“Everything becomes
simpler when you are unburdened with anxiety, or fear, or guilt …”
A car accident in his childhood damaged Elmer Jurado’s right frontal lobe and left him incapable of feeling emotions. The same accident cripples Elmer’s mother, La China. She is a controlling woman who uses her son’s disability to turn him into a contract killer for her underground murder-for-hire business. The plant nursery is just a front and Elmer apparently is just the gardener … killing is easy for him for he feels nothing. Corpses become compost for their blooming garden which ironically wins the ‘Garden of the Year’ award. Elmer begins to regain his emotions due to a brain tumor and when he meets Violeta, his last assigned victim, he begins to ‘feel’ ... sadness, anger and love. La China cannot accept that her son cares for someone else other than her - it threatens her control over Elmer as well as their cover as local gardeners with exposure. Elmer’s mother tries desperately to get rid of Violeta. The series explores the dark psychology of a manipulative mother who exploits her emotionally devoid son for financial gain.
The Gardner explores shades
of love and keeps the viewer in a state unable to take sides. The series is not just about
crimes and cops, at a metaphorical level, it explores the complexities of relationships
between traumatized souls … relationships that are considered the most sacred
in life. Elmer is completely controlled by the women in his life: his ruthless mother,
his beloved who strings him along in an on and off relationship … and even his relentless
‘client’ who wants to avenge the death of her own son. The head injury sustained
in a car accident, the benign brain tumour, the ‘successful’ brain surgery are
all plot-devices that enable these women to deny Elmer the capacity to ‘feel’ and
thereby know what he wants / needs, so that they can control him. The series shows
the devastating corruption of ‘love’ and daringly suggests that only someone
unable to feel any emotion can ‘survive’ in such a toxic environment. The most
interesting part of the series is Elmer’s transformation - a cold, clinical
killer, who slowly breaks out of the ‘mould’ that his mother put him into since
childhood, to a man re-discovering his ability to feel and make his own decisions
for the first time in his life. This emotional awakening adds depth to the
narrative.
Though the series ends in
a cliffhanger, there are indications about a return.