Roseanne: Complete Sixth Season [DVD] [1989] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

123. Two Down, One to Go

Roseanne is devastated when Darlene decides that she doesn't want her to take her to school in New York. After a big blow out, it is decided that she will drive her, and ends up staying the night in her new apartment. The two stay up late talking about personal things for the first time, bringing a new aspect to their relationship.

124. The Mommy's Curse

Brutally honest Roseanne suffers the consequences after telling Bev that she's had her fill of her at the Lunch Box. Bev agrees for once, and sells her share of the diner to Leon. Meanwhile, Jackie jumps back into the dating arena, deciding to give Fred a shot.

125. Party Politics

Tired of David and Darlene's separation, Roseanne plots to reunite them, bringing Darlene home for the weekend. Once she finds that Roseanne had this planned, she teams up with DJ, to help him master ditching school, Darlene style.

126. A Stash from the Past

Foreman Dan feels lower than low for getting tough with his employees at work, while Roseanne lectures David for getting high after she finds a stash of pot in the house. After getting a false confession out of David, who assumed it was Darlene's, Dan lets her know that the stash is indeed her own.

127. Be My Baby

Roseanne has been trying to get pregnant for months, but has had no luck. Jackie drops a bomb on the situation, by announcing her own pregnancy with Fred after a one night stand. Jackie's news seems to hold consequence for Dan, Roseanne decides that she can't be pregnant while Jackie is.

128. Halloween V

Halloween at the diner becomes complicated when Nancy complains that Dan doesn't like her, and Roseanne discovers that Darlene and David are each dating others.

129. Homeward Bound

Darlene visits, making David realize how much he misses her; Roseanne urges Dan to have a man-to-man chat with D. J. after they discover he's been spending too much time behind locked doors.

130. Guilt by Imagination

Dan has a hard time concealing the fact that he had lunch with an old flame.

131. Homecoming

Becky and Mark return home for Dan's high school football team's 20th anniversary party. It soon becomes apparent that there's trouble in paradise, so Roseanne schemes to break them up.

132. Thanksgiving '93

The Connors' dysfunctional-family Thanksgiving finds Becky preparing the bird, Dan and Mark duking it out, and an absent-minded Nana Mary revealing Bev's secret about her marriage.

133. The Driver's Seat

Leon convinces Jackie and Nancy to open the restaurant for breakfast, causing Roseanne to fear he is planning to force her out. Roseanne's car is stolen -- by DJ, and her violent reaction frightens her that she may repeat the pattern of her own abuse as a child, while Dan blames her anger on work stress.

134. White Trash Christmas

Roseanne and Dan snub the neighborhood association by putting up gaudy Christmas decorations, and become furious with Becky when she gives the check they have given her for college to Mark and takes a job as a waitress in a tacky bar.

135. Suck Up or Shut Up

Roseanne joins a women's club in hopes of establishing useful contacts, leaving DJ high and dry with a weird classmate whose mother also belongs; meanwhile Mark drops a bombshell on Becky when Dan discovers that he has dropped out of school.

136. Busted

Dan takes it upon himself to get Mark & Becky talking again, after a major arguement. He heads over to his buddy's house to try and talk him into coming home, and ends up falling in love with the bachelor pad. When it doesn't quite work, Roseanne heads over for a shot at it, and learns that David is living with Darlene in Chicago.

137. David vs. Goliath

Guilt and Roseanne's slavedriving push David to confess to Dan that he was living with Darlene in Chicago. Dan punches a hole in the wall, and throws him out; straight to Jackie's. Jackie refuses to take money for the baby from Fred, so Roseanne devises a plan. Roseanne and Becky try to pressure Dan to hire Mark.

138. Everyone Comes to Jackie's

Jackie's house buzzes with activity as Roseanne tries to hide David from Dan. David was supposed to go back to his mother's but Roseanne convinced Jackie to let him stay for awhile.

139. Don't Make Room for Daddy

In the heat of anger, Dan advises Fred to obtain legal custody of his and Jackie's unborn child. Fred takes the advice seriously, and follows through. Jackie goes into hysterics when served with the paperwork, and Roseanne is on the warpath. Dan is hiding the fact that was the one who gave out the advice.

140. Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Roseanne is the life of the party at a gay bar, until Nancy's new girlfriend plants a disturbing kiss on her; meanwhile, back home, Becky's old flame gives Mark reason to distrust Becky.

141. Labor Day

Jackie is due to give birth, and has to choose between Fred and Roseanne to accompany her to the delivery room.

142. Past Imperfect

When Dan's father misses an alimony payment, Dan and Roseanne argue about covering it; meanwhile, Fred becomes concerned about Jackie's sexual past.

143. Lies My Father Told Me

Roseanne helps Dan understand his dad's lying about his mom's mental state.

144. I Pray the Lord My Stove to Keep

Darlene discovers that D.J. has been sneaking off after to school to attend church; D.J. gives Roseanne a hard time about morals when she accepts a mistaken delivery of a second stove at the diner.

145. Body by Jake

Bev moves in after breaking her pelvis at the retirement home, blaming Dan for not safeproofing her shower; then Roseanne discovers that it happened while Bev and Jake were having sex.

146. Isn't It Romantic?

Fred asks Roseanne how to propose to Jackie, then uses hints from Jackie's favorite soap opera; an enraged Roseanne demands romance from Dan, then turns to fantasy; Mark and David struggle with the concepts of feminism.

147. Altar Egos

Egos clash when Jackie and Fred can't make a decision about their marriage. Fred is having what Dan calls"the moment of clarity" - a case of the jitters that affects some men just before the big day. But what's really bothering Fred is his belief that Jackie has feelings for someone she sees almost every day and whom she is always "asking to come over and fix stuff" - none other than Dan.

Although this season has some excellent episodes, and overall is a five star season, we begin to see the start of some of the trends that eventually becomes the downfall of the series.

"A Stash From the Past" is one of the best episodes of the season. The scene with Jackie, Roseanne, and Dan all in the bathroom together is worth the price of admission alone. Also, the Halloween episode from this season is one of the better ones, with Darlene and David pretending to be broken up and seeing other people. Roseanne finally gets bested by a Halloween prank when she walks in on what appears to be Darlene in the aftermath of having brutally murdered David's new beau. "Homeward Bound" is also excellent with D.J. having taken up a new hobby - one that has him tying up the bathroom for excessive periods of time. Dan has a man-to-man chat with D.J. to let him know that what he is going through is typical for a boy his age, when D.J. decides to launch a volley of questions at Dan about his new hobby. A very uncomfortable Dan informs D.J. that although this is something that everyone does, it is also not something that people talk about.

"The Driver's Seat" finally goes into more needed detail about Roseanne's troubled childhood. D.J. steals the family car, and when he is found out, Roseanne reacts by spanking him in front of Dan and Jackie. Her remorse is great, and in probably the best scene between her and D.J. of the entire series, she tells him how sorry she is and how she was hit as a child. In the background, Leon has been adding to Roseanne's stress by trumping her in decision making over at the diner. Leon wound up a partner in the diner earlier in the season in "The Mommy's Curse" when Bev sold her shares to Leon to get back at Roseanne for telling her how her opinions really weren't appreciated at the diner.

On a similar theme, we learn more about Dan's childhood. In fact, Dan learns more about Dan's childhood in "Lies My Father Told Me". Up to now, we had been led to believe that Dan's father, played by the wonderful Ned Beatty, was a somewhat selfish guy, a bit of a buffoon, and a man who enjoyed his life of traveling salesman to the point that he didn't care too much about the impact it had on his family. In this episode, Dan's mother goes to a mental hospital, and Dan blames this all on his father, gets drunk, and goes over to his father and Crystal's home slinging accusations, but Dan's father is not home. Roseanne retrieves Dan, and when he sobers up she tells him the truth about his mother, how she had mental problems even before she married Dan's father. Dan breaks down crying, having an impossible time of reconciling a lifetime of opinion with the actual truth - that his Dad took Dan's disdain all of these years so Dan would have no bad feelings toward his mother. Dan goes back to his father's house to patch things up, and fixing a toaster together and watching a football game, you get the feeling that Dan may be seeing his dad through different eyes for the first time and maybe this is the beginning of them mending fences. It was a truly great episode.

One of the better long arcs of the season involves Darlene hiding the fact that David is with her in Chicago, rather than in Michigan with his mother. Although it isn't stressed, I think one of the sadder scenes involving David and Darlene is in "Thanksgiving 93" where the Conner holiday turns out to be a disaster. David and Darlene are in Darlene's spartan college apartment dining on macaroni and cheese when David asks Darlene if she misses being home for Thanksgiving, and she says "not really" in a very deadpan way. This brings reality to the proverb "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith", given the huge fight that is taking place back at the Conner home.

Now for the parts of the season that are not so great. It seems that this is the beginning of a trend in "Roseanne" where men tend to be disposable. For one, Jackie becomes pregnant via a one-night stand with one of Dan's coworkers - "Fred". Throughout the next two seasons in which Fred appears, the show doesn't bother to give him a background of any kind such as a family or even a last name. He seems to exist simply to give Jackie a child, to make that child legitimate via a brief-as-possible marriage, and then exit Jackie's life forever at the end of season seven because Jackie says so. Also, in seasons three and four, Mark Healey, now Becky's husband, was quite the rebel with distinct ideas about everything, and frequent clashes between himself and Roseanne. When Mark and Becky return home this season, Mark has been neutered for all intents and purposes. When Roseanne discovers all is not well in their marriage, Roseanne's first instinct is to get Becky to eject Mark, although she later retreats from that position. When in previous seasons he was pictured as a pretty able mechanic, this season Mark isn't even able to make passing grades in trade school, and can only get a job when Dan gives him one at the city garage.

There is also the entry of ideas and themes in the Conner household that working-class people simply just don't do on a large scale. For instance, it is ludicrous to think that with two grown children- one of which is in college- and the third and youngest child in adolescence that two people who have had to work so hard just to keep their heads above water all their adult lives would entertain having a fourth child. At this stage of life - their early forties - the Conners would likely cheer the fact that their aging bones do not have to work quite so hard just to put food on the table and want to relax a bit. Their decision for a midlife-child is more typical of the 40-something occupants of the upper west side of Manhattan than small-town Illinois.

In summary, season six is a very good season when grouped with the previous five. When grouped with the last three, season six is just the beginning of the end. In fact, I think that "Roseanne" would be better remembered if it had ended with this season and Jackie's wedding to Fred. The problems that begin to creep up in the show in this season would not seem so great if they hadn't had three more seasons to grow to fruition and ultimately into full blown disaster.

Season six of Roseanne is probably the most rewarding season on DVD to date - the actors are finally established in their roles, the situations and scenarios are more polished and fleshed-out and the scripts are tighter than before (not to say that seasons 1 thru 5 are bad: quite the opposite, they're great, and I own them all - as should you!!).

This season is notable for a number of reasons: it sees the beginnings of the considerable comedy talent of Sarah Chalke, a more likeable and accessible Becky than Lecy Goranson of previous seasons, the characters of Mark and David (particularly the latter) are given more screen time and better storylines, the nature of the relationship between Bev and her daughters becomes more multidimensional and more rewarding to watch, and the return of Leon makes for some hilarious one-liners.

Actually, hilarity abounds in this season, which contains almost all of my favourite Roseanne moments: Bev's sex accident and her reaction to Dan and Fred's knowlege of it (an undeniable television comedy classic, fans!!), DJ discovering puberty (Darlene's line about this has stayed with me forever!!), Jackie's wedding to Fisher and the preceeding epsiode where everyone thinks she has a crush on Dan, Nana Mary's line to Fred about how he impregnated Jackie... and the list goes on and on.

Similarly, the poignant moments in this season are much stronger and believable than before, with the most notable being in the episode "Lies My Father Told Me", where John Goodman's reading of a man coming to terms with his mother's mental illness is absolutely whole and very, very affecting.

This is definitely a wonderful season of an outstanding television comedy, but take my advice: if you haven't got any of them yet, start with Season One. Unlike some of its TV Sitcom-to-DVD peers, the continuity in "Roseanne" is strong, and it'd be a shame not to know the background for some of the characters and stories in this excellent collection of episodes.

Highly recommended.