I do feel bad for the rest of the cast who had a chance to get back into acting, though. The show was doing well. Thanks Roseanne.
I have to wonder if the cast of the show are all pissed at Roseanne for screwing it up...or if they always knew that it would end this way.
I do feel bad for the kids though. They didn't quite have time to develop much of an identity, and will now forever be known simply as that trans kid and the black girl who ended up living with a bunch of white rednecks for some reason.
I don't know if it was deliberate or just proves your point, but the boy explicitly wasn't trans (it was brought up in the second episode - he immediately identified as a boy when asked), the black girl was the daughter of the youngest child from the original series, and there's a third kid you left out completely.
In the case of the oldest kid, she found out the show was cancelled when she called in to resign over Barr's comments. Everyone seems pretty clear where the blame lies.
It is a shame, because the show was just starting to feel like the older seasons - most of the first season amounted to little more than character (re)introduction, and hadn't focused on the plot structure that made the show good in the first place. Still, cancellation was the only plausible action ABC could take here - with half the cast and staff in open revolt, there was no chance of keeping it going short of firing Barr, and she probably holds too much of the rights to make that possible.