The Conners' lost children are the biggest mystery of the series

Key points

• Sitcoms like The Conners do a better job of handling continuity changes than dramas, but the absence of characters can still leave fans perplexed.
• The whereabouts of missing characters, such as Jackie's son Andy, remains a mystery, with questionable explanations from the series' producers.
• Some characters have been completely erased from existence such as
  The Connors progressed
  with producers who refer to
  By Roseanne
  series finale that explains everything like a dream.

It is important to remember the controversial statements made by Roseanne Barr, the lead actress of the original ABC series, Rosanna. CBR supports the hard work of industry professionals on properties that fans know and love, and how The Conners While spin-offs continue to thrive without the original matriarchal character, it's important to recognize that these series cannot be discussed without occasional reference to Barr's role and character.

Sitcoms, for the most part, manage to get through some continuity “tweaks” much better than their dramatic counterparts. Bewitched Darrins, Monica and Rachel's apartment has lost structural support and Donna's sister is completely missing That show from the 70's — and the fans got carried away. For ABC The ConnersHowever, there is one continuity issue that continues to plague fans of the original series. This controversy concerns the whereabouts of the missing children from RosannaThe producers say they have explained the absences, but their explanation is not appreciated by most audiences.

Jackie's son, Andy, is one of the more glaring omissions. Showrunner Bruce Helford said they decided certain things were part of the dream revealed at the end of Rosanna. This is not consistent, unless the producers suggest that the entire series Rosanna it was a dream in a kind of New heart vein. Andy was born in season 7 and existed in the world of the show. The most obvious explanation is that they already had a large cast and needed to pare down the cast to make it more manageable for the writers. It would have been just as easy to briefly explain why a man in his thirties wouldn’t be with his family all the time rather than just say he ceases to exist.

UPDATE: 2024/09/10 23:15 EST BY BRIAN CRONIN

With the upcoming final season of The Conners, I've updated this interesting article on the post-original series retcons and, in particular, Roseanne and Jackie's missing sons, Jerry and Andy.

There is a long list of characters missing from the original Rosanne series

Most of the missing characters are children, which is a bit strange.

The rebirth of The Conners I saw a lot of fans of the original Rosanna series eager to find out what their favorite working-class family from the '90s had been up to in the 21 years since the finale. From 1988 to 1997, viewers tuned in weekly to watch the family of five live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet and hold their lives together because it was something they could relate to. During the nine years Rosanna aired on ABC, fans got to know not only the Conners, but also their beloved friends and extended family.

Rosanne Conner's younger sister, Jackie, and her older friend, Crystal, were regular cast members from the beginning. As their families evolved, their children became part of the story as well. Jackie and her boyfriend Fred, for example, had a son named Andy before they got married, but Andy is not present at all in The Conners. Crystal, who married Dan's father, Ed Conner, had two children: Ed Jr. and Angela. Although Ed Jr. made a handful of appearances on The ConnersSister Angela is not mentioned, as if she never existed.

Roseanne Barr's firing changed things

He made numerous inappropriate comments and actions

• Roseanne Barr has a long history of hateful rhetoric.
• After his firing from ABC, the series changed its name.

If all this doesn’t seem strange to you, in the seventh season of the original series, Rosannae became pregnant with her fourth child, a boy she named Jerry Garcia Conner. When the original series was rebooted in 2018, there were photos of him around the house, but Jerry was only mentioned briefly while on a fishing boat in Alaska, after which he was never mentioned again. There were no phone calls from Jerry, no emails, no texts. He was just swept under the rug.

After ABC fired Roseanne Barr from the series for her inappropriate behavior on social media, the reboot was renamed The Conners.The original title character was killed off, after overdosing on painkillers. When the third season of The Conners arrived, both Becky and Dan made comments that completely erased Jerry Garcia Conner from existenceBecky was heard saying that she is one of Dan and Roseanne's three children, while Dan jokingly pointed out that he has a favorite child and two spares.

Many characters were not brought back to make room for a new generation

Some old characters met tragic ends, while others are never mentioned.

It's much less mysterious that many of the original characters from the series don't make an appearance, but an explanation for some of them would be a nice touch. The only major missing character who got a proper explanation was Becky's husband, Mark Healy, who died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Jackie's first husband and Andy's father, Fred, is a mystery, however. When Jackie marries Neville in The ConnersDarlene makes a sarcastic comment about Jackie never having been on their honeymoon, suggesting that she and Fred never got married. Fascinatingly, in season 5 of The ConnersIn the episode “Possums, Pregnancy and Patriarchy,” we learned that Jackie had an abortion, something she had never mentioned in the series before this point. Some fans wondered if perhaps the show was suggesting that, in its current continuity, Jackie had an abortion rather than having Andy. Clearly, the show's writers are playing fast and loose with the series' continuity.

Jackie's best friend, Nancy Bartlett (Sandra Bernhard), did not receive the same treatment. Nancy played an important role in Jackie's life, as they were not only friends, but also business partners in the original Lanford Lunch BoxNancy's on-again, off-again relationship with Tom Arnold's character, Arnie, was good for laughs, but Nancy and Jackie were friends before that. So what happened between them after Nancy and Arnie broke up?

It's possible that both Nancy and Arnie were fictional, written in the book Roseanne was writing about her life to help her cope with Dan's death from a heart attack in season eight. It was this same fictional account that explained the family's outrageous lottery winnings, Jackie's affair with Jim Varney's Prince Carlos of Moldova, Dan's cheating, and a host of other incidents that led up to the series finale, which could then be dismissed as “just a dream.”

The Rosanne series finale denied much of the original canon

Some changes needed to be made

• The Conners is available to stream on Netflix, The CW App, and Prime Video in Canada.

Since Helford didn't clarify which years the writers considered to be part of the fictional story Roseanne was weaving, it seems to give them the freedom to choose who is real and who was just a dream. Angela was born in season 5, so unless she was simply forgotten, Dan seems completely indifferent to his sister, despite his bond with his brother on The Conners.

Sara Gilbert Has a Different Take on Andy's Absence from the Conners

Sara Gilbert is a leading producer of The Connersand, interestingly, he actually broke up with the showrunner, Bruce Helford, over Andy. He totally gets that they've waited so long without mentioning Andy, that it would seem impossible to introduce him now, but Gilbert disagrees, saying “In My keep in mind that it's not completely out of the question. I know some of the writers think we waited too long and it wouldn't work, but I think there's probably a way to do it.”

THE you can't fault the show for leaving out some characters, as it needed to add new blood for a new generation of Conners. One can criticize him for pretending that Andy simply doesn't exist. The show could have given him the initial “Jerry treatment” and explained it away with a joke or two; perhaps even killing off his character as further explanation for Jackie's often neurotic behavior. It's not that the show doesn't mine personal tragedies for story lines.

The truth is, as in life, most of the characters could be explained away for any number of reasons. Jerry Conner could be one of the few Conners to escape Lanford's clutches and never look back. Andy could have gone to college or joined the Peace Corps. Anything would have been better than erasing them from existence. It's a disservice to the fans, especially those who were left after the mother bear was kicked out.

Managing a large cast (let alone paying one) is no easy task, so the show can easily be forgiven for not including some characters from the original series. It's been over 20 years, after all. On the other hand, a few lines of dialogue explaining the character's absence would go a long way to assuaging fans' curiosity. It would certainly be more appreciated than erasing them from the canon. If Mark can spend the entire season 4 premiere calling the Conners around the country, he could definitely email his uncle or cousin off-screen. and briefly mention what happened at the table during dinner.

Fans will probably never get a satisfying answer about the whereabouts of the missing children. Unless, of course, that Alaskan fishing boat comes ashore and it turns out that Andy and Angela were with Jerry the whole time, counting crabs together on the high seas.