Into That Good Night

Into That Good Night is the series finale of Roseanne, which aired at the end of the ninth season of the sitcom.

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 confused and annoyed many critics, and it remains one of the most controversial finales of all time.

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] Pajiba was angry that "everything that had happened that season as a huge fucking sham", adding that "It was almost worse than a dream: It was a trick."^[4] 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."^[5]

References