Grosse Pointe Garden Society Episode 1 Review: Mystery and Drama Surround Gardening

In this NBC drama series, four members of an affluent gardening club find themselves amid a tantalising drama in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, after they share a murderous secret.

The first episode has a runtime of 42 minutes.

Grosse Pointe Garden Society Episode 1 Recap

The episode starts with a dramatic flair — someone is burying a dead body! We then go back six months to when Birdie, the wild child socialite facing community service after a drunk driving fiasco, joins the garden club, much to the chagrin of members Catherine, Brett and Alice. Although they are hopeful for her future at the club, things are about to get much worse for everyone there.

We then get to the present day, when everyone is having a hard time at their day jobs — Catherine, after being rejected by her husband, is having an affair with her colleague who wants to leave everything to be with her, high-school teacher Alice is handling annoying moms who think that their children can do no wrong and then gets pressured at home by her in-laws to have kids. Lastly, Brett is going through the aftermath of finding his wife cheating on him. Meanwhile, Birdie desperately tries to figure out what will happen after she finishes community service.

Later that night, Brett finds Alice’s missing dog and delivers the shocking news that it was murdered by someone, leaving her devastated and furious. We jump to 6 months later once again, when we see that Birdie is alive, so who was killed? Birdie freaks out about going to jail, but the others convince her to keep quiet and promise to have her back no matter what. In the present day, Catherine and Birdie get off on the wrong foot during a garden party meeting when the latter proposes a better idea for a charity event, but Catherine is more interested in Birdie’s bracelet which seems super familiar. When she learns that it’s Gary Mills, her colleague and affair partner, she is left heartbroken.

Catherine later makes up with Birdie and the two share their heartbreaks, eventually coming to the conclusion that guys like Gary shouldn’t get away with it. At work, Alice’s student implies that he might have killed her dog out of revenge for getting a D on his paper. Six months later, Birdie runs away with the victim’s burnt phone as the other three sit at a diner wondering what they should do with the phone. In the present day, Catherine exacts a delicious revenge on Gary, while Alice is distraught when she learns that she can’t do anything about Peyton.

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However, she goes a step ahead and reveals to Peyton’s mother that he is getting an F instead of a D and that he killed her dog. Meanwhile, Brett successfully becomes the cool dad at his kids’ school, while Catherine is left alone at home once again. Eventually, Alice is fired while Brett is investigated. However, the real shock comes 6 months later when they learn that, after the fundraising gala, the Garden Society has decided to dig up the entire garden to accommodate a koi pond, much to the shock of the four because that means that the buried body is going to be discovered!

Grosse Pointe Garden Society Episode 1 Review

There’s something extremely delicious about Grosse Pointe Garden Society — who knew that there could be so much drama (and murder) in a garden club?! Our protagonists seem to be regular people in the midst of this wildly scandalous tale and while we think about who is about to be murdered, we get to learn about these people and how they got involved in such a surprising problem. I enjoyed the first episode, I think it is going to be an entertaining watch throughout its runtime, bringing forth a little mystery in a breezy drama. However, I can tell right now (and I might be wrong here) that this isn’t going to be a particularly memorable watch in any way, but I am enjoying the relatable characters, Fumero’s snooty performance and the general chemistry among the primary four characters.

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