The elite of society is most successful at pretending to be the elite of society. While husbands with dignified gestures drop cigar ash on the weak of this world, wives are busy with other important things: they look at all the pictures in the latest Vogue, drape according to the precepts of haute couture, discuss the drapery of females who are not members of the cozy ladies’ club in their cozy ladies’ club. The gardening club, to be precise.
Rita Castillo (Lana Parria), the wife of the oil tycoon Nosferatu, commands this chicken coop. Bought into wives for the sake of striking looks, like all those who have acquired status since the black turn, Rita pretends to be an elite with a double sinister energy. A bitch with a capital letter. And she has all the reasons for her anger: the obscenely rich Brachiosaurus (Daniel Zacapa) promised even before the wedding that he would not last five years, a vile liar – all ten have already passed. A young actor in the care of the future widow, Scooter Polarsky (Matthew Daddario), a cute kid with the intelligence of a spaniel, helps to pass the evenings while waiting for the death of the faithful Mrs. Castillo. The other Gardening Club mates don’t count, they’re a necessary entourage. This is the arrangement of the pieces on one part of the board.
The Queen of gas stations
On the other side is Alma Fillcote (Allison Tolman, TV series “Fargo”), the wife of a veterinarian, a woman in a body and low-key outfits, suffering from social neglect. Alma is sweet, shy, and accepts the slaps of life with a timid smile. She grows flowers on the lawn and dreams of joining a gardening Club where women are smart, funny and graceful. The only problem is that Mrs. Fillcote is no match for them. But dreams don’t die so easily, unlike pets.
The viewer gets to know Mr. Fillcote (Nick Frost) at the moment when this funny and charming fat man puts a desperately sick dog to sleep. Gently, accompanied by piano music. The upset hostess is grateful to the kind doctor who relieved the suffering of her dear being. If only she knew what other infernal talents the sensitive Bertram Fillcote possesses… But the millstones of history will start to turn for a different reason, and in a dozen episodes they will grind many into bone meal. The first domino is dropped by Rita Castillo, who hires a private detective Loomis (Jordan Christie, by the way, the only black character in the entire series) to track down what her beloved Scooter is doing in his spare time. Knowledge multiplies sorrows.
The Gardening Club behind the adoption of resolutions
Marc Cherry, whose opus magnum until recently remained Desperate Housewives, in 2019 launched the anthology series Why Women Kill, the first season of which elegantly and humorously told about the love and criminal vicissitudes of three people who lived in the same house in the fifties, eighties and two thousandth years. They killed little and modestly, but they played subtly and with a spark. The second season tries on Los Angeles in 1949, the year when the damned Commies got themselves an atomic bomb, after which the even more damned Yankees declare the beginning of the Cold War and angrily invade Korea (see the series “M.A.S.H.”).
The new heroines do not care at all about the geopolitical situation in the world, they are oppressed by the burden of passions: lust, greed, cunning, dancing a dashing tap dance to the post-war swing. The outfits are luxurious to the point of kitsch, and you can plant bombers on the brims of fashionable hats. Mark Cherry, with the dash of a racing driver, lays plot twists, where every stupidity (in life it is commonly called deeds) leads to more and more tragic consequences on the scale of ancient tragedies. And the audience would cry if it weren’t for the operetta-fervent playfulness with which the characters look into the abyss. Each pawn strives to become a queen, an inconspicuous caterpillar turns into a cyclopean butterfly, dragging the rest of the moths with it to the light.
"You've sung everything, that's the thing. So lie down and die!"
Where a similar Fargo anthology series looked forced in places, this butterfly flutters casually, shedding light on the dark craters of women’s souls, and the Old Testament parable is hidden behind the facades of mansions. And if you suddenly smell a soap opera, don’t be alarmed, it’s the scent of expensive Parisian soap designed to corrode the dirt of Texas-Mexican brothels.
Combining debit with credit, I would like to say that the project has grown from a pomeranian of the first season into an Alaskan malamute, as fluffy as it is toothy. The bar is set high, will Mr. Cherry, who staged a farce on the site of a violent thriller, be able to surprise with the third part? We are waiting with anticipation.
