‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ Review: I Can’t Believe I Watched the Whole Thing

For a show that had as many storylines and red herrings as Grosse Pointe Garden Society, it’s a magic trick that they could not make me care about any one of them over the thirteen-episode first season. None of the characters we were supposed to commiserate with—Alice (AnnaSophie Robb), Catherine (Aja Naomi King), and Brett (Ben Rappaport)—were likable enough for me to sympathize with their problems. And none of the characters we were supposed to hate, or at least see as morally wrong, were bad enough to elicit an emotional response.

I kept waiting for Grosse Pointe Garden Society to get less confusing. But all they did was introduce more characters and storylines in every episode. It almost felt intentional, as though the murder mystery they wanted us to be invested in wasn’t well thought out enough to carry the show.

And it wasn’t. When they finally revealed the identity of the “quiche” (their nickname for the body) buried in the garden, it was disappointing because the death wasn’t premeditated or even intentional. It was a tragic accident borne of a henpecked husband’s desire to protect his wife from Alice’s aggressive and misdirected text-taunting. Grosse Pointe Garden Society would have been more successful if they had committed to the idea of cold-blooded murder. They spent ten episodes building up to what should have been a shocking act of violence. Keith’s death in the gardening center was less of a bang and more of a whimper that hardly felt worth all of the headaches of trying to keep up with the non-linear storytelling.

The main plot was further diluted by adding new cast members every week and elevating their storylines to be on par with the murder mystery. I didn’t need to know so much about Brett’s ex-wife (Nora Zehetner) and her new husband (Josh Ventura). That entire storyline only served as a plot device to introduce a PI in the final three episodes who attempted to blackmail our little cabal so he could pay for his semi-estranged daughter’s college tuition. What kind of stakes are those? And, in turn, that only seems to have been a device to hook us into season two, which was teased just before the credits rolled on the final episode. But season two hasn’t been confirmed yet. So all of that feels like a big waste of time.

The two bright spots of the series were the ones you would expect. Melissa Fumero and Nancy Travis handily stole the show from AnnaSophie Robb, who seemed like the intended star. But they were hobbled by the writers’ inability to string together a more coherent plot. Lost in the jumble of time jumps and disparate character arcs were two strong female characters, whose experiences outside of the bubble of Grosse Pointe embued them with a ruthless grittiness they each hid behind veneers of lavish wardrobes and swanning around with a cocktail in each hand. If the creators of Grosse Pointe Garden Society had let those two off the leash to be meaner, more provocative, and more hedonistic, we would have had a proper foil for Alice’s wide-eyed ingenue and characters capable of and deserving of being murdered. As it is, no one on Grosse Pointe Garden Society deserved to die. But they didn’t deserve this many weeks of our attention either.

Someday, Melissa Fumero will find a project worthy of her talents. But until then, all episodes of Grosse Pointe Garden Society are available to stream on Peacock.