The Conners Fans Caught A Couple Of Continuity Errors In Season 5 Episode 13
The following article contains spoilers for "The Conners," Season 5, Episode 13 — "New Pipes and Old Secrets."
The sense of discontinuity between "The Conners" and its parent show "Roseanne" can sometimes be quite thorny. When "Roseanne" returned to the airwaves, it had to junk its original series finale to facilitate its return to the airwaves and went even further than that to junk Jackie Harris' (Laurie Metcalf) marriage to Fred (Michael O'Keefe) and the existence of her son Andy. The program even retconned the existence of the youngest Conner sibling, Jerry Garcia Conner.
The moments of discontinuity have continued into "The Conners," and while the show sometimes does an excellent job of getting it right, sometimes the writers fumble the ball and miss out on something major. This time out, two huge continuity issues got fans talking about the little details — and both of them involve the life of the ever-irascible and now dementia-stricken Bev Harris (Estelle Parsons).
Tracking Bev's illness has caused some sticky issues
During "New Pipes and Old Secrets," Darlene Conner (Sara Gilbert) is trying to convince Jackie to hire a nurse who specializes in memory care for Bev. Jackie is reluctant due to the amount of money required, but Darlene and her sister Becky (Lecy Goranson) point out that their aunt's only other option is "a crowded state facility."
This seems to portend that Bev had never lived in any sort of retirement community before, but "Roseanne" and "The Conners" previously established, as Twitter user @Wee_Westie29 pointed out, she has been living in a nursing home. In fact, an entire "Roseanne" reboot episode ("Darlene vs David," Episode 5) focuses on Jackie and Roseanne's (Rosanne Barr) attempt at getting Bev out of Roseanne's house and back in her own place after she gets kicked out of her nursing home, specifically due to how she spread a venereal disease among her fellow retirees.
That's a pretty major blooper, and it's just one discontinuity issue fans of the show had with this episode. For example, on "The Conners" subreddit, u/RickGrimesSnotBubble singled out the big twist reveal that Roseanne, Jackie, and Bev once moved in with Nana Mary because Al tried to hit Jackie and Bev got between them, breaking her arm in the process. They wrote that this couldn't have possibly happened the way the show insists it did due to Jackie and Roseanne's established ages. "They've also never really mentioned living with Nana Mary before," the Redditor added. "It was always a big deal how Roseanne escaped her crazy house and went out with Dan as a teen." Hopefully, the show works those bugs out before its next outing.