Into That Good Night (Roseanne episode)

Into That Good Night is the title of the two-part series finale of the ABC sitcom "Roseanne". The hour-long episode aired on May 20, 1997, marking the end of the series' nine-year run.

Cast

*Roseanne Barr as Roseanne Connor
*John Goodman as Dan Connor
*Laurie Metcalf as Jackie Harris
*Sara Gilbert as Darlene Connor Healy
*Michael Fishman as D.J. Connor
*Sarah Chalke as Becky Connor Healy
*Sandra Bernhard as Nancy Bartlett
*Johnny Galecki as David Healy
*Martin Mull as Leon Carp
*Fred Willard as Scott
*Estelle Parsons as Beverly "Bev" Harris
*Glenn Quinn as Mark Healy
*Cole Roberts as Jerry Garcia Connor

Synopsis

The Connor family and friends celebrate as Darlene and David finally bring their baby home. Roseanne tells Darlene that she'd like her to stay at home forever, and Darlene agrees to stay. Each family member and family friend takes turns going upstairs to see the baby and welcome him home.During the course of the celebration, there's other good news: Leon and Scott are adopting a baby, and Becky and Mark are expecting their own child.As the family gathers around the kitchen table to eat, Roseanne looks around and reflects.The last fifteen minutes of the episode consist of a monologue delivered by Roseanne, in which she reveals that the entire series, in many respects, was a product of Roseanne's imagination as she wrote a book about her life. Whatever she didn't like about her real life, she changed:

...as I wrote about my life, I relived it, and whatever I didn't like, I rearranged.

She reveals that it was Jackie, not her mother, who was gay, that Becky actually ended up with David, and Darlene ended up with Mark, that the family never won the lottery, and, in perhaps the most striking contrast, Dan in fact did not survive his heart attack. In the final moments of the episode, we see Roseanne sitting in her writing room, working on her book. She gets up and exits, revealing that her kitchen and living room are returned to the way they were before the Connors won the lottery. The final scene of the episode features a special version of the theme song sung by Carole King. As the camera pans up on the Connor's living room, the text of a poem by T.E. Lawrence displayed on screen:

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with eyes open, to make it possible.

Explanation

Reaction to the series finale, and the ninth season as a whole, was mixed among critics and audiences, though Barr has vehemently defended it. Barr wanted the series to mirror her real life, and the ninth season represented how she felt after she became rich and famous. She lost touch with reality and became a subject of tabloids, and her dissociation with reality mirrored her character's disconnect and the surrealism of the ninth season.

After Roseanne reveals that Dan died as a result of his heart attack, she goes on to explain some of the events of the ninth season. She reveals that the fantasy sequences in which she fought terrorists and became Xena represented her anger at Dan's death, and the story arc in which Dan had feelings for another woman represented the betrayal she felt after Dan died. She explains:

At first, I felt so betrayed, as if he had left me for another woman...so I began writing about having all the money in the world, and I imagined myself going to spas and swanky New York parties, just like the people on TV, where nobody has any real problems and everything is solved within 30 minutes...one day I actually imagined being with another man, but then I felt so guilty that I had to pretend it was for some altruistic reason.

She further explains that she made her mother gay in her book because she "wanted her to have some sense of herself as a woman".

Quotes

*"We women are the ones who transform everything we touch. And nothing on Earth is higher than that"
*"A lot of times, nerds are really artists who just listen to the beat of a different drummer"
*Dan and I always felt that it was our responsibility as parents to improve the lives of our children by 50% over our own, and we did. We didn't hit our children as we were hit. We didn't demand their unquestioning silence. And we didn't teach our daughters to sacrifice more than our sons.
*(Final line of the series)"I learned that God does exist. He, and/or she, is right inside you. Underneath the pain, the sorrow, and the shame. I think I'll be a lot better now that this book is done."