'The Conners' to debut with live episode starring New Hampshire primary vote

[brooklynite]

Manchester Union-Leader

LOS ANGELES - ABC is expanding its stake in live sitcoms to include "The Conners."

The followup series to "Roseanne" will go live on the night of the New Hampshire Primary, Tuesday, Feb. 11, and ABC News's coverage of the real-time results of that political event will be incorporated into the broadcast, which will be performed and air live on both the east and west coasts.

This still-to-be-titled episode will start with Mark (Ames McNamara) watching the results of the primary for a school report with Harris (Emma Kenney), who is apathetic to the electoral process and believes money's influence in politics means real change is impossible. This allows the rest of the family to weigh in with their usual differing takes on why people should vote, including the idea of voting for a candidate that you may not love but who you think will "screw you the least."

But the episode won't be 100% focused on politics: Louise (guest star Katey Sagal) gets an opportunity that might send her away from Lanford, which causes the family to interfere in her and Dan's (John Goodman) complicated relationship by throwing a surprise going-away party.

[PatSeg]

1. Very cool idea

They have a great cast. I'm glad they were given a second chance after Roseanne was fired. John Goodman is one of my favorite actors. He plays such a realistic TV dad.

[Sloumeau]

2. Yep, I have pretty much liked Goodman in everything that he has been in. :) eom

Last edited Wed Jan 8, 2020, 03:51 PM - Edit history (1)

[The Valley Below]

3. Unfortunately, with the Connors being the mirror image of the Bunkers

it only makes dramatic sense for them to back populist candidates.

Ugg.

[Hortensis]

4. We'll see. Younger generations. May just talk sense to

viewers, cautioning against those seeking power by poisoning people against what we older folk all grew up with believed would always be. Younger generations don't know how good it was and need to know we can make it even better. But itm, we certainly know now that it can happen here, to us, not just others.

[The Valley Below]

5. I'd be amazed. But I like your optimism.

I hope you prove to be right.

I remain skeptical.

[Hortensis]

6. I don't see destructive populism in All in the Family.

It was old-fashioned conservatism versus agitating "campus" liberalism in a working class family.

Archie conservative, hating change of any kind, very typical of type. Meathead first-generation college-educated full of "new" liberal ideas about everything Archie's generation had done wrong (everything) and changes that had to be made to everything.

Both were idiots exactly because their types were too extreme and intransigent to be wise. Sweet little Edith was the voice of not just wisdom but rationality. In those days she couldn't be portrayed as a smart, powerful person, seldom seemed to understand anything, but she was the strong moral center that family revolved around and the series resolved all issues through.

And none of it was about harnessing hostility and negativism to turn it to mindless destruction of some amorphous "status quo" or "establishment" to do end runs around the good sense of the Ediths of our nation. Archie was just an old-fashioned traditional conservative who wanted to keep everything as it was. Meathead aspired for better in his own narrow-minded clueless way, abut without hostility toward the America he grew up in.

Archie's cultural bigotry was a constant theme, but there was never a whiff of the roiling antagonism, eagerness to overthrow, and active socially conservative meanness so intrinsic to populist movements, not in Archie and not in Meathead. Neither could have even imagined yelling "Lock her/him up" about a presidential candidate, much less avidly lusted for it.

[The Valley Below]

7. I'd have to disagree about Archie. He represents the type most vulnerable to populist appeals.

The only thing missing from his proto-populism was that he was attached to a president (Nixon) whose conservatism (despite the racist dog-whistles to the Silent Majority) was more "establishment" than "populist."

And Archie was angry and ready to blame "the other" for our nation's problems.

[Hortensis]

8. I'd have to revisit Archie. What I remember is the usual

conservative resistance and anger toward change, I don't remember hostility to the America he believed he lived in. When it comes down to it, although it's not limited to just this for everyone, populists want to blow it up for spite.

I've gotten curious, now, though. I seldom watch sitcoms any more, but I'll be checking this one out. I'm afraid it'll have a laugh track, though.

[The Valley Below]

9. Not anger to the "America" that he represented, but certainly anger

towards the minorities, foreigners, Jews, and liberals that he blamed for tearing down his country. A classic populist, if you ask me.

All he lacked was a populist demagogue to follow, in my estimation.

I re-watched many episodes recently as I wanted by 15 year old to see a show that I loved as a young person. He really liked it, despite thinking he wouldn't coming in to it.