On the Roseanne reboot, it is Darlene who is the "emotional heart" of the story

BuzzFeed

Media attention on the Roseanne reboot has focused on Roseanne Conner being a Trump voter. But the new Roseanne isn't a forum for Roseanne Barr's ideologies because the three episodes sent to critics "decenter Roseanne in a slight but remarkable way, ceding the emotional heart of the story to Darlene: unemployed, single-parenting two kids, and trying to figure out how best to raise them in her parents’ house," says Anne Helen Peterson. That the focus would be on Darlene makes sense since it was Sara Gilbert who orchestrated the revival. "The camera still starts and stops on Roseanne in the iconic opening credit sequence, but she has effectively ceded the moral center of the show," says Peterson. "Darlene was always the most independent of the Conner children. But she was also the most like Roseanne: irreverent, acerbic, thrilled by her capacity to undercut others’ expectations of her, yet blessed with a seemingly innate ethical clarity. She wasn’t scared to wound others, and yet, like her mother, she was secretly sensitive. Roseanne used those qualities to school her children and prepare them to be better people in the world. And what makes the new Roseanne work — despite its star, and what’s become of her — is the show’s willingness to let Darlene use the same strategies on her own parents. Roseanne remains committed to a certain sort of realism. But this time, part of that realist project is allowing a feminist daughter to reject the cynicism of her mother and forge her own path forward."