I'd Say Long Live The Conners But Unfortunately For Them They Probably Will

I've spent a while now asking my friends if there's been a sitcom since Roseanne that portrayed "real" lower middle-class families. Even the "struggling" characters on today's sitcoms are absurd - eg in The King of Queens, the characters are a UPS guy and secretary, yet they live in a humongous house with a yard, a huge garage, and a basement that's the size of a baseball diamond. In Queens. And this is a "struggling" couple in today's sitcom world. - XMASTIME IN 2008

I scream a lot these days about the preponderance of tv shows featuring insanely wealthy people making themselves miserable just for the sport of it, and it's kind of depressing that The Conners may be the only show left that has any real sense of real economic despair to it. (It can even be a bit TOO much sometimes - Dan's always scared he's gonna lose the house...that they probably bought for like $11,000 in 1973? Dafuck?)

Before this season's finale, here's an insightful article:

The show is so grim, in fact, that even the characters’ successes are depressing. Alcoholic Becky gets her life together after a rehab stint the family can barely afford. After her daughter Harris decides against college because it would require taking out a usurious 20-year student loan, Darlene secures a tuition waiver for Mark at one of his safety schools by giving up a management job at a factory to work in the college cafeteria. In doing so, she rejects Dan’s advice that she stay in management so that she and her husband Ben can save money and maybe retire someday — a dream Dan has apparently given up on achieving for himself. 

But can’t something go right for them without a huge asterisk? Mark couldn’t have gotten the contrabassoon scholarship he was hoping for? If someone had to develop an addiction to the diner’s new lottery machine, did it have to be Becky? With everything else they have on their plates, did the writers also have to give Ben and Darlene bed death? I’m so glad The Conners exists, because there really are no other shows like it on TV anymore — shows that care enough about working-class people to tell their stories honestly. I understand that the overarching story is one of downward mobility. But I’ve known and loved these characters for 35 years, and none of them is an emotional abuser or an assassin. Maybe once in a while they could notch an unmitigated win.

I loved the original show and I've loved the reboot, and I'm hoping that something good happens to these peple too (albeit not stupid good like back when they wont he lottery ugh). On a side note, Jackie officially needs to be included in the pantheon of great supporting sitcom characters; whatever the top 15 funniest lines of the show have been, 12 have been from Jackie. If not 15.