final episode...what really happened.

[new england holiday]

When Roseanne gives her monologue at the end of the finale, she reveals that the ENTIRE series was in fact fiction and part of her book....many people though that she was implying that the only fiction was the LAST season (after Dan died from his heart attack). It's easy to see this as a depressing show, but this narrator is just another fictional Roseanne Conner. The one we've been watching most (if not all) of these years had a happy ending. Dan was alive and back with Roseanne, her children were parents or parents-to-be, and her friends were
all doing well.... I LOVED this episode...it was depressing, but if you think deeply about it, both sides of the story were fiction (it's a tv show with fictional characters).....argh, it's hard to explain, but since the Roseanne series that we saw for 9 years was fiction, and the Roseanne-narrator-finale character was fiction as well, then it really doesn't matter how it turned out. Wow, I'm not even making sense to myself. If anyone actually read this pointless garble, do I make sense to you? I hope so.. haha


I also found this on the internet (a description of everything that happened at in the last 10 minutes of the show...SORRY FOR THE SPACING!)

"The show's last scene began with the Conner family eating Chinese food
around the kitchen table and celebrating the arrival of Darlene and
David's daughter into the house. Their two gay friends, Roseanne and
Jackee's mother, and Sandra Bernhard's character were also there.

A voiceover narration by Roseanne began, and it talked about the two gay
guys -- I think their names are Leon and Fred. The voiceover described
them as they talked, and Roseanne said that both were based on people she
knew.

This is where it became evident that Roseanne's narrative was talking
about the series as if it was a book she wrote. This hearkened back to a
few scenes early in the episode about how the basement was being set up as
Roseanne's writing room, and also the only flashback to an earlier
episode, in which the writing room was being set up by Dan and a much
younger Becky and Darlene.

Roseanne the narrator then discussed her mother, and said that she wasn't
a lesbian in real life. She talked about how her mother grew up in a
generation that believed women must be submissive, and Roseanne herself
rejected that notion.

The narrator then talked about Jackie, saying that in real life it was she
who was the lesbian, and her "pillar of strength." This was the first
dramatic deviation from the Conner family that we've watched for nine
years.

The next person the narrator focused on was Sandra Bernhard's character.
Roseanne said in her narrative that Sandra's no-account husband was a
source of trouble for her, and though she didn't know where he ended up in
real life, he was sent into outer space in her book. This was a funny way
of referring to Tom Arnold's character, who really was written out of the
show this way.

As the family was eating and Roseanne was rapidly deconstructing the
fictional Conner family, a very brief shot appeared to show Dan Conner
choking on his food. I couldn't go back to the tape to verify this, but I
got the strong impression Dan was choking. I expected Roseanne's narrative
to be interrupted by an effort by someone to save his life.

Roseanne's narrative wasn't interrupted, though. She still had to talk
about D.J., Darlene and David, Mark and Becky, Dan and herself. Roseanne
said that D.J. has been described in real life as a nerd, but that Stephen
Spielberg was often described in the same terms in his childhood.

The next shot was of David talking about going to a poetry reading with
Becky, and kissing her. This was pretty jarring, because David had just
come home with his wife and child. Mark was then shown asking Darlene to
get him a beer, and being told to get it himself. Roseanne said that these
two couples were reversed in her book, because she thought her daughters
made better couples with the other spouses.

Finally, Roseanne came to Dan, and the most depressing part of this
narrative took place. She said that Dan died when he had a heart attack a
year ago -- which was depicted as being something he survived on the show.
The fictional Dan disappeared from the kitchen table, and the happy scene
faded like Roseanne closed the book on them. She said, "He is my first
thought every morning and my last thought before I go to bed."

Suddenly, the Conner house seemed very empty, and Roseanne sat in her
basement -- which in her real life had become a writing room.

Roseanne the narrator then described the past year's shows as a flight of fancy brought on by her grief over Dan's "betrayal" -- his death that left her behind. She compared it to an affair that he could have had, which I believe had parallels on the show this past year when Dan strayed, and said her own budding romance with another man was more fantasy. book. This was a funny way of referring to Tom Arnold's charact Roseanne said the health problems of Darlene's baby forced her out of her grief and into active life again. She said her family needed her to get over Dan's death so they could get over it. She left her writing room behind, and you could hear the voices of her younger self, Dan, Darlene and Becky talking about her newly constructed writing room. "This is how Stephen King got started," a proud Dan said to her.

The show ended with Roseanne's statement that love is stronger than hate, and some other things I wish I remembered better. She was left alone on the Conner family couch, because the rest of her household was sleeping -- it was her only time to write.

The couch and the living room were as they appeared before the lottery win. A quote was superimposed on the 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 open eyes, to make it possible."
-- T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

This ending was a very melancholy one from the narrator's perspective: She is a Roseanne who is still feeling the loss of her husband Dan, though she's thankful for the healthy arrival of her granddaughter and the rest of her family. The completion of her book also marks a turning point for
her."

[iloveTV]

Thanks for that! I haven't seen the last episode in ages and had forgotten how great it was. I totally agree with you.