ABSTRACT
Disparate in both genre and era, Roseanne and Supernatural have a surprising amount of narrative commonality, including being some of the few series (past the 1970s) that featured working class protagonists. Yet the interest here is examining the similar ways in which both Roseanne and Supernatural willfully dissolve the “fictive dream” of their series to either create a “better” version or as punishment for “creations” that have rebelled against exploitation. The metatextual impulse in both series critiques the idea through highlighting the contested nature of television authorship. This is achieved in both series by using metatext to take aim at (sole) authorship through both the in-universe toxicity of Supernatural’s “author” and the blurred lines of Roseanne Barr’s comedic/public persona, her series, and its place within sitcom history, prizing the collective effort of television rather than the crutch of auteur-ship. This is further aided by the ways both series comment on the roles education, gender, and money played in conscripting individual stories in a television landscape that, in their respective eras, too frequently showed little interest in narratives outside of a narrow socioeconomic sphere.
