tearfully confessing to Darlene later on that she's become a drunk.
16	* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Jackie initially thinks Bev is faking memory lapses in "Of Missing Minds and Missing Fries" as a ploy for sympathy and to cause guilt, due to previous lies throughout both series. This line makes Jackie realize she's not faking it.
17	-->'''Bev:''' And that reminds me, could you tell Roseanne that she needs to come by and visit me, too?
18	* AscendedExtra: DJ's wife Geena was seen only occasionally in season 10 of ''Roseanne'', as she was still stationed overseas and could only communicate with the family through video calls. She's back home at the start of this series, and is thus bumped up to supporting character - then downgraded again.
19	* TheBabyTrap: Becky attempts this with her restaurant manager Ramon, since he was the richer of the two men she had sex with. Thankfully, Ramon had a vasectomy.
20	-->'''Becky:''' Normally that would be music to my ears...
21	* BlameGame: The pilot episode "Keep on Truckin'" has Dan and Marcy Bellinger arguing over who is to blame for Roseanne's demise after Dan first blames Marcy: Marcy for giving Roseanne the pills, or Dan for failing to afford the medical bills for Roseanne's ailing health.
22	* BusCrash: In season 3, [[spoiler: next-door neighbor Molly Tilden (played by Creator/DanielleHarris, reprising her role from ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'') died of brain cancer. The shocking death was revealed soon after Darlene reconnected with her teenage rival, who encouraged her to live life to its fullest — something Molly had done ever since she found out she was dying]].
23	* ButICantBePregnant: Becky and the family are shocked (albeit pleasantly) to find out that she's pregnant, as her doctor had previously told her that her eggs were too old.
24	* CastingGag:
25	** In October 2019, ABC had a network-wide "Cast from the Past" week where sitcoms featuring a particular cast member had an episode featuring actors from a prior work of that cast member. This series' contribution, "The Preemie Monologues", featured Creator/DanAykroyd as Buddy, a poker player friend of Dan's. Aykroyd and John Goodman had starred in ''Film/BluesBrothers2000'' as Elwood Blues and "Mighty Mack" [=McTeer=], respectively.
26	** Creator/KateySagal as Louise, Dan's new love interest after Roseanne's death. Sagal is best known for playing Peg Bundy on ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', which was largely considered to be ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'''s [[DuelingShows direct competitor]] during the latter series' original run. In fact, Roseanne Barr was the original choice for the role of Peggy, opposite Creator/SamKinison as Al. (Both turned it down: she wanted a project where she had more creative control, he wanted to become a movie star.)
27	* CatharticChores: The First episode shows everyone dealing with Roseanne's death in different ways. Jackie is desperately trying to reorganize the kitchen in order to keep her mind off of her sister's passing, which results in a scene where Darlene enters to find every single container, plate, and glass piled on the table while she tries to figure out "the flow".
28	* CharacterDevelopment: During ''Roseanne'', whenever a passing comment or joke about DJ being gay came up, Dan would get visibly uncomfortable with the idea and immediately shoot it down. Here, his grandson Mark is openly gay and, early on, would show a preference for dressing in typically feminine clothing. This time around Dan fully admits that he doesn’t quite understand this but doesn’t love Mark any less for it and will protect him against anyone who takes issue with it.
29	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome:
30	** Jackie's son Andy continues to be conspicuous by his total absence or lack of mention. When Becky goes through ''the exact same'' situation Jackie did in ''Roseanne'' (pregnant after a one-night stand, will have trouble supporting the baby but doesn't want the father involved), Jackie curiously doesn't bring up how much this resembles her own past situation with either Becky or (after he finds out) the baby's father. Showrunner Bruce Helford admitted the writing staff have considered [[RetCon retconning]] Andy away as part of the "dream period", even though he was born in season 6 and his cousin Jerry - whose continued existence ''has'' been established - was born two years later in season 8... but see immediately below.
31	** Roseanne and Dan's youngest child Jerry seems to have joined his cousin Andy in limbo. Although fleetingly mentioned in the revival of ''Roseanne'', he was a no-show at ''his mother's funeral'' without any comment from his father or any of his siblings (when even his sister-in-law managed to fly home from Afghanistan, albeit a bit late) and hasn't been seen or mentioned since. In the third-season episode "Halloween and the Election vs. the Pandemic", multiple characters explicitly acknowledge that Roseanne and Dan had three kids, officially [[RetCon retconning]] Jerry out.
32	* ContinuityNod:
33	** DJ's wife Geena, carrying over from the tenth season of ''Roseanne'', isn't a new character; she was mentioned in a single episode of the original series almost 25 years prior, where she was the little girl DJ didn't want to kiss for a school play.
34	** Roseanne's addictive personality was explored in several episodes in the original run, as well, including the episode where she started smoking and her addiction to bingo.
35	---> Thank God for birth control!
36	** [[spoiler:David breaks up with Darlene again]] by telling her he needs to be in a relationship where both parties are partners, and that she's been more or less dominating their relationship since day one. To illustrate this, a clip of the two of them from the original ''Roseanne'' is shown, in which she does just that.
37	* CanonDiscontinuity:
38	** In season 3 during Becky’s rehab episode, Dan says the money they sent Becky was for college and Mark used it and dropped out of trade school while in Minnesota. This a retcon of Roseanne’s original history, in Roseanne during season 6 Becky and Mark lived in the Conner home when Becky was given the money. It ''was'' intended to be for Becky's schooling, but she pushed Mark to take it because she wanted him to be more successful. He did still drop out of school fairly quickly, but he'd never wanted to be there to begin with.
39	** Jerry Garcia Conner and Andy Harris no longer exist in the ''Conners'' version of the timeline.
40	** Lanford has now become an outer suburb of Chicago rather than a rural community in the middle of nowhere. Mind you, the Chicagoland metro area stretches out quite a ways and does get rural at its outer edges, but this establishes that Chicago is now nearby rather than the multiple hours away that it used to be.
41	* DemotedToExtra: Carrying over from season 10 of ''Roseanne'', DJ plays a significantly smaller role these days. Despite his prominence on the [[CoversAlwaysLie marketing material]], he actually has the least prominent role of all the legacy characters, making infrequent appearances with few speaking lines. In the season 4 finale, [[spoiler: he makes a brief appearance but doesn’t say a word]]. After that, he was dropped from the main cast completely.
42	* DidntThinkThisThrough: Darlene attempts a grand gesture to make things up to [[spoiler:Ben for cheating on him with David. She signs the divorce papers in front of him, but he's surprised that she and David were still married the entire time. Signing the papers does make Ben feel better, but then Darlene lets it slip that David dumped her first and that she had been going to couples counseling with him.]] [[{{Understatement}} Yeah, it goes poorly.]]
43	* DownerBeginning: The series picks off from where the Conner family is still mourning Roseanne's death. Dan is taking it the hardest, initially refusing to even sleep in the bed he shared with her. DJ, oddly enough, is the only legacy character to never be depicted as emotionally affected by what's happened.
44	* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Roseanne ends up dying of [[spoiler:an accidental opioid overdose.]]
45	* DrugsAreBad: [[spoiler: Roseanne kills herself by mistake via opioid overdose having taken so many pills as she erroneously assumed the more she took, the quicker her knees would heal]].
46	* EveryoneHasStandards: Bev's actions in "The Icewoman Cometh" get Darlene so mad that she wants to abuse her power of attorney to get Harris some needed money. While the others are onboard, Harris objects to this. Subverted in that Harris says she intends to play the long game, get in Bev's good graces to get into the will, and then take her for a wheelchair stroll near Lake Michigan.
47	* EverythingIsRacist: In "There Won't Be Blood", Mark gets harassed by his school principal for dressing up as Frida Kahlo, claiming that a white male such as himself should not dress up as a Hispanic woman as it is apparently insensitive and therefore cultural in-appropriation.
48	* FamilyTitle: Reflecting its change in focus from Roseanne Conner to the entire Conner family.
49	* FirstFatherWins: Averted; the fifth season finale has Mark declare that recent-stepfather Ben is his ''real'' dad now. It's a sweet moment and nice to see Ben's hard work and support appreciated, but the episode left a bad taste in the mouths of many fans because the showrunners teased the prospect of the long-awaited return of Mark's ''biological'' father David, who hadn't been ''mentioned'' for over three years, only to spend the episode [[DerailingLoveInterests bashing David in order to make Ben look better]] without even a cameo.
50	* FiveStagesOfGrief: After Roseanne dies, Dan works through the grieving process, but his relationship with Louise hits a snag because he struggles with the fifth stage. He feels guilty having the kind of fun with another woman he was supposed to have with his wife. Becky says she understands, that it was easier to act like Mark was just away instead of never coming back.
51	* FreudianExcuse: Though generally nice and upbeat, Neville turns out to be very protective of his money, to the point of privately describing Jackie's family as grifters and leeches that would take him for everything he's got. Dan doesn't much like being insulted in such fashion, but he understands that Neville's crappy parents and childhood left him with some serious trust issues.
52	* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion:
53	** A big discussion in the season 5 episode "Possums, Pregnancy and Patriarchy" after [[spoiler: Harris'pregnancy]] is revealed and the family takes sides on whether or not she should keep it (the word 'abortion' is never spoken). Jackie does suggest that she had an abortion for an unplanned pregnancy when she was a young woman. As is common for the trope, [[spoiler: Harris ultimately]] decides to keep the baby, but then suffers a ConvenientMiscarriage.
54	* HalloweenEpisode:
55	** "There Won't Be Blood" (season one)
56	** "Nightmare on Lunch Box Street" (season two)
57	** "Halloween and The Election vs. The Pandemic" (season three)
58	* HateSink:
59	** Jackie's brief boyfriend, Peter, who proves that Jackie's luck with men doesn't seem to have changed much in the past twenty-something years. He's a condescending, unbearably dull, stuck-up, jobless, broke, KnowNothingKnowItAll mooch who makes Jackie not only pay for his schooling, but makes her participate in a school project of his where they both have to live like ancient Nordic people (which means Jackie does virtually ''everything'', while Peter sits on his ass) and has her add him ''to her bank account'' despite having no money of his own, talks down to Dan when he gets called out on his behavior, and seems to be liked by a total of zero people in- ''and'' out-of-universe. After she catches him having an affair with another woman -- and after he '''implies, to Jackie's face, that she's the reason why''' -- she promptly gives him the boot.
60	** Bill Wellman from Season 5 is insufferable CorruptCorporateExecutive-incarnate. After promoting Darlene at the company, she discovers that he only did so so that she could deny their products are polluting the environment without knowing they actually are--and it's confirmed to Darlene when her supervisor Robin Shetsky confides in her that she's the whistleblower. Darlene asks Wellman to give her her old job back since she's uncomfortable with lying, but he tells her she has to quit instead and when she threatens to go public if he doesn't fire her, Wellman threatens to sue her if she does. Even when Darlene quits, Wellman counteracts--as well as outright shuts down--Robin's good job references by painting Darlene as a liar--even though she mostly keeps her mouth shut--so that she's blackballed from any other corporate jobs.
61	* HenpeckedHusband: Despite Ben having been initially billed as the "alpha" who could stand up to Darlene's domineering personality, after marrying into the family he gets mercilessly bossed around by Darlene ''and'' Becky, who make all the decisions without even asking his opinion.
62	* HeroicBSOD: Dan and Jackie have this reaction to Roseanne's death, even three weeks after her funeral. Dan initially can't bring himself to sleep in their bed ([[spoiler:he ends up doing so in the tag]]), while Jackie goes crazy rearranging the kitchen all day because she can't bear to leave the house, feeling that doing so would mean leaving her sister. Jackie would show no further signs of grief until the end of the season where she has a drunken nervous breakdown at a restaurant that used to be The Lanford Lunch Box. Becky, Darlene, and DJ are shown to have a much better grip on dealing with their mom’s demise. In season 4, however, Darlene has a mildly intense reaction to [[spoiler: finding a note that Roseanne had wrote in a Bible begging God to heal the pain from her bad knees. The same pain that forced her to turn to opioids, causing her own demise]].
63	* HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: When Becky expresses fear that her various screw-ups will cause her daughter to not love her, Dan reassures her by telling her with some stories of how he and Roseanne screwed up with her. The topper is them using a beat-up stroller found in an alley that ultimately folded up on baby Becky; both Dan and Roseanne laughed at this because they were high at the time.
64	* InternalReveal: In the season 3 finale, the Conners have to fill in [[spoiler: Geena]] on all that's happened while she was away.
65	* ItsAllMyFault: It's implied that Dan feels this way about Roseanne's death from an opioid overdose, especially when he begins a violent smear campaign against Marcy, the woman who gave Roseanne the drugs in the first place. Marcy explains that she and other women in the neighborhood have formed a sort of support group for each other: since none of them have health insurance, they share whatever medication they get (Roseanne became addicted to the opioids, which Marcy genuinely didn't know). It's suggested that Dan is taking out his anger on Marcy because he blames ''himself'' for not being able to find a job that provided sufficient health coverage for his family.
66	* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine:
67	** As noted above, Dan Aykroyd (John Goodman's costar in ''Film/BluesBrothers2000'') appears in an episode as one of Dan's poker buddies.
68	** Creator/NoelFisher was cast to play Dan's long-lost half-brother Ed Conner, Jr., and naturally (given the show's fondness for LampshadeHanging) gets to share a scene in his debut appearance with his ''Series/ShamelessUS'' costar, Creator/EmmaKenney, who plays Harris. Harris flirts aggressively with him only to be shut down when Dan tells her they're family. (He's her half-great-uncle.)
69	** In Season 4's WeddingsForEveryone, Father Morton is played by Creator/IanGomez, Laurie Metcalf's co-star from ''Series/TheNormShow''.
70	** Speaking of ''Series/ShamelessUS'', TheStinger of "Two More Years and a Stolen Rose" sees Emma Kenney opening the front door and seeing Dan's high school rival Smitty standing there; she asks if they've met before. Smitty is played by Creator/WilliamHMacy, who played Kenney's father on the other series.
71	* InsultBackfire: When Harris gets caught making pot cookies, Darlene chastises her but also Dan for somehow never noticing the smell. This leads to a brief argument over who managed being a working parent better, with Darlene finally saying Roseanne mostly raised the kids, not Dan. Dan simply retorts that they both know it was really the TV.
72	* {{Irony}}: In the first episode, Becky and Darlene are going over the massive bills. Becky suggests just telling the collectors that Roseanne died, but Darlene points out that Roseanne actually tried that claim in the past.
73	* KilledOffscreen: Roseanne, followed by [[spoiler:Dan's father]] in season 2, and [[spoiler: Molly Tilden]] in season 3.
74	* LawOfInverseFertility:
75	** In season 1, Becky tried donating eggs only to be told she's too old for it. Then she gets drunk and has a one night stand with a busboy, believing she couldn't get pregnant. Afterwards, she discovers to her surprise that she did manage to get pregnant with her baby daughter Bev.
76	** In Season 2, after having no luck trying for a baby with Ben and seeing him being friendly with Becky and help her with her baby, Darlene lashes out at them due to jealousy. After calming down, she reveals to Ben that the real reason she was angry was because she went to the doctor and was revealed to have scarring, meaning it would be little chance for her to have a baby with Ben. Ben assures her that if Becky could get pregnant after being told her chances were impossible, Darlene could too. By season 3, [[spoiler: Darlene finds out she's pregnant -- only to be told by a doctor that it was a false positive and that she is near pre-menopause at 43.]]
77	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Becky mentions in "The Icewoman Cometh" that Dan has been working on the motorcycle in the garage since 1988 (the year ''Roseanne'' premiered).
78	* LiveEpisode:
79	** “Live from Lanford” (season 2), with a subplot built around the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary.
80	** "Trucking Live in Front of a Fully Vaccinated Studio Audience" (the season 4 premiere), with a subplot centering on Mark meeting distant relatives on [=FaceTime=] for a school project (the relatives were played by winners of a contest ran by the network and were called live on air).
81	* LoveTriangle:
82	** Darlene ends up in one with David and Ben for the first half of season two. Ultimately, [[spoiler:both end up breaking up with her -- David because he's been seeing a therapist who helps him realize their relationship is more or less dominated by her, and Ben because he found out about Darlene cheating on him with David when he and the latter both showed up to change her tire while on the road.]]
83	** In Season 2, Jackie finds herself entangled in an arranged love triangle with a polygamous husband and wife.
84	** In season 3, Darlene fears this is happening between herself, Ben and Becky. Turns out she was wrong as Ben was just helping Becky with her baby.
85	* MamaBear: As the Halloween episode showcased, Darlene is one fierce MamaBear when it concerns her kids.
86	* MistakenForGay: Jackie is mistaken for a lesbian by Becky's daughter's paternal grandmother and aunt due to her short haircut. This may be a minor CallBack to Jackie revealed to being a lesbian in the original 1997 series finale before it was retconned.
87	-->'''Tia:''' That one's a lesbian.
88	-->'''Becky:''' She's not a lesbian. It's just her short haircut.
89	* TheMourningAfter: This is the others' concern about Dan in the early episodes, as he puts on a brave face but never appears to deal with what he's feeling. "The Separation of Church and Dan" sees him go to a support group at the others' insistence.
90	* MoralityPet: The Conners and Beverly Rose are this to Becky, especially when she relapses and seeks treatment for alcoholism in season 3.
91	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
92	** Dan and a neighbor suffer this--Dan when he realizes he called out the wrong person for Roseanne's death and the neighbor for accidentally causing her death.
93	** Jackie after drunkenly slapping Darlene during their argument.
94	* NeverRecycleABuilding: The Wellman Plastics factory reopens after being closed for almost 30 years with minimal rebuilding needed, presumably only cleanup.
95	* NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: Meta example. Unlike ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen'', which made a big joke out of killing off their main character (rather viciously, at that) after clashing with the actor under similar but apolitical circumstances, the series portrays utmost reverence for Roseanne the character. Her death has affected the characters in several ways (particularly Dan and Jackie, of course) and is occasionally mentioned verbally as being missed and loved. In-universe, this trope is subverted in terms of the elder Mark Healy, David’s brother. Dan admits in season 3 that he thinks Mark was a “selfish little punk” who ruined Becky’s life.
96	* OffTheWagon: Becky starts drinking again when she gets depressed about not seeing her daughter more often and feeling like she doesn't love her enough. It gets to the point where she is passed out when [[spoiler:the baby is crying with a fever. The others convince Becky to go to rehab.]]
97	* OhCrap: Darlene has this reaction when [[spoiler:both Ben ''and'' David show up to help her change a flat tire while she's out on the road. In fact, her having this reaction is what helps Ben realize that she's been seeing David behind his back, leading him to break up with her.]]
98	* OneDrinkWillKillTheBaby: Becky starts to take a sip of an alcoholic drink she's made herself, before suddenly remembering she's pregnant.
99	* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Bev, now that Roseanne is dead.
100	-->'''Bev:''' No mother should ever have to bury her own child.
101	-->'''Jackie:''' Mom, you're 92. You're gonna see all of us die, and then you're gonna get buried by a robot.
102	* ParentalFavoritism: "The Icewoman Cometh" seems to have this as a running theme, with Bev calling Darlene out for blatantly favoring Harris over Mark, when Harris has been nothing but a screw-up being constantly bailed out by her family and Mark has been ignored in all his accomplishments. Ironically, it's shown Bev also is guilty of this when the whole reason she wanted to expose Darlene's favoritism in the first place is because she's upset Darlene gave her share of the restaurant back to Jackie, reinforcing Bev's old favoritism for Roseanne over Jackie from the original series.
103	* PartingWordsRegret: Harris struggles with how most of her interactions with Roseanne before her death was constant fighting.
104	* PoliticalOvercorrectness: The main premise of "There Won't Be Blood".
105	* RearrangeTheSong: The 10th season arrangement of the famous ''Roseanne'' theme song gets an update for this series.
106	* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
107	** Barr's ousting from ''Roseanne'' led to that show's cancellation, but ABC later walked it back and ordered ''The Conners'' to replace it.
108	** The third season deals with the current COVID-19 pandemic. Worth noting that the third season filmed with extreme COVID precautions. Adding to this, Bev doesn’t appear due to the elderly being at higher risk from the virus than others.
109	* ReallyDeadMontage: [[spoiler: For Darlene and David's ''marriage''.]]
110	* ReluctantRetiree: In some Season 3 episodes, Dan's ability to do dry wall and other construction work is called into question, due to his age. It reaches a head in "Panic Attacks, Hardware Store and Big Mouth Billy Bass" when his impaired hearing prevents him from hearing an approaching forklift; he gets fired from that job for being a liability and gets turned away by another contractor who heard about what happened. Talking to Jackie, he acknowledges how the work is just getting harder to do and that it's taking him longer to recover from it.
111	* RelationshipUpgrade: [[spoiler: Dan and Louise]] get engaged in the season 3 finale.
112	** [[spoiler: Darlene and Ben]] get back together and also get engaged in season four's "The Best Laid Plans, A Contrabassoon and A Sinking Feeling".
113	* ReplacementFlatCharacter: Darlene's first love interest is Neil, a sensitive, quiet fellow quick to do whatever she says. Upon meeting him, Dan remarks Darlene simply got herself another David.
114	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Roseanne’s death by opioid overdose has been a major problem in the real world and only started being addressed in 2018.
115	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Dan discovering a hidden pill bottle has him raging against Marcy Bellinger, the woman who gave Roseanne said bottle. Ultimately Marcy turns up at his doorstep begging him to end the smear campaign, but he refuses, fully convinced Marcy was his late wife's dealer. When Darlene shows him a second hidden bottle belonging to someone else, he learns Roseanne was going to all kinds of people looking for painkillers. He softly tells Darlene to drive Marcy home.
116	* SassyBlackWoman: Geena.
117	* TheScapegoat: In "Keep on Truckin'", [[CrusadingWidow Dan]] turns Marcy into one for Roseanne's death attributed to drug overdose because it turns out that [[spoiler: Marcy gave Roseanne painkillers]].
118	* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Beverly Rose was born premature in season 2, but by season 5 is already attending kindergarten.
119	* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Darlene's first major love interest is Neil, a passive, sensitive guy quick to do whatever she tells him to. In other words, he's a new version of David, which Dan lampshades upon meeting him. It becomes deconstructed as Darlene realizes she's just repeating a pattern that led to a failed marriage, so she breaks up with him. This motivates her to look for someone different, and she ends up with Ben, David's polar opposite.
120	* TeamMom: In the wake of Roseanne's death, Darlene and Jackie have stepped up to be the co-matriarchs of the family.
121	* ThreeWaySex: In Season 2, Jackie takes her "thrupple" relationship with Ron and Janelle (guest stars Clark Gregg and Jennifer Grey) to the "next level" albeit being nervous.
122	* ThreesomeSubtext: Nothing happened sexually between Jackie, Ron and Janelle yet but the husband and wife polygamous duo spoil Jackie with gifts, money and spa trips.
123	* TheThingThatWouldNotLeave: "Nightmare on Lunch Box Street" ends with Jackie so mad at Bev that she finally kicks her out. Bev immediately goes over to Dan's house and refuses to leave, much to his horror.
124	* TimeSkip: Roseanne's death occurred shortly after the knee surgery she was preparing to have at the end of the revival. This series begins only three weeks after her burial.
125	* VocalEvolution: Mark's voice dropped (as he also shot up like a weed) between seasons three and four, thanks to his actor Ames [=McNamara=] reaching puberty. It got deeper come season five. At the same time, Mary's voice also matured, due to the same result with her actress Jayden Rey.
126	* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: In the premiere, it's revealed that a woman named Marcy Bellinger gave Roseanne a bottle of powerful painkillers to help her in recovery. Marcy explains that she's part of a group of suburban women who lack health insurance and so pass the little medicine they can afford around to each other. What Marcy didn't realize is that Roseanne became addicted to the meds and started actively seeking out other people to get them, which ultimately resulted in her death. Dan accuses Marcy of being no better than a drug dealer, but she firmly explains that she genuinely didn't know about Roseanne's addiction and was just trying to help.
127	* WeddingsForEveryone: Season 4 ends with a double wedding between [[spoiler:Darlene & Ben and Jackie & Neville]].
128	* WhamLine: Dan, in the season three premiere, reads a letter given to him by a neighbor (which turns out to be a court summons) and drops this:
129	--> '''Dan:''' "They're foreclosing the house".
130	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: [[spoiler:Dan's father]] dies in season 2, prompting the appearance of [[spoiler:a fully grown "Little Ed", who mentions his sister but does not mention his mother Crystal or half-brother Lonnie at all, despite her having already appeared in the series]].
131	* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: Initially Lanford was implied to be in north central Illnois, it was later stated to be somewhere near Elgin or [=DeKalb=]. Lanford was finally given an approximate position in the fourth season episode "The Wedding of Dan and Louise", taking the place of the real life town of Berkeley - which is about 15 miles away from downtown Chicago, completely out of keeping with the transit times in the original show.

Context Series / TheConners