Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of Grosse Pointe Garden Society, called “Bad Seeds” and available streaming now with a Peacock subscription.
The twisty, turny, darkly funny first season of Grosse Pointe Garden Society has come to an end on NBC in the spring 2025 TV schedule, and the finale aired without the network revealing if it would be cancelled like Suits LA or renewed like the One Chicago series. “Bad Seeds” proved that Alice and Co. hadn’t actually cracked the case of who killed Molly when they realized the gun belonged to Patty.
While Alice was packing a bag for a guilt trip, the core four still had to figure out how to dispose of Keith’s body and deal with the P.I. who knew their secret. There were major questions left in the present timeline when the credits rolled on the Season 1 finale, but that didn’t prevent a flash-forward to a Halloween bash that seemingly went as sideways for Brett, Catherine, and Birdie as the gala did.
Fortunately, I’d spoken with showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs earlier in Season 1 to get their thoughts on a possible second season, and their comments hit a little harder now as the wait continues for news of GPGS’ future.
What About Season 2?
The central mystery of GPGS’ first season was who “Quiche” was as the pieces slowly came together of how the person had died. The reveal that Quiche was Keith and he was accidentally killed when trying to stop a quilt from being destroyed in a woodchipper was a pretty darkly funny development nobody could have seen coming when the series started, let alone the bonus twist that Marilyn had killed Molly, not Patty.
So, is there a future beyond Season 1 now that the central mystery has been solved? I asked the co-showrunners (who previously teamed up on Good Girls prior to Grosse Pointe) that very question, and Jenna Bans responded:
We do [see a future]. I think we have a good sense of what it would look like by the end of this season… What we like is it's all offshoots from the Keith/Quiche death. It's not like a brand new person dies or something like that. It's complications that are caused because they've decided to cover up this murder.
While that should come as good news to any fans of GPGS, there’s still the issue of a lack of renewal. It’s worth noting that Bans debunked the idea that the show had been sent “to die” on Friday nights, and Bill Krebs explained the goal to boost viewership on Peacock, and they “actually could see it” as a Peacock original series.
At this point, it’s just a waiting game to learn the fate of Grosse Pointe Garden Society. I’d say that we shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a move from NBC to Peacock, as the same switch happened for Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5, and I can certainly imagine some characters making the most of the freedom to drop F-bombs on the streamer.
The “Tragic” Evolution Of Season 1
Of course, the cliffhanger at the end of Season 1 might have been easier to enjoy if there was a guarantee of whether or not Grosse Pointe Garden Society would be back to pay off on it. The last scene set in the present featured Alice trying to confess to the murder to a police officer, with Joel attempting to stop her without alerting any of his colleagues.
Then, before we saw if/how Joel pulled it off, the timeline jumped forward to a Halloween garden party with a pumpkin previewing “Next Season.” Alice is nowhere to be seen, but Birdie, Brett, and Catherine are having words about trust with a fourth person, who is… wearing a bulky duck costume that 100% conceals their identity.
And the cliffhanger ending – or cliffhangers, plural, really – reminded me of the showrunners’ comments about all the factors that came together for that tease of “next season” without an actual guarantee of another season. They said:
- Bill Krebs: "We like the simplicity of how the whole season evolved, which will then evolve in hopefully multiple seasons, which is it all started with Alice wondering what happened to her dog, and had she not gone on that journey, none of these journeys would have branched out from that, and we they never would have ended up on that fateful night."
- Jenna Bans: "And had Catherine not told her that that bullet came from that gun, it wouldn't have happened. And had Patty not loved that quilt, it wouldn't have happened. It was all a tragic domino effect."
“Tragic domino effect” is right, if GPGS is tragically doomed to end after one season! Krebs went on to note that the whole murder mess wouldn’t have happened if the core four hadn’t become friends, hadn’t “decided to play this prank about the quilt,” hadn’t “ended up near a woodchipper.” Bans dug even deeper, saying that “had Connor not even confronted Brett, Brett may not have put that pickaxe back where he put it.”
Per Jenna Bans, they “wanted it all to add up in the rearview,” and hopefully fans “at least know we’ve thought about it.” Bill Krebs went on to sum up all the work that they “exhaustingly” put into making sure that everything made sense by the end.
We thought about it exhaustingly, and it was tough because we were shooting as we were writing, so we were only about two and a half weeks ahead from what we were shooting, and so we had to plot quickly in advance, because the cement would dry on all these episodes the second they were shot. We couldn't go back and reshoot. We couldn't go back and change anything. We had these massive boards in our office and in the writers room that was just timelines, and then we would erase things and jump things around, just to make sure it all had to make sense to us. Otherwise, we felt like we were kind of being cheap about it.
So, what about the future of Grosse Pointe Garden Society? At this point, I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for either a Season 2 renewal by NBC or news that it’ll get the Organized Crime treatment and switch over to streaming to become a Peacock original. NBC has slotted On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, a new competition series hosted by face of The Tonight Show, in the 8 p.m. ET time slot on Fridays in the fall, but that certainly doesn’t mean the case for more GPGS is hopeless.
For now, you can always revisit the full first season streaming with a Peacock subscription. Summer hiatus is starting for major networks, so scripted broadcast options will soon be few and far between.
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