Besides, we already knew what really killed Roseanne Conner: Roseanne Barr’s racism. The meta-cause for the character’s absence couldn’t help but hang over the “Conners” premiere. And in a way, Roseanne’s ejection was a kind of refutation of the premise of the earlier “Roseanne” revival.

The revival made the case, in part, that families could have deep, hurtful divisions over the election and the state of America but that, in the end, these were just politics. (This has also been a theme of the new, more conciliatory episodes of “Last Man Standing” on Fox.)

That was nice to hear, but it wasn’t totally honest. It took the example of the real-life Barr to point out that the schisms in America right now aren’t just about politics, in the sense of marginal tax rates or health care policy. They’re also about decency and empathy and dehumanization. (Barr likened an African-American former Obama aide to an ape.) These are moral lines that — once someone like Barr crosses them — you can’t simply agree to disagree about. You have to make a choice.

ABC did, and in the process, it freed the Conners to be themselves.

I’m still not sure if “The Conners” works as more than an epilogue, but it has room to grow. Gilbert is now essentially the lead — Darlene dropped into Roseanne’s empty chair in the show’s closing kitchen-table sequence — and her dry, Gen X humor could give “The Conners” a distinct voice from Barr’s gleeful bullhorn. There’s still plenty to do with the underdeveloped family branch of D.J. (Michael Fishman), his soldier wife, Geena (Maya Lynne Robinson), and their daughter, Mary (Jayden Rey).

But the show will have to get past not just a death but the ghost of the last “Roseanne” season, which the political moment turned, like so many things, into the least subtle version of itself.