‘Roseanne’ ripped over ‘belittling’ joke about minority-led shows
Numerous viewers condemned the recently revived series over a scene in Tuesday's episode where John Goodman's character, Dan Conner, tells Roseanne they "missed all the shows about black and Asian families" because they fell asleep in between "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
"They're just like us," Roseanne Barr's character responds. "There, now you're all caught up."
The line seemed to take aim at "black-ish" and "Fresh off the Boat," which air between "Wheel of Fortune" and "Kimmel" on ABC, the same network that broadcasts "Roseanne."
Among those who weren't pleased with the joke was "Bob's Burgers" writer Kelvin Yu, who wrote in a series of tweets that "at the very least, it's reductive and belittling."
"But the real kicker is when Roseanne says: 'They're just like us. There, now you're all caught up.' Which implies that the point of any show about a minority family is simply to normalize them," Yu wrote. "That's it. The stories, the humor, the characters... not important."
He then said he wouldn't expect Barr and Goodman's characters to watch series like "black-ish" or "Fresh of the Boat," but contended there was no reason to make the joke in the first place.
"Consider what exactly the audience is laughing at," he wrote. "What exactly is the punchline here? I'll tell you what it is: it's an endorsement of dismissiveness and disregard. It's a familiarity and comfort with the culture of objectifying and demeaning people of color."
"The nerve of roseanne to take potshots at black-ish and fresh off the boat," tweeted Zoe Owens. "We never needed another roseanne. we DO need diversity on television."
Those jews should have kicked her shyt in with those burnt jew cookies nonsense... She's gonna learn the fukking hardway...
