What Happened to Johnny Galecki's David in The Conners' Finale?
It looks like the star's return to his iconic role didn't go as well as fans expected.
Before The Big Bang Theory catapulted him to superstardom, Johnny Galecki was best known as David on the hit show Roseanne. The young actor played Darlene's boyfriend and the eventual father of her children.
While Galecki was an integral part of the main series' cast, he apparently didn't return for the revival and spin-off The Conners, as he was then busy filming TBBT and his paychecks were certainly a bit too much for The Conners' producers. However, fans were more than happy to see Galecki pop up for a few episodes of the just-completed Season 5, but the reintroduction of his character David left most of them puzzled.
People always wondered why David was never in the picture in the spin-off, never mentioned by Darlene or his kids Mark or Harris. Fans knew that David was not a great dad even before Galecki's return, but his overdue appearance finally cleared things up — David is actually a huge prick.
In the final episode of Season 5, the returning David was portrayed as a wreck of a man, an absentee father who couldn't care less about his kids, not even bothering to visit them once in four years!
No wonder the season ended with Mark refusing to accept David as his father and asking his stepfather Ben to attend his high school graduation. Viewers silently sobbed during this scene, as the emotional impact of a son choosing another man as his father is a truly dramatic moment to witness.
While this finale is certainly compelling and sheds light on an absent father issue, fans of the original show still feel quite embarrassed by the spin-off, accusing the writers of ruining the beloved series.
'I understand why Johnny Galecki didn't want to do the show full time, but they did the David character so wrong. The David of the Roseanne years would have never ditched his wife and kids. Ever,' one fan argued.
While this notion is debatable, The Conners is certainly no match for the original show, proving once again that spin-offs of beloved sitcoms are bound to anger fans of the originals, with only Young Sheldon and Fraser able to avoid this dire fate.
Source: Reddit.