Grand (TV series)

Premise

Grand was the story of three interconnected families. It was more of a satire of soap operas than it was a traditional situation comedy; the program often mocked the conventions of soap opera. The series followed three interrelated families, from different social classes, in rural Pennsylvania – the wealthy Weldons, the impoverished Pasetis, and the middle class Smithsons.

The Weldons were the wealthiest family in the small town of Grand, Pennsylvania; they owned the largest industry, a piano factory which was starting to fall on hard times due to the declining sales of its pianos, a situation that patriarch Harris Weldon (John Randolph) blamed on Asian imports. In Weldon's household were his dimwitted son, Norris (Joel Murray) and the acerbic butler, Desmond (John Neville), whom Weldon kept despite his acid tongue as he had once been responsible for saving Weldon's life. Weldon's housekeeper Janice Paseti (Pamela Reed) barely scraped by on what Weldon paid her; she lived in a mobile home with her obese daughter, Edda (Sara Rue). In between these two extremes were Weldon's niece Carole Ann Smithson (Bonnie Hunt) and her husband Tom (Michael McKean), who was constantly hoping to improve his finances by returning to a position (he was fired by Weldon on his first day), preferably an executive one, at his wife's uncle's factory.

Grand followed soap opera convention by featuring numerous story arcs which carried through several episodes, most notably Harris' attempts in the first season to secure a date to take to a ceremony honoring him at Carnegie Hall, Janice's struggle to come to terms with her divorce while fending off the amorous attentions of police officer Wayne Kazmurski, Tom's attempts to first hide from Carol Ann the fact that he had a teenaged son from a previous marriage and then his attempts to integrate the son into their lives, and Harris allowing Desmond to believe that he was actually Norris's father, although Harris knew it was not true. The pseudo-soap-opera format was abandoned after the second episode of Season 2, but resumed in the series' final four episodes. A 26th episode was filmed but never aired.

This program was less successful than the somewhat similar Soap, which had also featured an acid-tongued butler and mocked many of the same soap opera conventions. Grand ran for two shortened seasons in 1990, with thirteen episodes from January to April and twelve more from October to December 1990, prior to its cancellation.

Cast

Recurring cast: