Although The Conners isn’t the most subversive sitcom out there, Joe Walsh’s return as Aldo’s father Jesse flipped a famous trope of the genre on its head. While some sitcoms, like Arrested Development and Community, mine most of their humor from spoofing the conventions of TV comedy, The Conners usually offers a more straightforward brand of humor. Like its predecessor Roseanne, The Conners' secret weapon is plots that are funny but rooted in real-life working-class issues ranging from job insecurity to the rising cost of higher education.
However, from time to time, The Conners mines big laughs out of parodying sitcom cliches. Usually, this occurs when one of the show’s more sincere characters, like Jackie or Mark, seems to be setting up a schmaltzy, sentimental moment only for a more sardonic character like Harris or Darlene to cut through the sweetness with a sharp one-liner. However, Joe Walsh’s return to The Conners saw the series take this idea further.
In “Three Ring Circus” (season 4, episode 19), Joe Walsh returned as Aldo’s father Jesse and, despite disapproving of his son’s proposed marriage to Harris, patched things up with his offspring. The episode focused on Harris’ Conners season 4 story as she once again told Louise, Becky, and Jesse that she intended to stay with Aldo despite their advice. However, one scene saw Jesse tell Aldo that he opposed his marriage to Harris with “every fiber of my being” but then blessed the union anyway since he was “always proud of you, son — just not of what you're doing and who you are.” A bizarre, contradictory claim, the line was a clever deconstruction of the typical sweet Golden Moments featured on family sitcoms.
Jesse’s meaningless comment, and Aldo’s misplaced emotional reaction to it, underlined the difference between an unconventional, “dysfunctional” family like the Conners and a genuinely dysfunctional family like Aldo and Jesse’s. Even though earlier in The Conners season 4 plot, Harris defended her relationship with Aldo when Jesse told her to leave his son, Aldo instantly forgave his father because he seemingly wasn’t even aware that Jesse was actively insulting him. For his part, Jesse seemed equally unaware of the fact that his words weren't a sweet send-off for his son and were instead a cold condemnation of his conduct.
While it sometimes seems like the Conners don’t care about each other because of how often and relentlessly they make fun of each other, the family does try to see eye to eye and do respect each other even when they disagree. However, much like The Conners uncovered That 70s Show’s lax parenting, the sitcom's Jesse/Aldo scene underlined how hollow and meaningless a lot of sweet sitcom moments are when the father/son duo patched things up despite neither of them growing, changing, or improving in any way. The duo accepting their terrible relationship and treating their mutual disdain as if it was an achievement was an unusually dark sitcom subversion for The Conners, but it was an effective contrast to how the titular family constantly needle each other but ultimately have one another’s back, compared to Jesse and Aldo’s terrible setup.
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