Grand (found NBC sitcom; 1990)

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Title card of Grand's first season.

Status: Found

Date found: 22 Aug 2023

Found by: GettyStallone, Grand (1990) NBC Sitcom


Grand was an American television sitcom created by Michael Leeson and starring Pamela Reed, John Randolph and Bonnie Hunt that was broadcast on NBC for two seasons from January 18th to December 27th, 1990. The series was designed to be a satire of soap operas, featuring ongoing story arcs that took place over the course of multiple episodes, and numerous other elements that parodied conventions of the genre.

Plot

The series took place in the eponymous fictional town of Grand, Pennsylvania, and focused on the lives of three families: the impoverished Pasettis, the middle-class Smithsons, and the wealthy Weldons. Former homecoming queen Janet Pasetti (Pamela Reed) lives in a trailer park with her daughter Edda (Sara Rue) and spends her days fighting off the advances of motorcycle cop Wayne Kazmurski (Andrew Lauer) while working for the various members of the Weldon family.

Harris Weldon (John Randolph) is the patriarch of his family, having made his fortune through his ownership of Grand Piano Works, a piano factory which has since fallen on hard times due to the importing of foreign keyboards. Harris lives in his mansion with his dimwitted son Norris (Joel Murray) and his butler Desmond (John Neville), whom Harris largely keeps employed due to Desmond having previously saved his life.

Living separately from the mansion is Harris' niece Carol Ann Smithson (Bonnie Hunt), who instead lives a middle-class lifestyle with her husband Tom (Michael McKean), an ambitious worker who is always attempting to get an executive position at the piano factory.

Grand's first season would be broadcast from January to April of 1990 and featured storylines involving Harris' attempts to get a date to accompany him to Carnegie Hall, Tom attempting to hide his teenage son from a previous marriage from Carol Ann, and Harris allowing Desmond to believe that he is Norris' father despite this not being the case. Despite this season's strong ratings, it was unclear if NBC would be willing to commit to a second season. As a mocking response to this indecision, the season finale "Blow Off" was created, which ended with the town of Grand being destroyed by a tornado, with the majority of its residents subsequently disappearing.

However, despite the rather decisive nature of this finale, NBC still chose to renew Grand for a second season, even giving it the prized Thursday 9:30 PM timeslot. But by the time this decision had been made, Andrew Lauer, Michael McKean, and many members of the show's crew had already moved on to other projects. As a result of these walkouts, along with the events of "Blow Off", many drastic changes took place between Grand's first and second seasons. Tom would be written out of the show in the second season's second episode, being revealed to be an illegal alien who had stolen $50,000 from a Texas Savings and Loan, and who had used the tornado as a means by which to disappear before the FBI could close in on him. Wayne and many of the recurring story arcs present in Grand's first season would also be dropped without explanation, with the show now far more resembling a traditional sitcom as opposed to the pseudo-soap opera it was originally.

However, this sharp change in format only served to alienate many of the show's original viewers, with ratings beginning to decline as a result. In response to this, the ongoing story arc idea would be revived in season two's final four episodes, though with considerably more outrageous storylines involving themes of witchcraft, gangsters, a corporate takeover of the piano factory and Carol Ann adopting a teenage son who had been raised by wolves. Despite these changes, ratings for Grand would only further decline from here, with the show being cancelled as a result.

Availability

26 episodes of Grand were produced over the course of two seasons throughout 1990, but only 25 of these episodes would ultimately be broadcast, with series finale "The End of the World as We Know It" going unaired for unknown reasons. In the decades following its cancellation, the series would never be uploaded to any streaming service or digital marketplace, and no home media releases are known to have been available. The front cover of an apparent DVD release of Grand is featured on the series' Wikipedia page, but there is no evidence of this DVD having made it to market (if it ever existed at all).

The entirety of Grand's first season was considered lost media until December 18th, 2022, when, in the comments to a Reddit post discussing the series, Reddit user GettyStallone provided a link to an Internet Archive upload of all thirteen episodes of Grand's first season. In another comment on the same post, GettyStallone would explain that they had acquired these recordings from TV Vault, a private, invite-only torrent tracker website which is known to possess full recordings of both of Grand's seasons but has not yet made them publicly available.[1]

By contrast, Grand's second season was considerably harder to come by, with its theme song and a brief selection of clips from "The Well" being all that has currently surfaced from it. YouTube user dominik500 is known to possess a full copy of "The End of the World as We Know It" (having uploaded the episode's "previously on" segment (which contained the aforementioned clips from "The Well") to their account), and while they did express interest in having said copy digitized, they have seemingly yet to act upon this idea, leaving the episode (like the rest of the season) lost.

On August 22nd, 2023, the entire series of Grand, including the unaired series finale, was uploaded onto YouTube by @Grand1990NBCSitcom.

List of Episodes

Season 1

# Name Air date Status
1 A Tale of One City Jan 18th, 1990 Found
2 The Pretty Good Mother Jan 25th, 1990 Found
3 Sex, Lies & Cable TV Feb 1st, 1990 Found
4 A Boy and His Dad Feb 8th, 1990 Found
5 Faded Genes Feb 15th, 1990 Found
6 Legends of Sport Feb 22nd, 1990 Found
7 Deer Hunter Mar 1st, 1990 Found
8 The Bald, the Blonde, and the Dead Mar 8th, 1990 Found
9 Carnegie Hall Mar 15th, 1990 Found
10 An Obtuse Triangle Mar 22nd, 1990 Found
11 Trigonometry Made Easy Mar 29th, 1990 Found
12 Czech, Please! Apr 5th, 1990 Found
13 Blow Off Apr 12th, 1990 Found

Season 2

# Name Air date Status
1 Janice Steals Home Oct 4th, 1990 Found
2 The Chickens Come Home to Roost Oct 11th, 1990 Found
3 The Healing Oct 18th, 1990 Found
4 The Return of Yale Pinhaus Oct 25th, 1990 Found
5 Desmond's Mother Nov 1st, 1990 Found
6 Norris' Romance Nov 15th, 1990 Found
7 Roamers and Rumors Nov 22nd, 1990 Found
8 Lady Luck Nov 29th, 1990 Found
9 One Way Out Dec 6th, 1990 Found
10 The Mother Load Dec 13th, 1990 Found
11 Wolf Boy Dec 20th, 1990 Found
12 The Well Dec 27th, 1990 Found
13 The End of the World as We Know It Unaired Found

Gallery

Both variations of Grand's intro.

External Links

References