Grand revolved around three interrelated families from different social classes – the wealthy Weldons, the impoverished Pasettis, and the middle class Smithsons – who lived in the fictional rural town of Grand, Pennsylvania. The show was a satire that featured story arcs which carried through several episodes, and mocked soap opera conventions in the vein of Soap.
Series overview
Pamela Reed starred as Janice Pasetti, a former homecoming queen living in a trailer with her daughter Edda (Sara Rue), while working as a housekeeper for the Weldons, the wealthiest family in town. Harris Weldon (John Randolph) is the family's patriarch and owner of Grand Piano Works, a piano factory starting to fall on hard times due to foreign keyboard imports. Also living in the Weldon mansion were Harris' dimwitted son, Norris (Joel Murray) and his acerbic butler, Desmond (John Neville), whom Harris kept despite his acid tongue as he had once been responsible for saving his life.
Janice also worked for Harris' niece Carol Ann Smithson (Bonnie Hunt), who lived a middle class life with her ambitious husband Tom (Michael McKean), who always attempting to get an executive position at the factory. Janice also spent her time fending off the advances of Wayne Kazmurski (Andrew Lauer), a motorcycle cop.
Grand ran for two shortened seasons in 1990, with thirteen episodes from January to April, and twelve more from October to December, with one left unaired. The first season follows Harris' attempts to secure a date to a ceremony honoring him at Carnegie Hall, Tom's attempts to hide from Carol Ann his teenaged son from a previous marriage, and Harris allowing Desmond to believe that he was actually Norris' father, although Harris knew it was not true. By the time production began on the first season finale, NBC had still not committed to another season. Believing the show would be cancelled, the finale was entitled "Blow Off," an apparent stab at NBC's indecision regarding the show. The episode concluded with the town of Grand being devastated by a tornado and the disappearance of the entire cast, save for Wayne.
However, the show's ratings, finishing 15th among mid-season shows, proved high enough for NBC to renew the show and given the prized Thursday 9:30pm slot. But by the time executives made their decision, at least two cast members (Michael McKean and Andrew Lauer) and several members of the production had already committed to other projects. This took the show in a dramatically different direction, with the first episode dealing with what became of Janice's trailer rather than answering questions about the characters who had disappeared. The second episode wrote out Michael McKean's character offscreen, making him an illegal alien who had stolen $50,000 from a Texas Savings and Loan and used the tornado as a means to disappear when the FBI began to close in on him. Andrew Lauer's characters, along with all recurring cast members and their storylines (with the exception of Pamela's ex-husband Eddie, played by Ed Marinaro) were dropped with no explanation.
The pseudo-soap opera format was then abandoned, followed by standard, stand-alone situation comedy episodes, and ratings steadily declined. The soap opera aspect was revived in the final four episodes, but instead of relatable storylines about class relations, the arcs were more outrageous and improbable, involving witchcraft, gangsters, a possible corporate takeover of the piano factory and Carol Ann's decision to adopt a teenager who was raised by wolves. The show was then cancelled, with its final episode left unaired.
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