Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for The Conners season 6, episode 12.
While The Conners got a rare major win in season 6, episode 12, this came with a dose of reality for Roseanne’s famous family. The Conner family has struggled with money since Roseanne first began back in 1989. The Conners has a large cast of characters, but few of them have any financial security and most of the show’s heroes live pay check to pay check. The Conners and Roseanne both focus on the harsh realities of working-class life, although this is something that The Conners season 7 may change as the upcoming outing prepares to end the series.
The latter half of The Conners season 6 has heavily implied that the family’s financial woes may become a thing of the past in the near future. Nothing is set in stone and Dan was right to note that, whenever the Conners seem to have it good, an unexpected disaster brings them back down to earth. Nonetheless, in season 6, episode 12, “Flying, Applying and Rassling Gators,” Dan managed to finally pay off his mortgage and even ended up with a little extra cash. Despite the family’s best attempts to gloat, their bank visit didn’t go entirely to plan.
Thanks to The Conners season 6’s Ben storyline, Dan was able to pay his mortgage off early with the money from an insurance claim made by Darlene’s husband. When Dan arrived at the bank, he brought his entire extended family and hoped to rub this achievement in the manager’s face. Instead, he was met by a manager who was disarmingly delighted for him. The entire bank’s staff courteously congratulated the Conners on paying off their mortgage, with one bank staffer even offering the family her own birthday cake to celebrate. This agreeable attitude frustrated Dan to no end.
Dan’s desire to stick it to the bankers made sense since he had spent the entire series struggling against a tide of late notices and overdraft fees. Despite this, the bankers themselves didn’t display any animosity toward the family and seemed genuinely thrilled to hear about their newfound prosperity. Making the family rich was the biggest mistake in Roseanne’s original run, but The Conners season 6 avoided this by ensuring their windfall wasn’t too massive. For Dan, it was just enough to pay off his mortgage and afford a trip with Jackie, which made up for the bank staff’s under-reaction.
It was funny to see the bemused bankers congratulate the Conners, but their family trip to the bank did reveal a sad truth underneath all the jokes. The Conners understandably believed that the financial institution had it out for them since it was easier to think that a handful of local bankers hated them than to contend with the scale of their struggles. At every turn, the Conner family was let down by banks, unreliable employers, expensive educational institutions, and meager government support. The family has struggled for three and a half decades, so having a common enemy helped them.
The Conners borrowed one clever twist from another hit sitcom as Roseanne’s spinoff proved the family’s problems were systemic. Like Abbott Elementary, The Conners resisted the easy option of depicting the bankers as cartoonish villains and instead acknowledged that broader systemic issues kept the family in poverty for decades. It wasn’t one bad banker, but rather an entirely rotten banking system and an unstable economy that meant the family never accrued any wealth to fall back on. Although not all of The Conners’ relationships work, the show keeps Roseanne’s streak of uncompromising social commentary alive in episodes like this.
Even though refusing to stray from the realities of blue-collar life is what makes The Conners stand out in a crowded sitcom landscape, the spinoff’s final season looks set to finally improve the family’s financial standing once and for all. Dan paying off his mortgage implies that the Conners may become financially solvent in season 7, just in time for the show to provide everyone with a happy ending. Granted, this is still the world of Roseanne, so a happy ending will likely be a humble one. Still, seeing the Conners comfortable for the first time would be a perfect conclusion.
This would also make up for Roseanne’s original final season, an abomination that also saw the family come into an unlikely financial windfall. Unlike The Conners season 6’s Ben storyline, this absurd plot abandoned reality entirely when the family won over $100 million in the lottery. This win transformed their lives overnight but ruined the show in the process. Gone were the relatable stories of working-class strife, replaced by fanciful outings where Roseanne saved the First Lady from terrorists or starred in a bizarre parody of Rosemary’s Baby. Understandably, Roseanne’s season 10 revival retconned this entire season’s events.
While Dan paying off his mortgage was the biggest change to the family’s financial standing in “Flying, Applying and Rassling Gators,” another subplot could also be good news for the future of the Conners. Mark dropping out of college could mean that Darlene can leave her cafeteria job since she only took the role so she could cover his tuition. Mark opted to leave his college when he learned he had been accepted into a more prestigious university, deciding to work for a year so he could save up and attend that school. This could help Darlene’s career prospects considerably.
Darlene was a relatively well-paid manager at Wellman’s Plastics before she was fired, but she took a major pay cut when she became a cafeteria worker at Mark’s college. Now, Darlene and Ben’s The Conners season 6 story could see her run a magazine with her husband as she no longer needs to cover Mark’s tuition and Ben already used his share of the insurance payout to buy Hardware magazine. Via this new job, Roseanne’s heroine Darlene may finally fulfill her dream of becoming a writer and the characters of The Conners might gain the financial independence they have wanted for decades.