Grosse Pointe Garden Society arrived on NBC's unconventional Sunday nights early in the 2025 TV schedule, and the combination of drama, mystery, murder, and comedy quickly turned it into my favorite new network show of the year to that point. The Sunday night pairing with Suits LA ultimately didn't work out, and the network decided to keep the Suits spinoff in its original time slot while moving GPGS to a dreaded Friday night time slot... except that according to creators/showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs, moving to Fridays isn't a death knell to a network TV show anymore.
Once upon a time, being moved to the last weekday was unofficially known as airing in the Friday night death slot, and Grosse Pointe Garden Society losing Sunday nights and being moved to its new place on Fridays at 8 p..m. ET didn't seem like a great sign for its longevity. When Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs spoke with CinemaBlend, however, they shared some context for why GPGS wasn't being sent to die. When asked for their thoughts on the move to Friday nights, Bans said:
We were excited about it because what they were trying to do, as they explained to us, was to just get more people to sample it and then hopefully catch up on Peacock. A lot of the press was like, 'Oh, it's sending it there to die!' Which wasn't the case.
Bill Krebs echoed his co-showrunner's take that they "were excited," which is no surprise. Before creating Grosse Pointe Garden Society together, they joined forces on NBC's Good Girls. He went on to explain why the role of a Friday night slot has changed in the streaming era, saying:
In the traditional days, when you got moved to a Friday or Saturday, they were burning you off. And that's just not the case anymore. We were at 10 o'clock on Sunday, a serialized show. [It's] very, very difficult to get people to show up on network television.
For folks who have to get up early for work on a Monday morning, staying up until 11 p.m. ET to watch a murder mysery just might not have as much appeal as if episodes released elsewhere. A former Grey's Anatomy producer, Bans revealed that even her parents "were like, 'We're not staying up to that hour on a Sunday!'
Krebs pointed out that in the era of streaming, "you don't have to" stay up late on a Sunday to watch, and NBC's system of adding new TV episodes to Peacock next day after they air live could be used to help rather than hurt Grosse Pointe Garden Society. He went on:
It was on the next day on Peacock, and so part of the move was, 'Let's put it at Friday at 8.' People who still want to watch linear and live, they can. But more importantly, it'll drop on Peacock on Saturday, so now you have the weekend to watch it with the Peacock viewers, which is really where we've realized we're living more because of the serialized nature of the show. People can binge and watch chunks at a time to get caught up.
Considering that the show was already reaching a larger audience on Peacock than it was attracting on Sundays (per Deadline) before the time slot switch, perhaps this approach will result in Grosse Pointe Garden Society scoring a Season 2 renewal sooner rather than later. I'd personally be interested to see if NBCUniversal would move GPGS over to Peacock to release as a streaming original, like the approach to Christopher Meloni's Law & Order: Organized Crime, which was another serialized 10 p.m ET on NBC show that reportedly performed strongly on the streamer.
For now, new episodes of Gross Pointe Garden Society will continue debut on NBC Friday starting at 8 p.m. ET, and the drama is getting closer and closer to revealing the identity of Quiche... a.k.a. the mystery character who was killed by the core four. Check out the promo for the next new episode on May 2:
Will this finally be the episode that reveals the identity of the corpse that the lead characters have been trying to hide in the flash-forwards all season? Well, if the present storylines are finally catching up with the flash-forward timeline, I think we must be getting close to the actual murder. The "Monaco Under the Stars" episode airs on May 2 at 8 p.m. ET and then streams next day on Peacock.
Be sure to check back with CinemaBlend for more from the showrunners as the finale approaches and the wait for renewal (or cancellation) continues!
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