Johnny Galecki joined the cast of “Roseanne” in Season 4 as David, a recurring role he’d play for the remainder of the show’s original run, while also returning for the 2018 revival season. His first episode as David aired in January 1992. However, that wouldn’t be the first project that Galecki and Roseanne Barr ever did together. In fact, just two months prior, a movie called “Backfield in Motion” aired on ABC that starred both Barr and Galecki, marking their debut as castmates.
In “Backfield in Motion,” Barr plays Nancy Seavers, a recently widowed single mother who moves to a new town with her son, Tim (Galecki). The pair discover that the town’s entire identity is its local high school football team. Not content to just have Tim join the team while she’s forced to play the role of sidelined sports mom, Nancy fights for a mother-and-son game to match the town’s existing father-and-son game. Barr’s then husband Tom Arnold plays the school’s vice principal.
Backfield in Motion was a ‘serviceable’ made-for-TV football comedy
People sometimes forget that Johnny Galecki had already made his mark in movies before becoming a sitcom legend. While the actor is most commonly associated with his roles on “Roseanne” and “The Big Bang Theory,” Galecki had previously landed the role as the third Rusty Griswold in the holiday classic “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Meanwhile, Roseanne Barr’s groundbreaking sitcom was already going before she took her own first swings at being a movie star. Barr initially starred opposite Meryl Streep in the black comedy flop “She Devil” — a role Streep should have said no to — followed by Barr voicing Julie in “Look Who’s Talking Too.”
As for “Backfield in Motion,” The New York Times review at the time was actually somewhat kind to the movie. “Not a cinema classic, to be sure, but ‘Backfield in Motion’ provides an unusual and, in many ways, an extraordinary performer with a serviceable showcase,” it reads. And really, could you expect anything better than “serviceable” for a 1991 made-for-TV sports comedy starring Roseanne Barr?