Into That Good Night

"Into That Good Night" is the season 9 finale of Roseanne and was the original show's series finale until a revived tenth season premiered in 2018. The episode aired on May 20, 1997 on the ABC TV network.

After a panned season, this episode undid all the plot progressions since the Conners winning the lottery by claiming it was all a fictionalization. This polarized many critics, and it remains one of the most controversial finales of all time, even after the revival season which effectively reversed all of the ill-received aspects.

The title refers to the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas.

Plot[]

The beginning of season nine saw the Conners win the lottery, which changed the dynamic of the show by increasing their socio-economic level. This finale "ripped out the rug from under viewers" by showing that the entire plot of the ninth season was in fact a dream that Roseanne Conner had concocted in her new career as a writer.^[1]

Critical reception[]

Time listed it in its article That Was It?: 10 Controversial TV Series Finales, describing it as "off-the-rails loopy", and compared the finale to Barr's career at that point: "by becoming rich and famous, she’d turned into an unbearable diva who’d forgotten the little people".^[1] Uproxx wrote that it "almost made up for all the nonsense before it."^[2] The A.V. Club stated that the episode "makes either excuses or amends for the season that preceded it".^[3] The Independent thought that the "middling" finale did not do justice to the show, writing "This was less a farewell than a Viking funeral, and it was worth trying to remember, even as you stared in slack-jawed astonishment at the burning boats, how much the series had deserved a good send-off."^[4]

References[]