‘The Conners’: Dan Struggles to Deal With Wife Roseanne’s Death in New Sneak Peek

Dan Conner wants to grieve his wife’s sudden death in private.

In a sneak peek of Tuesday night’s episode of The Conners, called “The Separation of Church and Dan,” Darlene (Sara Gilbert), Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) and Becky (Lecy Goranson) are concerned about Dan (John Goodman) when he watches TV on the front porch through the window in an effort to have some alone time.

Click here to watch the sneak peek from Entertainment Tonight.

The three women stand in front of Dan as he lies in a reclining lawn chair with a knit blanket draped over him.

“Watching TV from the porch… cool,” Becky observes, asking her dad, “Quick question: Why?”

“I wanted to watch TV and I’m getting some fresh air. Also, looking for a little alone time,” Dan says.

“Don’t mind us,” Becky chirps, as Jackie says, “Yeah, that’s healthy.”

“Sure…” Darlene chimes in.

After an awkward silence, Jackie crosses her arms disapprovingly and says, “Nothing wrong with being alone.”

Dan gets up from his perch, bringing the blanket with him inside.

“I’m glad you feel that way, but we won’t know until we test it,” he says, shutting the door and leaving the three women outside.

The Conners has been following the family through their stages of grief after Roseanne’s opioid overdose. In the premiere episode of The Conners in October, the family initially believed that the family matriarch died from a heart attack while sleeping in her bed, but soon realized that she died from an opioid overdose after secretly battling with addiction.

Fans learned before the episode aired that the show would kill off Roseanne Barr‘s character, the titular Roseanne, after she was fired and the original sitcom was canceled following her racist tweet in the spring. Goodman revealed that Roseanne Conner would die in an interview with The Sunday Times in August, saying that Dan “will be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead.”

And later, Barr revealed on her YouTube show, Walk Away, that her character would die from “an opioid overdose.”

“It wasn’t enough to [fire me], they had to so cruelly insult the people who loved that family and that show,” she said at the time. “There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s done. It’s over. There’s no fight left.”

Ratings for the spinoff dipped after its second episode aired during the World Series, but spiked again after its latest episode two weeks ago, earning 7.7 million viewers and a 1.8 rating among adults 18-49. The sitcom did not air last week due to election coverage, so that means Tuesday will mark its fourth episode. The series premiere episode earned the show’s best ratings to date, with 10.5 million viewers.

The Conners airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.