‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ Bosses Break Down That Tragic Episode 11 Victim Reveal

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Grosse Pointe Garden Society” Episode 11.

“Grosse Pointe Garden Society” finally revealed the murder victim from the night of the gala that has driven Catherine (Aja Naomi King), Birdie (Melissa Fumero), Alice (AnnaSophia Robb) and Brett (Ben Rappaport) into a frenzy since the NBC drama’s premiere.

Episode 11, titled “Monaco Under the Stars,” caught up to the night of the gala, leaving off with the main four hungry for revenge on Patty (Nancy Travis), whom they learned was, in fact, responsible for Molly’s death. They decide to destroy Patty’s precious quilt — which was auctioned off at the gala for a hefty sum — but are interrupted when Patty’s husband and Alice’s father-in-law, Keith (Ron Yuan) arrive after seeing the texts Alice sent to Patty.

Keith ends up being the accidental victim, as desperately tried to salvage the quilt from the wood chipper. He succeeded in saving his wife’s piece, ended up pinning himself against the tool wall, which puncture into his back and killed him.

While showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs noted the pilot introduced a handful of “uber villians” — from serial cheater Gary to Connor, whom Bans calls “the worst new husband your ex could have,” to grandbaby-crazy Patty and Misty — they noted the people who “deserve” it most “never get their comeuppance.”

“That’s just not how life works,” Bans told TheWrap. “We thought it’d be fun to pivot at the last second and have it just be almost a tragic sort of happenstance.”

“It was almost too easy to pick one of them, because then it lets everyone off the hook,” Krebs added. “We wanted something that would carry forward and weigh on them and their consciences — the moral quandary of it — and have it be just a giant burden they had to carry.”

The burden will weigh especially heavy on Alice, who will have to deal with Patty’s crisis moving forward as Keith seemingly goes missing. “She still has to be reminded of what she did every day when she looks at Doug and when she’s around Doug, so that’s going to be the tragedy that she has to live with forever,” Krebs said.

While the identity of the dead body, whom the gang had been calling “quiche” since the incident, will come as a shock to most viewers, the showrunners said they dropped some hints about it being Keith, like mentioning the country club in the pilot and having a “throwaway” line in Episode 6 where he said, “by then, I’ll be dead.”

“In the beginning, we circled lots and lots of people. But then you really have to commit to this path, because we wanted in the rearview mirror for it to feel earned,” Krebs said. “We really wanted it to be from the pilot forward someone that you saw in the pilot, and then had all the breadcrumb trails lead back to that person.”

Below, Bans and Krebs talk hinting at the murder victim, tease an honest conversation between Alice and Brett and share their hopes for a Season 2 greenlight.

TheWrap: How did you want to portray Alice in the aftermath of this tragedy, especially because it’s more close to home than the others?

Bans: When you get to Episode 12, you really see her emotional reaction — she’s shattered. We’re catching up to these moments that we’ve shown in the early episodes, where we couldn’t portray her too shattered, because then it would give away that it was someone close to her. In Episodes 12 and 13 we’re caught up into real time, but 12 [is] the rest of that night — it’s almost a two-parter.

Krebs: It was tough, because when we were showing all the flash forwards throughout the season, we couldn’t really reveal too much emotion from anyone in character, one way or the other, any type of opinion. We were always jumping time in a way where they would already have collected themselves before they actually were in this particular moment that we were showing in Episode 6 or 4.

Bans: I hope what’s satisfying for fans is that even the red herring, for example, Catherine saying in Episode 5, “I should drive the body, because it’s all my fault.” She feels that way because she’s the one that revealed to Alice in 11 that it was Patty who killed the dog, so she feels like that was a domino effect they set off. All of those misleads, if you will, should make sense in the rearview mirror as well.

Krebs: Even everything going up through Patty, having the gun … it was really Keith who bought the gun because of the break in and gave it to Doug.

Alice already had this frought relationship with Patty. How does Keith’s death impact that dynamic?

Bans: Clearly not in a good way. That’s something, if we’re lucky enough to get a Season 2, we really want to explore. We do a little bit in the final two episodes —there’s some really fun stuff between her and Patty in Episode 12, once she has the knowledge that Keith is gone but Patty doesn’t yet. We’re hoping it’ll be a really great source of tension and conflict and drama going forward.

Krebs: You never know if Keith may or may not make another appearance
in a different way.

Alice is also right now in this interesting dynamic with Doug and Brett. At this point does she think she has feelings for Brett?

Bans: It’s a really crazy night, there’s also some interesting things between her and Brett that happens, sort of related to the murder, but not directly related to the murder, in that they have a conversation because of the murder.

Krebs: We peel it back, and they finally somewhat reveal how they feel about one another, and then they explore how complicated that could be, even if they want it to be true, especially now that this murder has happened.

Brett’s also in another love triangle with his ex-wife.

Krebs: Even though he may have had stronger feelings at one time, those are now complicated further, now that he’s kind of revisiting his past relationship with Melissa.

Bans: The timing is not great for Alice and Brett.

We also find out Birdie is pregnant. At this point does she intend to keep the baby?

Bans: She doesn’t intend to keep the baby, pre-murder, when she’s with Misty in the car, and then you’ll see what leads to those scenes we saw in Episode 2 where she gets Joel to cover up the murder for her. Obviously, the baby now plays into that, and that is information we didn’t have in 2.

Krebs: It’s not so much she’s using it to get her way, as much as she never felt that she was ever going to have the proper relationship that would be able to nurture a baby and to have a family. She actually says, “I feel like I’m 16 all over again. I’m back in high school all over again.” That’s what’s always been on her mind, because she just doesn’t want to keep repeating her bad mistakes and bad decisions until she is presented with an opportunity to maybe kind of grow with it and do it right and do it right this time.

Catherine had some upheaval in her marriage earlier in the season, but she and Tucker seem to be in a good place by now. What are her next hurdles?

Bans: Catherine is someone who’s a perfectionist and really thrives on her reputation and appearances, especially in Grosse Pointe, and I think it’s really hard for her, morally speaking, to sort of just move on after this horrible thing has happened, and she was a big part of it, So I think she’ll really struggle to sort of be the perfect wife and mother and everything she thought she was.

Krebs: she really believed her perfectionist ways and that what she was doing was the right way to do everything, and now she actually has evidence that she is not that person inside. How does she become, then, a proper role model?

There’s two episodes left in the season. Where does the mystery go from here? 

Krebs: We always wanted to tell this story like a thriller, where, at the end of the second act, you think it’s all over, and then by the third act, they’re like “the calls are coming from inside the house.” We still have a few twists and turns that are up our sleeves to make the finale just as satisfying as Episode 11.

What have you heard about a potential Season 2? How confident are you feeling about it?

Bans: We’re very hopeful. We know it’s doing well on streaming.

Krebs: Confident is a hard word to use in the landscape of TV.

Bans: We know we have a lot of support at the network, and people love it creatively, so we’re just hopeful they’ll find a way to bring us back. It might not be a traditional way, but we’ll see. We have nothing concrete though.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“Grosse Pointe Garden Society” premieres Fridays at 8 p.m. on NBC.

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