Although The Conners featured a cameo from NFL star Aaron Rodgers back in season 3, season 4 of the hit sitcom appeared to mock his anti-vaccine stance. The Conners is not entirely averse to celebrity cameos, but the sitcom doesn’t feature too many famous faces either. As the story of a working-class family’s (relatively) grounded struggles, The Conners strives to be a little closer to reality than many sitcoms and has fewer celebrity appearances than some of its competitors as a result.
Usually, when famous people do show up on The Conners, it is in the role of an original character (like Eagles musician Jeopardy when Jackie managed to find her way onto the daytime game show.
However, despite Rodgers appearing on The Conners, that did not stop the sitcom from seemingly poking fun at his controversial anti-vaccine stance in one season 4 episode. In “Hot for Teacher and Writing a Wrong” (season 4, episode 12), Becky’s line about Mark switching to home-schooling seemed like a pointed reference to Rodgers, whose anti-vax stance was recently reported on by production schedule of The Conners allowed the show’s writers to add it close to the episode’s airdate.
The scene occurred when Mark bemoaned Darlene’s decision to return him to public school. The switch was prompted by Mark’s intense course load leading him to hide an addiction to ADHD pills from his family, resulting in Darlene discovering the deception and deciding her son would be better off at his old public school. When Mark draws attention to the bullying he suffers there, Becky counters this by saying that he should consider becoming homeschooled as “then you won’t be forced to have all those life-saving vaccines, and you can make up your own scientific theories like your favorite athletes.”
There are other athletes the line could refer to, particularly when the Winter Games have reignited the topic in recent weeks. However, The Conners season 4 is most likely mocking Rodgers, since few of the other athletes objecting to vaccine mandates are as famous as him (particularly in the US). That said, the joke still comes as a surprise when Rodgers appeared on The Conners relatively recently. With The Conners season 4 also joking about the former star of the series, Dan’s late wife Roseanne, being in Hell, it is clear that the sitcom isn’t concerned about upsetting its former stars. Thus, Rodgers appears to have become the butt of a coded joke on The Conners despite the likelihood of this jeopardizing any future appearances the athlete could have made on the series.