And Still the Seed (or Todavía la Semilla) is a Puerto Rican short film about protecting and preserving the genetic history of the trees that are native to the country. It’s hardly 14 minutes long, and it manages to deliver such an effective message about how easy it is to keep our planet green and how we choose to destroy our national resources in such violent ways regardless. The Perfect Tomato (alternatively titled El Tomate Perfecto) is about a tomato farmer’s deep-rooted ties to his farm, how it stands at odds with his daughter’s pottery business and his granddaughter’s education, and the decision he makes in order to remember his past while paving the way for his family’s sustainable and healthy future. The wheat-cutting scenes in Rebel Moon have been lambasted, but I think it’s the best farming documentary Zack Snyder has made or is ever going to make in his career. Now, I’m no horticulture expert, but I can confidently say all of these films, individually and combined, are more entertaining than The Gardener.
Mikel Rueda and Rafa Montesinos’ The Gardener, written by Miguel Saez Carral and Isa Sanchez, tells the story of Elmer and his mother, China. When Elmer was a wee child, he found himself in a car being recklessly driven by China. She crashed the car and lost her leg. Meanwhile, Elmer hit his head on the window and lost his emotions. When he became a teen, he gravitated towards horticulture. So, China built a business around that hobby, and it turned into a profitable venture. China’s ultimate goal was to earn enough money to go back to her home country, Mexico, and live there. However, in addition to inflation, her ex-husband, Tony, caused a lot of issues. Hence, the mother-son duo not only killed him but also began a side business taking out abusers and other kinds of fiends and used those corpses to fertilize the plants in their garden. China struck gold when Sabela showed up with a hefty contract to kill a girl named Violeta. Fortunately or unfortunately, before Elmer could murder Violeta, he fell in love with her. Since Violeta reciprocated his feelings, Elmer wasn’t sure if he wanted to be China’s hitman anymore.
I think that Dexter is the most popular example of a story about a character using their incredibly specific professional skills to commit murder and hide the bodies in such a way that no one can catch them red-handed, while collecting souvenirs that are both horrifying and oddly beautiful. Now, if you replace the blood spatter analyst part with horticulture, the dismembered bodies in the ocean with buried bodies in a garden, and the blood smear slides with plants, then that’s basically The Gardener. If you have watched The Lovely Bones or The Chaser, the use of gardening to hide bodies won’t come as a surprise. And if you have watched any crime thriller about mommy issues, the dynamic between Elmer and China will feel really derivative. To be honest, I was so bored the first 2 episodes that I kept hoping for a Psycho-esque surprise where it’d be revealed that China had died in the car crash and Elmer was doing these murderous deals dressed up as his mother while committing the acts as himself (spoiler alert: that didn’t happen). It wouldn’t have been very politically correct, but at the very least it would’ve been a little more interesting than the nothingburger offered by the writers.
The Gardener technically does a lot of things, but it’s so repetitive and boring that, on an emotional level, it amounts to nothing. The mother-son dynamic, the romance, the investigation by the detectives—it’s all so pointless that I am baffled at the fact that this is a 6-episode miniseries and not a short film. While I can give the first two plots a pass, what the heck was the subplot with those 2 detectives? What was the whole point of even having them in the narrative? They barely had anything substantial on their plates in the first episode, and (spoiler alert), by the end, they failed to nab 2 of the dumbest criminals in Spain for no real reason. Am I supposed to treat that as some kind of a subtle commentary on the state of law enforcement in the country? Sure. But then why use them to romanticize adultery? What exactly does that add to this stale show? I don’t know, and I don’t even want to know. Also, what’s up with the visuals? Did the directors think that they had such a banger of a story on their hands that they didn’t need to care about the cinematography, editing, production design, costume design, or all the other things that are needed to make a show look good? Where’s this confidence coming from?
When every single element of a show is bad, I’m always inclined to give the actors a pass, because how the hell are they supposed to salvage material that’s practically dead on arrival? But, yeah, none of the actors do anything to make the viewing experience somewhat engaging. I don’t really know what Cecilia Suarez was going for, but every time she widened her eyes and lectured people with some kind of authority, I got annoyed. If that was the intended reaction she wanted, good for Cecilia. Everyone keeps dogging on Freddie Highmore for, well, whatever he did in those 5 seasons of The Good Doctor, but at least it’s more thought-provoking than what Alvaro Rico is doing in and as The Gardener. Catalina Sopelana is definitely more tolerable than the leads of the show. The same can’t be said about Maria Vazquez and Francis Lorenzo. By the way, I think this is a good time to bring up the abysmal writing for the three main female characters in the show. Didn’t anybody stop and think that they were perpetuating such harmful stereotypes while crafting these roles? What an absolute dumpster fire! As for the supporting cast, they are all just fine. They get the job done.
Even though The Gardener isn’t written by Harlan Coben, it definitely felt like it was. I don’t know if it seemed like that to me since I hate Coben so much or because Coben’s worst traits are starting to affect projects that have nothing to do with him or his books. The structuring of the story, the bad dialogue writing, the undercooked characters, the central gimmick, and the unnecessary subplots are so similar to Missing You, Just One Look, and Caught. I won’t be surprised if it’s revealed that, due to the (inexplicable) success of Coben’s Netflix adaptations, the streaming platform has asked every writer to emulate his style. Well, if it works wonders for Netflix and impresses its target audience, who am I to complain about it, right? All I can do is ask you to watch better shows that do pulpy crime right, e.g., Hannibal, Bates Motel, and of course Dexter. Or, as mentioned before, watch horticulture documentaries because they are so much better, more entertaining, and more educational than garbage like The Gardener.
