‘The Conners’: Jackie Struggles With Roseanne’s Death After Breakup

Jackie finally broke up with her boyfriend during The Conners season finale, and the heartbreak led her to finally process Roseanne‘s death.

During “We Continue to Truck,” Peter (Matthew Broderick) returned to Jackie’s (Laurie Metcalf) after a visit to the Renaissance Winter Fair, though the comeback did not prove to be a happy one after she discovered another woman’s underwear in his dirty laundry.

“Are you suggesting I cheated on you? You’re being ridiculous,” Peter tells his girlfriend. Jackie says she simply wants the truth, which angers Peter and he says he might as well cheat if she is going to accuse him of it. Jackie says she won’t mention it again, and Peter says he will return the bra and put it in the lost and found at the fair.

That night, Peter returns to find that his clean laundry has been left in the hallway outside of the apartment. Jackie, who has been drinking tequila, tells him to explain himself as his phone bill reveals the most called number to be the woman whose bra she had previously found.

Peter reveals that the woman in question is a colleague he turns to frequently about his work. Jackie, however, says she already talked to “Breast Bags” and she said that her “boyfriend must have accidentally grabbed” them.

Peter changes his tune and says that his affair doesn’t mean anything and that he still loves her. Jackie says that this is not her fault, and he rudely tells her to not let her “insecurity” drive away another man from her life. At that comment, Jackie says Dan (John Goodman) was right when he warned her about Peter and she kicks him out of the apartment.

Later on, as Darlene (Sara Gilbert) and David (Johnny Galecki) have a tough conversation about the future, Dan interrupts announcing they have to go help Jackie now.

They find her at a Chinese restaurant on the site of The Lunchbox — the restaurant Jackie and her sister Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) used to own — where she is drunkenly pretending to be a waitress. She gets excited when she sees her family and she reveals Peter’s cheating and kicking him out.

She sits down with them and starts to break down as she remembers when she and Roseanne worked and later owned the diner.

“It was the last place I was happy,” Jackie admits before she goes on about how Dan was right about Peter’s attitude. She continues to lose it as one of the restaurant’s patrons signals to her — thinking she’s one of the waitresses.

She opens the patron’s fortune cookie, and it teases a future of romance, but she says it’s a lie.

“It’s supposed to say that your sister is going to die, and that the guy that you thought was going to save you… he don’t give a rats ass about you so that’s your fortune,” she says before she throws her bottle of tequila at the wall, a sign that it’s time to take her home.

Dan chases her around the restaurant before she starts to cry.

“It’s not the Lunch Box anymore,” she says.

The next morning, after turning down the idea of moving with Ben for now, Darlene finds Jackie awake in the kitchen, wondering what happened to her that night. Darlene tells her aunt that no matter how horrible things might seem now now, they could always get better later.

“I’m O.K., everything is just coming out,” Jackie admits. “All of the toxic mess of my life that’s been boiling up ever since your mom passed… I just gotta work real hard on why I always look outside myself for happiness.”

She is distracted when she realizes that she has a life coaching client in 20 minutes and no time to shower off the stench of the previous night.

Will Jackie find her happy ending? The Conners has not been officially renewed for Season 2 yet on ABC.