TV URBAN LEGEND: The second season episode of Roseanne, "Officer and a Gentleman," was a test case for the show writing off Roseanne Barr from the show.

With the reports that Roseanne Conner will be killed off ahead of the new The Conners spinoff from Roseanne following Roseanne Barr's firing from the series over her controversial tweets, it has made people look back to the past and see how other shows have dealt with situations like this. I wrote an article about other TV sitcoms that killed off their main character, and the case of Valerie Harper and her sitcom, Valerie, is likely the most applicable, because there the show managed to get rid of her after Season 2 and continue the series for another four seasons as first Valerie's Family and then The Hogan Family.

The Harper incident took place in 1988, which is the same year that Roseanne debuted, so obviously the producers and the network were all quite familiar with what was going on on another network.

In any event, in Season 2 of Roseanne, there is an episode called "An Officer and a Gentleman," where Roseanne has to go out of town and Dan (John Goodman) and Roseanne's sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), have to work together to step in for the absent Roseanne.

The episode feels eerily like, "What would this show be like without Roseanne?"

Well, according to legends over the years, that is precisely what the show was SUPPOSED to be like.

According to IMDB:

Roseanne appears only briefly in this episode as a result of a feud with Matt Williams, who helped develop the series. Roseanne had a line of dialogue in the script in which she told Dan "you're my equal in bed, but that's it". Roseanne Barr refused to say the line, as she felt it was something her character would never say. Williams refused to budge, and Barr boycotted her own show as a result. Meanwhile, this episode was so well-received that Williams asked Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman if they'd be willing to continue with the show if Roseanne was to suddenly "quit". Both actors refused and later reported the meeting to Barr.

That, however, is not the case. This episode aired in January of 1990, in the back end of Season 2 of Roseanne. Matt Williams left Roseanne in the middle of Season 1 after Roseanne essentially gave the network and the producers an ultimatum of "Either he goes or I go."

Now, is it true that Matt Williams tried to convince the producers and ABC that they COULD do the show without Roseanne? Probably.

From an LA Times report when he left the show:

Williams, however, sees his ouster as "symptomatic of an industry disdain for writers in general. The feeling is that writing isn't important, that what's important is the star. And to me, that's very, very sad," he said in his only interview since his ouster.

"The problem was who was going to have the final say on stories, scripts and the overall thrust of the show. As the creator and executive producer, I automatically assumed, rightly or wrongly, that I would have the final say. And, obviously, Roseanne thought she had the final say. And that, in essence, was the central conflict."

Barr, through a spokesman, declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article.

But others associated with "Roseanne" said in interviews that Carsey-Werner executives considered dumping her from the show last November because of the production problems she was causing, which included throwing temper tantrums, screaming at co-workers, locking herself in her dressing room, storming off the set and threatening on several occasions to quit.

Carsey denies this. Yet one Carsey-Werner associate explained at the time, "I don't know that she's indispensable."

Looking back, one writer said that "the feeling among the writers and producers was that we (still) had a show with John Goodman (who plays Barr's husband). But ultimately ABC owned the show and had the final say. And to them it was keep the star at all costs."

From a People magazine interview with Roseanne from October 1989:

Then Matt tried to get me fired. He compiled a list of every offensive thing I did. And I do offensive things. Like I belch at the audience and swear and fart and stuff. That’s who I am. That’s my act. So Matt was in his office making a list of how gross I was, how many times I farted and belched—taking it to the network to show I was out of control.

You were an instant hit, premiering at No. 5, but success didn’t cool things?

No. By the second or third show I asked the producers to fire Matt. His anger was escalating. I couldn’t perform. He’d call the cast and extras together, make us sit in a circle, and then he did this kind of Robert De Niro slow walk around the inside perimeter [like Al Capone’s skull-bashing scene in The Untouchables]. And he’d say, “The show tonight sucks.” He’d walk up to me and say, “It’s all your fault,” and humiliate me. Carsey-Werner told me: Make it through 13 shows, and we’ll fire him. I said okay.

I was writing my character’s lines, but he was changing her. “No,” I’d say, “this isn’t what Roseanne would say,” and he’d go, “Say it as written.” It was always around castration jokes. I refused to do them because I had to take the heat in the press for being this big antimale woman, and it was never about that. But he perceived her as this castrating woman.

There were reports you and John Goodman were fighting too.

No. There was never any tension between us or between Laurie and me. We’re just like the best buds. The only tension was when Matt was there, and I’d go to John and say, “You’ve got to help me do this,” and he’d go, “Roseanne, I’m here to be an actor.”

He didn’t want to get embroiled?

Uh-uh. But he never went against me. Matt would call John and ask him if he could do the show without me. And John would say, “I won’t be here if she’s not here.” He was there for me, but he didn’t want to take sides. He had his bad stuff too. John used to go berserk on the set all the time, every Friday, just out of nervousness and all the s—-. The whole cast would go berserk. John would pound the walls and scream, and we’d all be freaking out, scared s—-less out of frustration. It wasn’t just me.

It was in that interview that Barr told the story of the joke that she and Williams clashed on, noting:

The big showdown day came when Matt wanted me and John Goodman in bed and me saying, “I have no respect for you outside this bed.” I said, “No, she would say the opposite, like, ‘I have respect for you in every room, but this is the room where I have the most respect.’ ” A nicer way of saying the same thing. Matt was always making me do these degrading sex scenes. So they line up the cameras around the bed, him and the director, and I go, “Change the line.” He goes, “Say it as written.” So then he came down with lawyers, and they all stood around the bed and they go, “Are you refusing to perform?”—a violation of my contract. I go, “I ain’t refusing to perform. I’m waiting for a line change.”

Now, after Williams left, Barr clashed with pretty much every other writer she ever worked with on the show, so it was likely some other writer clash that led to her sitting out "An Officer and a Gentleman."

However, there does not appear to be any discussion about actually getting rid of her past Season 1 and even there, who knows how serious that was. It might have been something Williams WANTED but was never actually going to happen.

The legend is...

STATUS: False

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