While Roseanne‘s final Christmas special was not the worst episode of the series, the outing set up one storyline that is still more hated than anything featured in The Conners. Roseanne has, to put it mildly, a messy canon. The first few seasons of the working-class family sitcom are fairly straightforward. However, when John Goodman’s Dan became a less reliable presence on the series and Roseanne Barr took season 9 in a widely unexpected direction, this resulted in an entire season that was retconned in its finale, before that finale was itself retconned in 2017 by Roseanne’s season 10 revival.
By the time The Conners killed off Roseanne and her legacy, it was almost impossible to work out which parts of Roseanne’s continuity carried over into The Conners. The events of season 9 were almost entirely retconned, but so were Jackie’s marriage and her child (which predated the controversial final season). Meanwhile, the worst Roseanne storyline of all time, which was introduced in Roseanne season 9, episode 12, “Home for the Holidays,” was effectively written out of the show’s story. In this episode, Roseanne’s final Christmas special, viewers learn that Dan is cheating on Roseanne—a twist that was later undone in the finale.
Roseanne’s Final Christmas Episode Explained
In “Home for the Holidays,” Dan returns to the Conner family home after a lengthy sojourn to California where he cared for his ailing mother offscreen. The Conners season 5 later revealed Dan’s mother died at some unspecified point between this episode and the spinoff, but Dan’s time nursing her was retconned from Roseanne’s canon when the season 9 finale revealed that Dan died of the heart attack he suffered at the end of season 8. However, before the retcon, Dan spent “Home for the Holidays” acting weirdly distant and cool toward Roseanne, only for the last few seconds of the episode to reveal that he was cheating on his wife.
Why Dan Cheating Was Roseanne’s Worst Story
Dan cheated on Roseanne while he spent weeks caring for his mother in California, with the long distance between the duo driving them apart. Since Dan’s new wife Louise is often absent from The Conners for multiple-episode stretches, viewers who are familiar with the character might find this motivation hard to square with the loyal, laid-back Dan. In reality, the reason Dan cheated on Roseanne was that the sitcom didn’t have an alternative use for the character and season 9 was in the middle of rewriting every character’s persona, with Goodman’s absence resulting in his character bearing the brunt of this.
Roseanne’s Christmas Episode Made Dan’s Cheating Reveal Sadder
Dan was endlessly devoted to Roseanne throughout the rest of Roseanne’s run and, while their marriage was often fraught and troubled, the pair’s loving relationship was a big part of the show’s appeal. Even The Conners couldn’t make Dan and Louise’s pairing an effective substitute for Barr’s chemistry with Goodman, something that was obvious from the duo’s earliest screen test. As a result, it was always going to be difficult for Roseanne season 9 to pull off a storyline centered on Dan betraying Roseanne’s trust. However, the weakness of Roseanne season 9’s writing—and the arrival of the twist at the end of a Christmas special—made this harder.
This was the same season where the Conners, one of television’s few believable depictions of a working-class family, won the lottery and become millionaires. Roseanne season 9 featured full episode parodies of Rambo and Under Siege, Martin Mull’s Roseanne character Leon taking over the Lunchbox, and a whole host of other plot lines that didn’t gel with the low-stakes storytelling of earlier outings. Throwing Dan’s infidelity into the middle of this turned what should have been a show-shaking revelation into a mere afterthought, while Goodman’s lack of screen time meant that Dan’s story never really resonated on a character level either.
Why Roseanne Season 10 Retconned Dan’s Cheating Story
Roseanne’s 2017 season 10 revival swiftly retconned all of season 9—for a second time. The Roseanne season 9 finale had technically already retconned the season’s events when it was revealed that Dan died from his season 8 heart attack, Beverly never really came out as gay, and the Conners never won the lottery. However, the season 10 revival also retconned Jackie’s Roseanne character transformation, Dan’s death, and Leon buying the Lunchbox, thus leading the series to effectively pick up where season 8 left off. This erased Roseanne’s worst plot from existence and allowed The Conners to continue season 10’s story when Roseanne was killed off.
