With 10.5 million viewers, ABC premiered its new show “The Conners”,  a spin-off to their old show Roseanne, on Tuesday, October 16th. The episode revealed how writers killed off the main character Roseanne Conner after ABC fired Roseanne Barr for a racist tweet about former President Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett and canceled her show last May. They revealed that she died of an opioid overdose.

The show picked up after the events from the Roseanne finale when she is dependent on her painkiller medication after her knee surgery. The family is gathered around mourning her death three weeks later, believing that she died of a heart attack. We learn that she died in her sleep and Dan has been sleeping on the couch ever since. The family later learns that she died from an overdose and her addiction became the topic of discussion.

Though ratings for the spin-off’s premiere didn’t come close to the estimated more than 18 million viewers who tuned in last March for the return of Roseanne, it was the evening’s Number 1 show for their intended audience of 18-49-year-olds. The Roseanne finale had a total of 5.6 million viewers and a 4.2 rating. It seems that many viewers wanted to see how The Conners would solve the problem with Roseanne Barr. Since this is just the first episode, producers will like to see how the show will continue to perform in future episodes.

After The Conners premiered, Roseanne Barr fired off an incendiary tweet on twitter to express her opinion on the way the show decided to get rid of her iconic character. Later she released a much longer statement on the Facebook page of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach stating, “While we wish the very best for the cast and production crew of The Conners, all of whom are deeply dedicated to their craft and were Roseanne’s cherished colleagues, we regret that ABC chose to cancel Roseanne by killing off the Roseanne Conner character. That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show,” Barr also added that Roseanne was the only show on television that directly addressed the deep divisions threatening the very fabric of our society. Barr concluded her statement with, “The cancellation of Roseanne is an opportunity squandered due in equal parts to fear, hubris, and a refusal to forgive”.