Despite Darlene’s well-meaning advice to Mark in The Conners season 4, her choice of instrument for him is wildly misguided. The Conners is not the most realistic show in television history but, unlike most sitcoms, the Roseanne retooling does make a point of depicting working-class characters with believable struggles. Over the years, the eponymous family has encountered all manner of financial woes, and The Conners like Roseanne before has never been afraid to show how difficult it is to make ends meet in modern America.
This made one oversight in Mark’s Conners season 4 plotline bizarrely striking, as the series seemed hopelessly out-of-touch about an easily researched price point. When Mark began selling ghostwritten admission essays to his rich former schoolmates to fund his own college tuition, Darlene was impressed with his ingenuity but disapproved of the scheme. She did some research and discovered a more ethically straightforward pathway to guaranteeing a college scholarship.
