An Officer and a Gentleman Question

Families help each other.

No, it gave the producers a backdoor pilot for a show withOUT Roseanne. Once the cast figured out they were trying to "pull a Valerie Harper" on her, they united and threatened to all walk.

They even included a scene in at least one of the biopics concerning this, with a scene involving a producer talking to "John" about the revamped show on the kitchen set. John admits he had tried to break his contract to do movies full time in s1, but they liked him more than Roseanne, and bent over backwards to keep him on.




*(for those that are too young to remember, Valerie Harper had her own sitcom a few years before this, giving us Jason Bateman. She got into a dispute with the producers and found herself without a job. The show's title evolved from "Valerie" to "Valerie's Family" and eventually "The Hogan Family" as Sandy Duncan came on as the father's sister and replacement mother figure. I forget who the father was, but he was a semi-popular character actor of the time, and was barely in half the eps, as his day job s "pilot". the "nosy neighbor" filled in after Valerie "died" until Sandy was hired, then helped out after that. She's best known as the school secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.)


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