Grosse Pointe Garden Society Premiere: Will the Murder Victim’s Identity Ever Be Revealed? Creators Weigh In
There’s something dark budding beneath the flowery surface of NBC’s Grosse Pointe Garden Society.
The dramedy, which hails from Jenna Bans (Desperate Housewives, Scandal, Good Girls) and Bill Krebs (No Tomorrow, Good Girls), premiered on Sunday and introduced us to our four main gardeners: Birdie (played by Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Melissa Fumero), Catherine (Lessons in Chemistry‘s Aja Naomi King), Brett (For the People‘s Ben Rappaport) and Alice (The Carrie Diaries‘ AnnaSophia Robb).
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We follow each of their lives in a small Michigan suburb, switching between a present and future timeline. We quickly come to know that six months from now, this rag-tag group of gardeners isn’t just planting your garden-variety gardenias — they’re seen shoveling dirt on top of a body bag during a garden society gala. A foolproof way to hide a corpse! Except that the garden society later decides the land needs to be dug up for a complete restructuring. And just like that, the group is at risk of being caught — but for what, exactly, we aren’t yet sure.
Besides the mysterious death at the center of the series, we see that this group practically invites chaos. Alice, a local teacher, publicly accuses one of her students of assassinating her dog; Birdie, a Real Housewives-like diva, makes reckless choices all around and is rumored to have joined the garden club to fulfill a court-ordered community service requirement; Catherine, a Type-A perfectionist, is cheating on her husband with a co-worker, but discovers she’s one of many mistresses; and poor Brett is recovering from his ex-wife’s infidelity and at risk of being out-fathered by her new lover. (Plus, he seems to have a thing for his married pal Alice?)
But there’s so much we don’t know: Who did these people bury? How did the person die? What drove such an average group of people to murder? Will they be caught? And how long will we have to wait for all our questions to be answered?!
TVLine spoke to Bans and Krebs about the trajectory of the dramedy’s freshman run and whether or not viewers will learn the murder victim’s identity soon.
“The good news about the big reveal is it happens in Season 1, and it doesn’t happen in the last moment of the finale,” Bans told TVLine. “We don’t make the audience wait too long to find out.”
As Season 1 continues, Krebs added, the gap between present and future will continue to shrink until we finally witness the night of the gala in real time, in its entirety.
In the meantime, though, “it’s a giant riddle,” Krebs said. “We want people to have their own theories as we feed them different information.”
What are your early Grosse Pointe Garden Society theories? Grade the premiere, then let us know in the comments!
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