Grand Ole Grandma is the twenty eighth episode of the shows second season.
Summary[]
Gordo's grandmother (Doris Roberts) now lives a more exciting lifestyle since the last time she and Gordo met. This irritates Gordo, but impresses Lizzie and Miranda. Meanwhile, Lizzie's parents feel ill and are confined to bed. Lizzie and Matt thus enjoy their unsupervised freedom at home.
Plot[]
Gordo is looking forward to the arrival of a favorite relative, his Grandma Ruth, who is coming for a week while his parents are away. But when he takes Lizzie and Miranda over to his house to greet her after her arrival, he's thrown for a loop. Grandma is dressing differently in "spicy" outfits and going by the name "Gorgeous!" She's not making brisket and kugel for him anymore, she's serving sushi and whole meals made of appetizers. And she's into--parachuting?!
The next morning at the McGuire house something odd happens--Lizzie and Matt are up and ready before Mom and Dad have gotten out of bed. But the parents soon stumble downstairs and it's obvious they are both sick with some kind of bug; in fact, the fever is putting both of them a little on the delirious side! They go back to bed, hand the kids some money for pizza and tell them they'll have to take care of themselves for a while. Matt and Lizzie prepare to enjoy themselves.
Gordo comes home to find that Ruth has "feng shue"'d the house. He's having a great deal of trouble understanding his new, free-spirited grandma. To him, it seems like the roles are reversed now: he's like the responsible adult and his grandma is the one acting like a kid. He even turns down an offer to take a snowboarding lesson the next day because it will mean missing school. He begs off sitting on the floor with his shoes off eating the Japanese dinner Ruth has prepared.
Back at the McGuire house, Lizzie and Matt are doing what they want and eating what they want, and in the process they've trashed the house. Grandma Ruth comes by looking for Gordo. She and Lizzie talk. Lizzie tells her how much she means to Gordo, and Ruth realizes that her new persona has been difficult for her grandson to accept. She tells Lizzie how now that her husband is gone and there's no one to take care of, she's been doing many of the things she never had a chance to previously. Gordo arrives at the house, but before he comes in, he eavesdrops on the conversation, which helps him understand his grandma better. Later, they talk and reach an even better understanding. But before that, Ruth goes back into her "grandma mode." She makes soup for the sick parents and sets Matt and Lizzie to work cleaning up the messy house. Later, when Sam and Jo are feeling better, we find out that they weren't so sick that they didn't realize how irresponsible their children acted, and both of them are (once again!) grounded.
Trivia[]
- The clapboard seen on the blooper reel at the end of the show gives the date of production as April 15, 2002 (almost a year before its eventual premiere).
- We learn that when Lizzie was four years old, she used to call her grandmother "Winnie Pooh Ba-ba."
- Gordo is shown drinking from a Pepsi can with the logo altered.
- Jo and Sam were sick for less than a week. In reality, most grown-ups feel sick for 3-5 days.
Notes[]
- Gammy McGuire was to make an appearance, but she would have banned Lizzie from sitting with her friends. This meant that Gammy would dislike her granddaughter's friends since they (unlike Gammy herself) dislike unicorns.
Goofs[]
- As Matt leaves his parents' room with Sam's wallet, a wall can be seen opposite the door, but in past episodes the door to Sam and Jo's room is at the opposite end of the hall which leads to Lizzie's room. So instead of seeing the wall, we should have seen the door to Lizzie's room.
- At the beginning, we see Gordo sitting directly across from Miranda at the table (his tray is lined up with hers). In the next scene he's sitting it front of Lizzie and his tray is clearly in a different spot.