The Conners Season 6 is struggling to prioritize some of its cast members even though Roseanne’s spinoff recently cut characters to make more room.
While it might sound surprising, The Conners season 6 shedding cast members did not stop Roseanne’s spinoff from repeating a frustrating mistake. The Conners has a large cast that has only gotten bigger since the series was rebooted in 2018. Originally titled Roseanne, The Conners began life as a sitcom about a working-class mother that ran for nine seasons throughout the ‘90s. Roseanne was revived for one season in 2017 but, when star Roseanne Barr was fired for racist tweets, the show’s title character was killed off and the series was retooled to focus on her family, the Conners.
Although The Conners season 7 might change this, the first six outings of the spinoff have never replaced Roseanne with a single main character. Depending on the episode, The Conners typically focuses on either Darlene, Dan, or Jackie, but the show didn’t choose one of these characters and make them the show’s new protagonist after Roseanne died. Theoretically, this should mean The Conners has plenty of screen time for all of its cast members, but every episode of season 6 has left out at least one major character. Beverly-Rose, Harris, and The Conners hero Mark bore the brunt of this.
The Conners Keeps Dropping Main Characters
Mark, Beverly-Rose, and Harris’s screen time was limited early in season 6
In one striking omission, Darlene’s son Mark didn’t appear in The Conners season 6 at all until the fourth episode, even though he was the main character of the show’s season 5 finale. Meanwhile, season 6, episode 3, “Mom and Rats,” marked the first time that Darlene’s daughter, Harris, was absent for an entire episode since season 2, episode 9, “Smoking Penguins and Santa on Santa Action.” This is an unfortunate trend since these characters both deserve storylines of their own and the little screen time that they do get proves that Mark and Harris still have a lot of untapped potential.
Mark’s college storylines have been consistently engaging whether he was hiding his struggles from Darlene, trying to deal with his patronizing new friend’s interactions with his sardonic mother, or attempting to get Harris out of his dorm room. Meanwhile, Harris’s The Conners season 6 plot has the potential to turn around her historically aimless character arc. Jackie gifted her niece The Lunchbox in the season 6 premiere when she realized that her heart was no longer in the restaurant, and this could be a great opportunity for Harris to prove she is mature and ambitious. However, the plot has barely been mentioned since then.
The Conners Season 6’s Cast Reshuffles Should Have Avoided This Issue
The Roseanne spinoff dropped Jayden Rey’s Mary to trim its cast
Mary talking to Becky in The Conners season 5 episode 4
Before The Conners season 5 began, the show’s creators announced that Michael Fishman’s DJ wouldn’t return for the outing. Although viewers were disappointed by the supporting character’s exit, season 5 did use DJ’s screen time to give Becky a new boyfriend while fleshing out Ben and Darlene’s relationship. Now, as The Conners’ 100th episode nears, the spinoff has failed to repeat this trick in its sixth outing. Before season 6 began, it was announced that Jayden Rey’s character Mary wouldn’t return to the show. This made sense in terms of story, since Mary’s father, DJ, moved out of Lanford for work a year earlier.
However, the new generation of The Conners characters didn’t gain more screen time as a result of Mary’s exit. Instead, the show continued to go entire episodes at a time without any substantial storylines for Becky’s daughter, Beverly-Rose, in favor of focusing on Dan and Jackie’s latest problems. In some ways, it makes sense for The Conners to prioritize John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf’s characters since these Roseanne mainstays are the closest connection to the show’s original incarnation. However, centering a story on Jackie and Dan’s The Conners season 6 fight instead of Darlene and Becky’s children ultimately hurts the show’s long-term prospects.
The most notable issue with The Conners season 6’s underserved characters is what they all have in common. Mark, Harris, and Beverly-Rose are all part of the next generation of the Conner family. If the series was interested in longevity, the show would focus on them to get viewers invested in their futures. This is what Roseanne did in its later seasons when Becky’s relationship with Glen and Darlene’s relationship with David was among the show’s most important storylines. Since these plots made viewers care about Becky and Darlene as much as Jackie and Roseanne, the show’s revival succeeded.
In contrast, The Conners season 6 is repeatedly short-changing its young stars to focus on its established cast. Without giving Mark and Harris substantial storylines, Roseanne’s spinoff gives viewers no reason to continue caring about the fam
ily. The show’s original run could have reduced the kids to walking punchlines and focused all of its character growth on Dan, Jackie, and Roseanne, but no one would have wanted to check in on Becky and Darlene decades later if the creators had taken this approach. As it stands, there is little reason for viewers to tune into a future series about Harris or Mark’s life.
The Conners Risks Its Longevity By Dropping Younger Characters
Becky and Darlene’s children won’t replace them without more story focus
John-Goodman-as-Dan-Conner–Laurie-Metcalf-as-Jackie-Harris–Nat-Faxon-as-Neville-from-The-ConnersCustom image by Yeider Chacon
The only reason that Becky and Darlene were able to become the stars of The Conners is because Roseanne’s later seasons devoted more screen time to their storylines. When The Conners season 6 focuses on Jackie and Dan over Harris and Mark, the show risks ruining its own legacy. Part of what made Jackie and Dan such compelling characters in the first place was their interplay with the next generation of the eponymous family. Even Roseanne’s season 10 revival, despite its many faults, featured a lot of storylines that highlighted the generation gap between Roseanne and her grandchildren.
In contrast, most of The Conners season 6’s episodes focus their main storylines on Jackie, Dan, Darlene, Ben, Becky, and even Neville. While Mark and Harris have both gotten some subplots of their own, only the season premiere gave Darlene’s daughter a clear purpose in the series. Similarly, it was only in season 6, episode 4, “Shrinks Don’t Talk and Kids Don’t Sing,” that Mark’s internal world got substantial focus from the show. Although The Conners season 6 has other big storylines to set up, Roseanne’s spinoff still must not relegate the next generation of its titular family to the background.
