This Roseanne Pop-Up Restaurant at Comic-Con Ignores the Last 10 Years of Her Life
To be fair to the Lanford Lunch Box, how many Deadpool cosplayers would ever even consider ordering a sandwich called “The Muslim Brotherhood Meatball Sub”?
This past weekend, the world’s most passionate nerds flocked to Southern California for the annual San Diego Comic-Con, the most popular and high-production value assembly of its kind. This year’s gathering featured a peculiar, immersive exhibition that took convention-goers into the world of one of the most popular shows of the 1990s that definitely isn’t Star Trek: TNG — The Lanford Lunch Box, a pop-up restaurant/carnival celebrating the sitcom Roseanne, took over about two acres of prime parking lot location a couple blocks from the convention center.
As part of Cozi TV’s “30 years of Roseanne” activation, the free event featured signature loose meat sandwiches and game booths touting names like “Roseanne’s Ring Toss” and “Darlene’s Knock It Down.” Clearly, the Lanford Lunch Box was the perfect place to bring Roseanne fans who booked their tickets for this year’s Comic-Con immediately after waking up from a 10-year coma.
Roseanne Barr’s many inflammatory and divisive remarks are well-known at this point — anyone vaguely familiar with the formerly universally beloved sitcom star knows that the last decade or so has seen her slide further and further down the political spectrum to full-on QAnon conspiracy nut. Since Barr was removed from the show bearing her name in 2018, the Lanford Lunch Box pop-up, so named for the in-universe restaurant co-owned by Roseanne and her family, exclusively bears images and decorations from the show’s original run, with most such material showing the happy faces of Roseanne and Dan, both alive and unfired.
Predictably, the Lanford Lunch Box includes no mentions of Barr’s bad behavior, choosing to focus on the show itself instead of the creator’s controversial views. The pop-up even put on a re-enactment of an episode of Roseanne — fittingly, the Season Five episode “Lanford Daze” — while a Loretta Lynn impersonator entertained Roseanne die-hards who were probably very confused by the rest of the Comic-Con.
That said, some Comic-Con goers were displeased with the appearance of The Lanford Lunch Box at the convention as members of the nerd community found it distasteful for a characteristically inclusive gathering to be used to promote the work of someone who just recently said that the Holocaust didn’t happen but it should have.
If those fans still feel upset about the inclusion of the Roseanne homage when next July comes around, they should hold a convention that explicitly bans depictions or mentions of Barr — they can call it Conners-Con.
