Roseanne Conner is dead.
One of TV’s best-known characters was killed off in an accidental opiod overdose in the series premiere of ABC’s “The Conners” on Tuesday night.
The new series features the blue-collar family from “Roseanne” returning to the small screen five months after its namesake star and creator, Roseanne Barr, was fired and the original show was canceled over a racist tweet.
In th🧸e old show, audiences saw the Conner family matriarch hiding an addiction to the pain pills she was taking for her knee.
The spinoff’s pilot, titled “Keep on truckin,” opens three weeks after Roseanne’s funeral, with the family still coming to grips with her death, from what they think was a heart attack.
The characters then learn that Roseanne had several pain pill suppliers and kept stashes of them hidden all over the house — and that her death was caused by an accidental overdose.
“I just got a call from a friend in the coroner’s office,” says Roseanne’s sister Jackie played by Laurie Metcalf. “The autopsy found that it wasn’t a heart attack. Roseanne OD’d on opiods.”
Roseanne’s husband Dan, played by John Goodman, is shocked: “It’s got to be wrong,” he says. But then he’s confronted with the bottles of pills found in Roseanne’s closet and in the kitchen freezer.
Later, Dan toasts Roseanne’s stubbornness with their daughter Darlene, played by Sara Gilbert, and concedes: “She was gonna do what she was gonna do.”
“She never listened to a damn person in her life.”
The episode closes with Dan getting into bed and silently reaching out for his wife’s now-empty space.
With Post wires