‘Roseanne’ Reboot Explains Fourth Child’s Absence in Premiere Episode

Remember Jerry Garcia Conner? Well there’s a reason you won’t see him in the Roseanne reboot.

During the family’s first dinner back together, Roseanne (Barr) says grace and briefly mentions her now-22-year-old son.

“Please watch over our son Jerry, who’s on that stupid fishing boat where, apparently they don’t get phone calls …”

Fans of the sitcom’s original run will remember Roseanne gave birth to her and Dan’s (John Goodman) fourth child during the Halloween episode of season eight. The baby was played by Cole and Morgan Roberts, but don’t expect to see them on the revival.

During a 2018 Television Critics Association panel, PopSugar reports, Barr announced Jerry would not appear in the revival’s first season, as writers didn’t have room to include everything they wanted in the nine-episode season.

“We haven’t dealt with Andy, Laurie’s son, yet, either, but we had so many stories to tell over the arc of these nine episodes that we were hoping for another season to bring more clarity to those characters,” Barr said.

The episode did reveal DJ’s (Michael Fishman) future, introducing viewers to Roseanne’s granddaughter Mary.

Before the reboot aired its first episode, executive producer Whitney Cummings revealed DJ married the African-American girl he once refused to kiss in the pivotal season seven episode, “White Men Can’t Kiss,” in which three members of the Conner family must look within their own issues with racism and bias.

The reboot’s premiere also dove into Roseanne and Jackie’s estranged relationship before they reconcile and showed the meeting of the two Beckys after the original (Lecy Goranson) meets new character Andrea (Sarah Chalke), who is interested in Becky being her surrogate.

Barr revealed on Twitter weeks before the premiere that the nine-episode reboot would tell a concrete story, as well as have individual stories per episode like other sitcoms, so we may get a glimpse at adult Gina in later episodes.

Maybe Jerry and Andy will be headed to the revival if there’s a second season.

Roseanne airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.