Grace Under Fire is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 29 September 1993, until 17 February 1998. The show stars Brett Butler as a single mom learning how to cope by raising three of her own children after finally divorcing her abusive husband. The series was created by Chuck Lorre and produced by Carsey-Werner Productions.
Grace Under Fire is the new comedy with the highest ratings in the 1993-94 season.
Video Grace Under Fire
Show premise
The Grace Under Fire, produced by Carsey-Werner International, was part of a wave of performances in the late 1980s and 1990s built around a comedian (and in some cases, based on his comedy routine). As for Carsey-Werner, many of their events are based on non-traditional, non-nuclear families.
Grace Under Fire follows the same formula; Housed in a small town in Missouri, Butler starred as Grace Kelly, a single mother who divorced and recovered alcoholics. The show began after the main character divorced her alcoholic husband for eight years in an effort to start a new life and prevent her children from making the same mistakes as she did. The performances revolve around Rahmat; his children, naughty Quentin (Noah Segan, pilot, Jon Paul Steuer, season 1-3, Sam Horrigan, 4-5 seasons), happy Libby-go (Kaitlin Cullum), and baby Patrick (Dylan and Cole Sprouse); he married his best friend and neighbor, Nadine and Wade Swoboda (Julie White and Casey Sander); and the city's undergraduate pharmacist, Russell Norton (Dave Thomas). They all help Grace keep the remains of whatever sanity is left.
In the first three seasons, the show had a blue-collar appeal due to Grace's chosen work line, post-divorce; He operates a pipeline at a local oil refinery, and has a second family of fellow crew workers at the plant. Among them are Dougie Boudreau (Walter Olkewicz), the friendly Vic (Dave Florek), and Carl (Louis Mandylor). Their rough boss is Bill Davis (Charles Hallahan). Both Bill and Carl were dropped after the first season; while Carl has no permanent replacement on the screen, the new boss crew is John Shirley (Paul Dooley) starting in the second season.
Russell's friendship with Grace, and their on-and-off dating ritual, is a theme that runs in the series. Throughout their friendship, they often date other people; for the time in 1994, Grace dated Ryan Sparks (William Fichtner), a unique chemist who worked in the oil refinery laboratory. In the third season, Grace had a relationship with the executive of Rick Bradshaw (Alan Autry) factory factory. Like Ryan, the affair between Grace and Rick happens regardless of their very different places in the corporate ladder. They broke up at the end of the third season, though Rick came back in the fourth season to see if their love story could be revived.
In the fourth season, Grace started taking classes at night, paid for by her workplace. When the factory decides to stop funding his education for half a season, Grace decides to quit the oil refinery and returns to full-time school because he takes only a few months of concentrated classes to graduate. The rest of the fourth season featured Grace as a full-time student, and towards the end of the season she actually graduated. At the end of the season, Grace took an entry-level position with an advertising agency, after working hard to become a white-collar professional.
However, at the start of the fifth season, Grace decided that long hours and working hours at the advertising agency. Louis forced him to spend most of his time away from his family. He quit his agent job, and took up administrative/business work for a local construction company owned by D.C. (Don "D.C." Curry).
Also in the fifth season, Russell finds some romantic interest in Dottie (Lauren Tom), a gossip hairdresser who also befriends Grace. Nadine, meanwhile, after childbirth and Wade's long-awaited son, suddenly decides to leave Wade and move to Colorado, and is never seen again. (Actress Julie White has left the show between season 4 and 5.)
Throughout the entire five years running, Grace's ex-husband, Jimmy Kelly (Geoff Pierson) appeared, occasionally causing trouble and in others miraculously cleansing and consciously, trying to win back Grace. Reconciliation never really happened, but both did good companionship for the children. In the midst of Jimmy's attempts to direct, his father Emmett (guest star of Matt Clark) died. After his death, it was revealed that Emmett was gay. At this time, Jimmy Jean's mother (Peggy Rea), a disrespectful and immoral mother-in-law of Grace, offers to move and help Grace raise the children (Rea has previously been a guest star as Jean several times since the inaugural series).
Russell, meanwhile, made peace with his estranged father, Floyd (Tom Poston). Seen twice at the end of the second season, in the third season Floyd finally moved in with Russell and worked with him at the pharmacy, and showed up regularly. As far as relatives of Grace and past lives go, she has a regular source of support from her sister, Faith (Valri Bromfield) in the first two seasons. Another development came when Grace was contacted by her first child, Matthew (guest star Tom Everett Scott), whom she gave to being adopted before meeting Jimmy. Matthew had questions about his ancestors and finally met his real father.
In the fifth season, Dot had replaced Nadine as a friend of Grace and a believer, but in early 1998, Dot stopped appearing on the show (though she is still mentioned). In contrast, Grace's old friend, Bev Henderson (Julia Duffy) returns to town and eventually moves to Kelly's family to get back in touch with the working-class roots. Grace and Bev's personal reunion was unexpectedly the last major storyline of this series. Although he joined the full-time player, Duffy only appeared in two episodes of Grace Under Fire before the series was suddenly canceled in mid-February.
Maps Grace Under Fire
Cast
- Brett Butler as Grace Kelly
- Dave Thomas as Russell Norton
- Julie White as Nadine Swoboda (1993-1997)
- Casey Sander as Wade Swoboda
- Jon Paul Steuer as Quentin Kelly (1993-1996)
- Sam Horrigan as Quentin Kelly (1996-1998)
- Kaitlin Cullum as Elizabeth Louise "Libby" Kelly
- Dylan and Cole Sprouse as Patrick Kelly
- Walter Olkewicz as Dougie Boudreau (1993-1996)
- Dave Florek as Vic (1993-1996)
- Louis Mandylor as Carl (1993-1994)
- Charles Hallahan as Bill Davis (1993-1994)
- Valri Bromfield as Faith Burdette (1993-1995)
- William Fichtner as Ryan Sparks (1994)
- Paul Dooley as John Shirley (1994-1996)
- Peggy Rea as Jean Kelly (1995-1998)
- Tom Poston as Floyd Norton (1995-1998)
- Alan Autry as Rick Bradshaw (1995-1996)
- Don "D.C." Curry as D.C. (1997-1998)
- Lauren Tom as Dot (1997-1998)
- Julia Duffy as Bev Henderson (1998)
Episode
Viva Las Vegas
The "Vega $" episode is part of a crossover with the Coach , The Drew Carey Show and Ellen in Las Vegas. It features Drew Carey as Drew Carey, Joely Fisher as Paige Clark, Jeremy Piven as Spence Kovak and Jerry Van Dyke as Luther Van Damme.
Ratings
This show is the new show with the highest rating in its first season. In the previous month Grace Under Fire first aired, Showtime broadcast the production of Carsey Werner Brett Butler Special, a half-hour comedy show by Butler.
- 1993-1994: # 5 (rating 17,9)
- 1994-1995: # 4 (rating 18.8)
- 1995-1996: # 13 (ranked 13.2)
- 1996-1997: # 45 (series) (ranked 9.1)
- 1997-1998: # 68 (tie)
Awards and nominations
Grace Under Fire was nominated for three Golden Globe awards: Best Appearance by an Actress in Comedy/Musical TV Series in 1995 and 1997 and Best Comedy/Musical Series in 1995.
Jean Stapleton was nominated for an Extraordinary Guest Actress 1995 in the Emmy Award Comedy series for playing Aunt Vivian in the episode "The Road to Paris Texas." Diane Ladd was nominated for the same award the previous year to play Louise Burdett in an episode titled "Things Left Undone" written by Brett Butler and Wayne Lemon.
Controversy and cancellation
When the third season ended in the spring of 1996, Jon Paul Steuer left the series. Sources have speculated that Steuer's mother pulled her out of the show after the incident with Butler, who allegedly showed off her breasts to the 12-year-old actor. At the start of Season 4, Sam Horrigan became the third actor to play Quentin Kelly, and with him in the role, the age of the 16th advanced character.
In the fourth and fifth seasons of the show, Butler fought against a painkiller addiction, which he eventually sought medical help. Cast member Julie White left the show after Season 4, also citing Butler's behavior as the reason. The event, which has been the Top 20 series for its first three seasons, began to experience a significant drop in ratings during the fourth season, from rank 13 to 45.
The first round of treatment and rehabilitation of Butler delayed the start of the 1997-98 season through November. After Grace Under Fire returns to production in season five, a newly clean Butler struggles to stay that way; morale on set is slightly better than in previous seasons, due to erratic behavior of stars. Around the holidays, Butler relapsed again, and although the producers committed themselves to resuming the show, ABC became concerned about Butler's overall health, and was impatient with the acceleration of the number of missing footage.
The event ratings continue to drop dramatically, which may be attributed to Butler's reputation in the media, a longer hiatus than usual between seasons four and five, and the fact that Grace Kelly's character is no longer through the kind of struggle that has made the show successful earlier. The addition of Julia Duffy several episodes to the fifth season is a last resort to improve the rankings, but with Butler in his current state, the network was not inspired to continue. Instead, by airing February 17, 1998, ABC canceled the series. The final three-month season averaged at # 68 in Nielsen's 1997-98 ranking.
Syndication
The series airs in syndication on Oxygen Networks in the United States, and TVtropolis in Canada. In the United Kingdom, the series was picked up by BBC2 where it aired from 1994 to 1999. The show was added to Hulu on March 1, 2014. The series is currently running on Laff's digital broadcast network that airs April 15, 2015.
Home video launch
On May 4, 2015, it was announced that Visual Entertainment (VEI) has secured rights to the series in Region 1.
It was then announced that they would release the Grace Under Fire: Complete Collection on DVD on October 6, 2015.
International remake
This show was reproduced in Russia as Lyuba, Children and the Factory in 2005. The Polish adaptation, Hela w opa? Ach ( Hela Under Fire ; Hela is a short form of Helen ), which was aired on TVN in September 2006.
There are also other Russian adaptations as ????? ( Olga ). The premiere in TNT on September 5, 2016.
References
External links
- Carsey/Werner.net
- Mercy Under Fire on IMDb
- Grace Under Fire on TV.com
- Polish version of the official website (Polish)
- Fame, Fire and Surrender: An interview with Brett Butler
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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