Is The Conners new tonight? What’s coming up next for ABC series

Wouldn’t it be great if The Conners was new tonight? We are sure that there are some people wondering if it’s new tonight and we certainly understand why. After spending the past several hours either standing in line and/or arguing with people at a voting booth, sitcoms can be a panacea — though Roseanne fans may not feel that way with this particular show.

Related The Conners video – Take a look at the latest ratings discussion on season 1 below! Also, subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any other CarterMatt video scoop and check out our Ratings Watch playlist for more ratings discussion. We have new videos daily.

No matter how you feel about Roseanne, or the spin-off without her, it doesn’t change the fact that the series is off the air tonight. ABC is shelving The Conners for the week, even if it first premiered less than a month ago, mostly out of fear that election coverage will completely devastate their ratings. Here’s the truth: Most of those fears are justified. The midterms are a ratings vacuum that sucks away anything in their path — especially this year. In this climate, it does The Conners well to steer clear of politics, at least for tonight. Maybe in a week everything will cool off.

So … what’s next? – For those of you who do want some sort of Conners fix, we don’t want to leave you empty-handed since ABC has already announced a few more details for what’s coming up. Take, for example, next week’s episode called “The Separation of Church and Dan.” (The reference in this title alone shows that the writers aren’t steering clear of politics for long.) We already shared the episode’s synopsis over here, while also explaining that it’s super-weird that ABC shelved this episode until after the midterms since there’s a big election-themed plot at the center of it. Then again, we’d argue that this is them not wanting to stoke some of those flames until after votes have been cast. “The Separation of Church and Dan” was actually the second episode filmed for this season.

Bonus Scoop – The upcoming November 20 episode is entitled “Miracles,” and we’ll let the official synopsis do the talking here:

Life-changing news lands in the Conner household when a member of the family makes an announcement that no one saw coming. Meanwhile, Dan is suspicious that Becky isn’t sticking to her end of the deal when it comes to her drinking. Darlene continues her job search, and Jackie offers English lessons to a Casita Bonita busboy in need.

Basically, there’s a big personal revelation here mixed with real-world issues: Difficulties finding a job and difficulties staying away from the bottle. This is the sort of stuff that The Conners does best: Examining dark or depressing subject matter and finding a way to get laughs about it. The idea here thematically isn’t all that different from Mom over at CBS; The Conners just has more viewers and significantly more baggage at the moment.

If you missed it… – ABC added another episode to the season 1 order, bringing the grand total to 11.

Are you still enjoying The Conners, or doing your best to ignore it altogether? Share below – though, to be fair, if you hate this show we wonder why you made it to the end of this article. (Photo: ABC.)