Why The Conners Season 3 Premiere Included An Unexpected George Clooney Throwback

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[size=30]The Conners Premiere: The Story Behind That George Clooney 'Cameo'[/size]

By Michael Ausiello / October 21 2020, 6:30 PM PDT

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Courtesy of ABC



For its Season 3 premiere, The Conners dug deep into into its storied archives and pulled out a George Clooney!


In Wednesday’s opener, Dan announces to the family that Wellman Plastics — the industrial Lanford behemoth that employed Roseanne and Jackie in the early days of the original Roseanne, and featured then-relatively unknown Clooney as their boss Booker— is embarking on a COVID-related hiring spree. The news immediately sends Jackie into reminisce-mode as she wistfully, meta-tastically recalls her former beau/supervisor “who looked just like George Clooney,” before cracking, “I should’ve hit that ’til I broke it.”


ABC’s top-rated sitcom went all-in on the throwback gag, queuing up a circa-’80s Season 1 Roseanne clip of Clooney’s Booker and Laurie Metcalf’s Jackie on a bowling date (watch the moment below). It was a rare instance of The Conners playing up its connection to the Roseanne Barr-led mothership series.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is sending us down memory lane tonight at 9|8c on ABC! We all want a George Clooney. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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Explaining the decision to draw on the franchise’s considerable history by using vintage Roseanne footage, showrunner Bruce Helford tells TVLine, “As soon as we decided that Darlene and Becky would work on the Wellman line like their mom and Jackie before them, we knew it’d be fun to pop in a memory of George. There’s such a rich history to this show and we have the unique gift to be able to flash back to earlier times with our characters, so we pick carefully.”

With Wellman Plastics once again a fixture in the lives of the Conners, Helford is not ruling out present-day Clooney making an appearance at some point. He’s also not holding his breath. “George knows there’s an open invitation to come visit the show, but we knew his schedule would be tough and even tougher in these times,” Helford says. “But who knows what the future may bring?”

In the meantime, Helford has no plans to introduce a new Wellman foreman, although the showrunner teases, “We are revealing some Wellman execs as we go… and some of [them] are very close to home.”

What did you think of Clooney’s “guest appearance” in the COVID-dominated premiere? And are you on board with the show’s decision to lean so heavily into the real-life pandemic in Season 3? Grade the episode and then elaborate in the comments.

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Why The Conners Season 3 Premiere Included An Unexpected George Clooney Throwback

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  • LAURA HURLEY
    
    
  
  
  

PUBLISHED: OCT. 21. 2020 6:55 PM


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Spoilers ahead for the Season 3 premiere of The Conners on ABC.

The Conners returned to ABC for the Season 3 premiere that revealed how the Conner household is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved Becky and Darlene needing to search for new jobs, Dan facing an eviction unless he starts charging his daughters rent, and Jackie going on a blast to the past that involved a throwback to none other than a very young George Clooney from Roseanne. Showrunner Bruce Helford explained why.

Speaking with TVLine about the Conners Season 3 premiere and the appearance of a very young George Clooney from his Roseanne days, Bruce Helford said:

As soon as we decided that Darlene and Becky would work on the Wellman line like their mom and Jackie before them, we knew it’d be fun to pop in a memory of George. There’s such a rich history to this show and we have the unique gift to be able to flash back to earlier times with our characters, so we pick carefully.

Back before he became a big-name movie star, George Clooney played a character by the name of Booker Brooks for eleven episodes of Roseanne, and his time on the show involved a brief romance with Jackie. Booker was the foreman of Wellman Plastics when Jackie and Roseanne worked there early on in Roseanne. His time on the show involved a bowling date with Jackie that The Conners revisited, courtesy of Jackie thinking back to days gone by.

When Wellman Plastics started hiring again, Jackie reminisced about her time there after Darlene said it would be "too easy" to catch something in an assembly line during a pandemic, saying:

Yeah. I was too easy. I caught something once. From the supervisor, Booker. But it was worth it. He looked just like George Clooney. Oh man, I should have hit that 'til I broke it.

The trip down memory lane involved a flashback to Roseanne including a young and very charming George Clooney flirting with Jackie as Booker Brooks. While this wasn't quite Clooney returning to TV to reprise his role as Booker, it did establish that both Booker and George Clooney exist in the Conners universe. Who knew?

That said, the mention of the actor George Clooney doesn't mean that the return of Booker Brooks is out of the question, should the stars align. Bruce Helford weighed in on the idea of Clooney actually appearing on The Conners:

George knows there’s an open invitation to come visit the show, but we knew his schedule would be tough and even tougher in these times. But who knows what the future may bring?

Bruce Helford further revealed that there are no plans to introduce a new foreman at Wellman despite Darlene and Becky beginning to work there, so fans can always dream sweet dreams of George Clooney making an appearance in the present. The Conners has already managed to land some big-name guest stars, including Dan Aykroyd, Jennifer Grey, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, not to mention Katey Sagal.

Still, George Clooney is on a whole other level. His TV appearances have also been few and far between since his days on ER, with the exception of a six-episode run on Hulu's Catch-22 limited series adaptation. At least Conners fans can appreciate the Season 3 premiere throwback!

New episodes of The Conners will continue to air on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.