Why The Conners Season 4 Needs To Reunite Darlene And Harris
Darlene and Harris’s fight in The Conners season 4 has provided opportunities for both of their characters to grow, but the sitcom needs to reunite the duo for this positive change to occur. The Conners has never been short on clashing personalities. The sitcom’s portrayal of a working-class family’s struggles sees three generations of relatives living together under one roof, resulting in inevitable schisms that often provide both laughs and moving moments.
However, Harris and Aldo’s relationship has led The Conners season 4 to keep one fight going for longer than the sitcom’s episodic structure can handle. Harris’s estrangement from her mother Darlene has made the duo’s dynamic strained, putting pressure on the rest of the cast to provide laughs amid a bleak ongoing storyline. The pair are overdue a reunion but, so far, The Conners season 4 doesn’t seem concerned about facilitating this.
Ever since Harris left her home to live with Aldo after arguing with Darlene about their relationship, the mother/daughter duo’s dynamic has been off and The Conners season 4 has struggled as a result. The schism occurred way back in “Let’s All Push Our Hands Together For The Stew Train and The Conners Furniture” (season 4, episode 7) and, initially, the issue seemed as though it might last a week or two. It was not unheard of for the two characters to struggle with each other, and dating Aldo wasn’t the first choice Harris made that seriously affected her relationship with Darlene. However, the fact that The Conners season 4 has since largely shifted its focus to Darlene and Ben’s romance, Mark’s struggles, and the rest of the family’s subplots mean that Harris’s relationship with her mother has been left on the back burner. This has resulted in a knock-on effect that makes the sitcom’s tone feel darker and more uncomfortable, while also limiting Darlene and Harris’s respective potentials for character growth.
Early on in The Conners season 4, it was Harris’ relationship with the far older Aldo that caused her mother to worry about her life choices. Darlene found Harris’s conviction that she could be a mother to Aldo’s three children to be a worrying one, since Harris is still a teenager herself. However, as is often the case, the headstrong Darlene didn’t do a great job of communicating this fear to her daughter. After a blowup between the two characters, Harris doubled down on her decision rather than heed her mother’s advice, a move that saw Darlene act in anger and her daughter return in kind. However, that was over four episodes ago and the pair still have not made up, resulting in Dan intervening between them and the stalling of one of the most interesting relationships since The Conners killed off Roseanne.
Harris and Darlene’s relationship is one that some fans of The Conners find frustrating, as Harris’s obstinacy and immaturity clash with the same qualities in her mother. However, the duo’s constant bickering and inability to see eye to eye is reminiscent of Roseanne and Darlene’s struggles in the original incarnation of the hit sitcom, Roseanne. As a result, their relationship allows The Conners to comment on how parents often unintentionally perpetuate the same cycles of poor parenting that they were subject to, despite how much they may have resented them at the time. One famous moment from Roseanne saw the titular maincharacter tearfully apologize for hitting her son and admit that her father did the same, an idea that was revisited in Darlene and Harris’ recreations of Darlene and Roseanne’s willful screaming matches. However, while the mother/daughter duo’s dynamic provides more authentic, organic conflict than Darlene’s on-again, off-again melodrama with Ben, it has unfortunately fallen out of focus in The Conners season 4.
While Harris still appears in most episodes of The Conners season 4, her truncated role in proceedings (owing to her now living elsewhere) makes communication with the titular family strained and strange. For example, her brief appearance at Mark’s celebratory dinner was a missed opportunity. If the reveal had occurred in an earlier episode of The Conners season 4, Harris could have been present for the golden child’s ADHD medication addiction being revealed, and she could have stood up for her brother (or Darlene) in the ensuing argument. Similarly, Harris’s complaint in “Patriarchs and Goddesses” (season 4 episode 11), that Aldo’s dad and her granddad Dan were planning her life behind her back, was a valid one since no one asked Harris her opinion on the matter.
However, the fact that Harris no longer stays under the same roof as The Conners gave Dan and Aldo’s father an excuse to confer without her, something they wouldn’t have been able to fall back on if she still lived with the eponymous family. Again, Harris’s absence from the Conner family home added another layer of complication to the family’s communication and resulted in a conflict with Dan that felt inauthentic and manufactured. It is entirely possible that, if Harris still lived with the Conners, her grandfather would have gone behind her back and spoken to Aldo’s father without her presence. However, if John Goodman’s character had done this, the subsequent fight would have felt earned since a betrayal of trust would have occurred. As is, Harris’s claim that the two men were conspiring behind her back is unreasonable since she doesn’t even live in the same house as Dan.
The primary issue with The Conners season 4’s Harris plot line is that Harris and Darlene have not directly addressed the fight for numerous episodes now. After the initial disagreement led to Harris leaving, her appearances on The Conners have been limited to her visiting the family and arguing with Dan, with only brief moments of sniping between her and Darlene. Bringing the duo together to hash out Darlene’s issues with Aldo and Harris’s relationship (and touch on Harris’s misgivings about her mother’s advice, given Darlene’s own messy love life) would put The Conners season 4 back on track and repair the dynamic between two of its most essential characters.