The Purple Grotto is a club in the Pearl Street Mall area of Boulder, Colorado, that Franklin Bickley's son, Tom Bickley performs at during his time in town, during Season 2's Mork Learns to See.
Location[]
The Purple Grotto is located in the Pearl Street Mall areas of Boulder, Colorado.
Owned By/Run By[]
The Owner is Unknown, but the Club is run/managed by Marty
About[]
The Purple Grotto is one of many bars/clubs in the entertainment district around the Pearl Street Mall area of Boulder. Marked by distinctive Purple tablecloths on the table and various shades of purple artworks on the wall, it is a bar centered around performances with a stage area purpose built.
One of the performers guesting there is Tom Bickley, who is in town to do a gig and ostensibly stay with/visit his father. However, as Mork & Mindy discover he hasn't actually met with his father for 12 years, and his father has made himself scarce again. Tom's blindness has not in anyway held him back, a confident young man who not only travels to write and perform his own music, but plays golf, runs, cycles and never lets his lack of sight hold him back, something which helps reinvigorate a homesick Mork.
Waiting for Tom at the Purple Grotto
Mindy and Mork attend the Purple Grotto to listen to Tom's set, and talk with him about his relationship with his father. Ultimately, angry at Bickley's constant evasion of his son they confront their downstairs neighbor. Bickley explains how he chose between his deep love for his son, and that fear that he would cripple him by being overprotective, and tried to make him capable of standing on his own two feet by sending him away to school and keeping away from him. Only to cripple himself with guilt and now being afraid to face his son.
Bickley silently listens to his Son play
Mork & Mindy, both cajole and shame him into at least coming to see Tom perform before he leaves town and return with him to the Purple Grotto to hear him. With the Grotto done for the evening, to Bickley's discomfort the couple get Tom to talk about his relationship with his father who he still loves and misses, reducing a silent Bickley to tears, before Tom goes to perform one final song and at its end reveals that he knows his father is there...his keen sense of smell (and the overpowering scent of it) allowing him to pick up on Bickley's aftershave. Father & Son finally, and tearfully reunited.