"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

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

. 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 "Do not go gentle into that good night" is a poem in the form of a villanelle by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953), and is one of his best-known works. Though first published in the journal '' Botteghe Oscure'' in 1951, the poem was written in ...

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Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Unde ...

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.

Critical reception

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'' 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". Uproxx wrote that it "almost made up for all the nonsense before it."

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cr ...

stated that the episode "makes either excuses or amends for the season that preceded it". ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

'' thought that the "middling" finale did not do justice to the show, writing "This was less a farewell than a

Viking funeral Norse funerals, or the burial customs of Viking Age North Germanic Norsemen (early medieval Scandinavians), are known both from archaeology and from historical accounts such as the Icelandic sagas and Old Norse poetry. Throughout Scandinavia ...

, 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."

References

{{Dylan Thomas 1997 American television episodes American television series finales Roseanne episodes Dylan Thomas