Caution: SPOILERS ahead for The Conners season 4.
While The Conners season 4 has never known what to do with Becky, this issue has been worsened by the fact that her college plotline makes no sense. Becky is a tricky character for The Conners. Perhaps tellingly, her original actor Lecy Goranson was replaced by Sarah Chalke during the original run of Roseanne, only for Chalke to be re-replaced by Goranson when the show was revived in 2017. As such, it is no shock that The Conners season 4 doesn’t know what to do with the character.
Becky’s college storyline has been one of the least consistent on The Conners. Initially, her affair with her teacher Professor Davis seemed like a promising plot thanks to the presence of sitcom stalwart Marc Even Jackson and the inherent tension of the duo keeping their illicit relationship a secret. However, Becky’s college classmates cottoned on to their relationship far too fast for The Conners to ever establish any real chemistry between the two.
The Conners season 4 broke up Professor Davis and Becky shortly after, but the series has not made sense of the latter’s college arc since. Becky and the professor ended their affair when they were caught by other students and he was temporarily suspended. Unfortunately, much like Harris’s plot hole-ridden season 4 move, that’s where the story stopped back sense. Seeing how devastated and directionless he was without his work, Becky dumped Professor Davis and took all the blame for the affair, ending up on academic probation. However, in The Conners season 4, episode 17, ”Big Negotiations and Broken Expectations”, she is back in college and studying with the same students.
It is one thing that The Conners never mentioned the end of Becky’s academic probation, although this is quite a big oversight. After all, The Conners season 4 treated the prospect of Mark getting caught writing personal statements for other kids as a serious issue, meaning it is inherently contradictory for the show to dismiss a more serious problem like academic probation. However, this is not the only problem that The Conners created with this storyline.
Becky is said to be busy studying with a study group when Dan is left to babysit her daughter early on in ”Big Negotiations and Broken Expectations”. However, given the small size of Professor Davis’s class, as seen earlier in the season, this means that Becky is working with the same students who ended her relationship or, at least, with students who are aware of her relationship with the teacher. Even for Becky’s flighty character, this doesn’t add up, and even if Becky was willing to let bygones be bygones, her classmates made it clear when they harangued her into attending a singles event that they thought her dating Davis would be a serious problem they couldn’t ignore. This attitude, along with the unexplained end of Becky’s academic probation, makes this storyline hard to swallow in The Conners season 4.
