Roseanne, Season 9

Jackie:
Roseanne! Roseanne! Where are you? I've got to tell you something!

Roseanne:
(rushing out to the living room in her bra) What? Where's my baby? What?

Jackie:
We won the lottery! This is the winning lottery ticket, I've got it right here! Remember, you told me to watch it on TV!

Roseanne:
What are you talking about?

Jackie:
We won the lottery, I can't believe it!

Roseanne:
What lottery?

Jackie:
The lottery! The Illinois State Lottery, it's the biggest one in the history of Illinois! It's 108 million dollars!

Roseanne:
You mean, you mean--

Jackie:
We're the people that picked the six winning numbers.

Roseanne:
Oh my God, so you're telling me -- (pauses while Jackie seems to be gasping for air) -- you're telling me -- (pauses again as she seems to be trying to grasp the subject) -- you're telling me that we won the Illinois State Lottery for 108 million dollars; is that what you're telling me? Is that what you're telling me??

Jackie:
Let's tell Dan!

Roseanne:
NO! Dan has just had a heart attack and this kind of thing could kill him!

Dan:
What's going on?

Roseanne:
Don't panic!!

Dan:
Why, what's wrong?

Roseanne:
Nothing, nothing is wrong.

Jackie:
Nothing is wrong. Nothing will ever be wrong again.

Roseanne:
Dan, Dan, I have something to tell you, but before I tell you, you have to promise me that you are not going to collapse or turn blue or anything like that.

Dan:
Scout's honor.

Roseanne:
WE WON THE LOTTERY!!!

Dan:
OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD, WE WON THE LOTTERY!! OH MY GOD!!

(DJ comes down the stairs as Roseanne is riding piggy back on Dan's back, both of them with Jackie screaming raucously.)

Roseanne:
(talking to DJ) Hey, hey. Go get my shirt.

(Darlene has tearfully told Roseanne that nobody deserves the lottery more than she and Dan)

Roseanne:
(laughs) Aww, honey, those are those pregnancy hormones kicking in(hugs Darlene). We should've gotten you knocked up :years ago!

Roseanne:
Well, I'll snap your spine in a half like a potato chip, ya bitch.

Roseanne:
Can I eat your dinner?

Jackie:
Hi, everybody! (notices Darlene, who's pregnant) Darlene, how ya doing?

Darlene:
Well, I've had morning sickness, evening sickness, roll-down-the-window-when-you're-driving sickness, my shoes don't fit, my rings don't fit, my clothes don't fit, my vision's blurry, and if you want to sit a spell, I'll tell you about my brand-new hemorrhoids! (smiles cheerfully; Jackie grimaces)

David:
Takes about ten minutes.

Roseanne:
Everybody stop what you're doing

(phone rings) Hello You've Reached the Conners Residence. And...

D.J.:
Why are you going?

Dan:
Well I told you, DJ. I gotta go back and take care of Mom.

D.J.:
Why are you going back?

Dan:
DJ, nothing bad's going on.

D.J.:
Your mom is fine so why are you leaving?

Dan:
DJ, quit yelling at me

D.J.:
Quit lying to me!!! Fine! Don't Tell me!

Dan What the hell does that mean?

D.J.:
You just hate me, is that it?

Dan:
No, I don't hate you

D.J.:
You hate mom?

Dan:
I love your mother. I love you Becky, Darlene and Jerry. I hope you understand someday.

D.J.:
Look I understand plenty, Dad! Have a nice trip! (As D.J. pushes the suitcase, he storms off and slams the door)

Roseanne:
(turns off the Radio) I got four kids for God sake. Actually I do. Who am I Kidding?

Darlene:
Unless one of the side effects is death, I'm taking this stuff- all I want to do is save my baby.

Dan:
Look David, I ain't no philosopher. But everyone knows that there's good and there's bad, okay? Nobody thinks that the bad stuff is ever gonna happen to them, and then one day, wham! – all of a sudden it does. And you think that there's no way that you can go on. But the day goes by, and another day goes by, then a week, a month, a year. And when you look back, you'll say "Hey, I got through this. I don't know how, but I made it".

Roseanne:
(to Harris) I owe you an apology. I've been trying to fix your body. We're not bodies with souls. We're souls with bodies.

Dan:
Somebody closed the garage door.

Roseanne:
Like... the wind?

Dan:
Yeah, and I suppose Mr. Wind started up the motorcycle as well.

Roseanne:
[after Audrey attacks Dan] Audrey, what happened to you out there in California? Did you have one too many frozen mocha frappachinos?

Dan:
Honey, that's what kids do - they leave the nest.

Dan:
I gotta go, I gotta pick everybody from the hospital. Our granddaughter is coming home shortly.

Roseanne:
Say it again, Dan. Louder

Dan:
[shouting] Roseanne and Dan's granddaughter is coming home today. Let's get ready to rumble!!!

Roseanne:
[Narrating] Everyone wonders where creative people get their inspiration. Actually, I’ve found it’s all around you. Take Leon for instance...

Leon:
(imitates police siren) Manners police. I'm sorry, Dan, no whittling at the dining room table.

Roseanne:
Leon is not really as cool as I made him. He’s the only gay guy I know who belongs to the Elk’s Club.

Leon:
(talking to Scott) You know, as far as I'm concerned, George Bush was the best president we ever had. I mean, look at all the fat he cut out of Medicare.

Scott:
You know, in China, they believe in reincarnation, so they have a HELL of a time with their probate law!

Roseanne:
Then there’s Scott. He really is a probate lawyer I met about a year ago and introduced to Leon. I guess I didn’t get too creative there.

Dan:
Hey DJ, quit bogarting the moo goo gai pan.

DJ:
Yeah, well, Darlene took all the pot stickers.

Darlene:
...and, now that you're distracted, I took the moo goo gai pan.

Dan:
Confucius say, you snooze, you lose, O thinning son.

Roseanne:
A lot of kids have called my son a nerd, but as I told him, they called Steven Spielberg a nerd too. A lot of times, nerds are really artists who just listen to the beat of a different drummer.

(DJ plays with chopsticks as if they were drumsticks and throws both behind his shoulder)

Bev:
Roseanne, will you keep your children in line? I didn't raise my children to throw chopsticks.

Roseanne:
My mom came from a generation where women were supposed to be submissive about everything. I never bought into that, and I wish Mom hadn’t either. I wish she had made different choices... so I think that’s why I made her gay: I wanted her to have some sense of herself as a woman.

Bev:
(talking to Leon) You may think I'm crazy, but it is the women's movement that has destroyed the family unit.

Roseanne:
Oh yeah, and she’s nuts.

Mark:
(talking to David) Hey man, check out my fortune here: True love lies where you least expect it.

Becky:
It better not.

David:
Mark, I think I got yours: Deep thoughts run shallow.

Jackie:
There's lucky numbers on the back. Let's play the lottery.

Roseanne:
No thanks, I can't get rid of all this money now.

Roseanne:
[internal monologue My sister, in real life, unlike my mother, is gay. She always told me she was gay, but for some reason, I always pictured her with a man. She’s been my rock, and I would not have made it this far without her. I guess Nancy’s kind of my hero too...

Nancy:
...the women's shelter needs furniture, so if there's anything you don't want, let me know and I'll have it picked up.

Roseanne:
...'cause she got out of a terrible marriage and found a great spiritual strength. I don’t know what happened to that husband of hers, but in my book I sent him into outer space. When Becky brought David home a few years ago, I thought "This is wrong"; he was much more Darlene’s type.

David:
(to Becky) Do you wanna go to this poetry reading before the museum?

Becky:
Yeah, before, I wanna pick up some books first.

David:
OK.

Roseanne:
When Darlene met Mark, I thought he went better with Becky.

Mark:
(to Darlene) Get me a beer.

Darlene:
Get it yourself, slob.

Roseanne:
I guess I was wrong, but I still think they’d be more compatible the other way around, so in my writing, I did what any good mother would do: I fixed it.

[camera pans over to Dan's chair; it is now empty]

Roseanne:
I lost Dan last year when he had his heart attack...but he’s still the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I miss him.

(background fades to black as Roseanne looks around. Dan's voice can be heard calling her name in the distance. Soon, we see Roseanne in a blue sweatshirt, sitting in the basement at the writer's desk the children got her back in Season 2.)

Roseanne:
Dan and I always felt that it was our responsibility as parents to improve the lives of our children by 50% over our own, and we did. We didn’t hit our children as we were hit, we didn’t demand their unquestioning silence, and we didn’t teach our daughters to sacrifice more than our sons. As a modern wife, I walked a tight rope between tradition and progress, and usually, I failed by one outsider’s standards or another's. But I figured out that neither winning nor losing count for women like they do for men. We women are the ones who transform everything we touch — and nothing on earth is higher than that. My writing’s really what got me through the last year after Dan died. I mean, at first I felt so betrayed as if he had left me for another woman. When you’re a blue-collar woman and your husband dies, it takes away your whole sense of security. So I began writing about having all the money in the world and I imagined myself going to spas and swanky New York parties just like the people on TV, where nobody has any real problems and everything’s solved within 30 minutes. I tried to imagine myself as Mary Richards, Jeannie, That Girl. But I was so angry, I was more like a female Steven Seagal, wanting to fight the whole world. For a while, I lost myself in food and a depression so deep that I couldn’t even get out of bed, til I saw that my family needed me to pull through so that they could pull through. One day, I actually imagined being with another man, but then I felt so guilty, I had to pretend it was for some altruistic reason. And then Darlene had the baby and it almost died. I snapped out of the mourning immediately, and all of my life energy turned into choosing life. In choosing life, I realized that my dreams of being a writer wouldn’t just come true; I had to do the work. And as I wrote about my life, I relived it, and whatever I didn’t like, I rearranged. I made a commitment to finish my story, even if I had to write in the basement in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. But the more I wrote, the more I understood myself and why I had made the choices I made, and that was the real jackpot. I learned that dreams don’t work without action. I learned that no one could stop me but me. I learned that love is stronger than hate. And most important, I learned that God does exist. He and/or She is right inside you, underneath the pain, the sorrow, and the shame. I think I’ll be a lot better now that this book is done.

(as Roseanne gets up and exits the basement, we hear snippets of the kids presenting her with the gifts)

DJ:
Happy birthday, Mom. Here, pencils.

Darlene:
Yeah, and I got you some notepads.

Becky:
And I got you a dictionary and a thesaurus.

Dan:
You know, Stephen King got started this way.

(Roseanne exits the basement and heads to the living room, as we see it was never renovated. As she walks to the couch and sits, Phoebe Snow sings the theme song acapella.)

If what doesn't kill us is making us stronger

We're gonna last longer

Than the greatest wall in China

Or that rabbit with a drum

If there's one thing that I've learned

While waiting for my turn

It's that in each life, some rain falls

But you also get some sun

We'll make out better than okay

Hear what I say

Yeah, any day.