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Elmer Jurado is the villain protagonist of the Spanish Netflix production El Jardinero.
He is a contract killer and a devoted gardener. He is portrayed by Álvaro Rico.
Personality[]
| “ | From a very young age he developed a special connection to the world of trees and plants. Maybe because with them, he didn’t have to perform. | „ |
| ~ China, speaking about her son. |
Elmer is a neuropsychology case, his right frontal lobe was damaged in a car crash in early childhood. As a result, he hasn’t been able to experience emotions since he was six years old.
This led him to have relatively flat affect. On the outside, Elmer is wide-eyed and sustains prolonged eye contact. His gaze looks empty. His voice is also monotone.
He is able to fake expressions and emotivity with the help of his mother, who used to be an actress. She trained him by practicing various emotions since the accident. Despite being able to mimic her, Elmer lacks any socio-emotional reciprocity.
Because he can’t feel anything, he hasn’t developed relationships outside of the one he has with his mother. Inability to empathize make rising to social expectations of conversation or politeness an effort. For this reason, he strikes outsiders as odd.
| “ | He was cute, yeah. And he was super… peculiar? |
„ |
| ~ Violeta describing him to her friends. |
Elmer is an extremely orderly person. Each of his action is carried out meticulously and thoroughly.
He has a strong sense of aesthetic equilibrium, harmony and mathematical beauty. He is passionate about plants, and his interest extends to chemistry and mathematics.
When he regains his emotions, Elmer falls in love. He is a very attentive lover with grand romantic gestures and date ideas.
However, unaware of social cues and misled by China’s comments, he expects to see his girlfriend all the time : be all that she needs. He is immensely affected when met with refusals.
To protect his relationship, he becomes secretive, lying and manipulative.
Elmer turns out to be an obsessive and incredibly overprotective boyfriend. He stalks his girlfriend, comes to her appartment uninvited, plunges into deep distress when pushed away and even goes as far as to kill a man for insulting her.
As a person who can feel, he feels extremely and excessively. Brimming with anger, he agrees to complete his mission (killing his girlfriend) after she hurt his feelings, revealing in the process a disproportionately vengeful and violent temperament.
His core interests remain the same but he now enjoys talking about them to others.
Psychopathology comparisons : While Elmer’s personality traits are an acquired condition due to his traumatic brain injury (TBI) and, later, brain tumor, his total absence of emotion could be a form of secondary Alexithymia ; his lack of interest in relationships would place him in the realm of Schizoid Personality Disorder ; his social and communication deficits as well as his fixated interests, abnormal in intensity and focus, bear a resemblance to Autism Spectrum Disorder and, later, the extreme lability and intensity of his emotions, the rash impulse-led actions and ‘flip-flop’ opinion of the person he loves (similar to splitting) are reminiscent of Borderline Personality Disorder (a condition Xoan could also have).
Biography[]
Past[]
Elmer was born in Mexico to an unknown father and the actress China Jurado.
Little is known about his home environment but he and his mother appeared to have lived in a villa with her manager at the time.
Their home housed frequent parties with heavy substance use, including cocaine.
After a fight with her agent-'slash'-lover, his mother rushed Elmer to her car and drove into the night. Heavily sobbing, hot-headed and possibly under the influence, she noticed her son didn't have his seatbelt on. She got her hands off the wheel to make him comply. This brief moment of inattention led them to steer out of the road and hit a tree. The car crash left her with an amputated leg while it caused him permanent brain damage.
Mother and son sebsequently relocated to Pontevedra, Spain. There, they started a plant-selling and landscaping business.
Being emotionless, Elmer was able to carefully plan a murder to get rid of his mother's abusive, free-loading lover.
Under his mother’s guidance, he went on to commit nearly a dozen murders-for-hire. She accepted the missions and handed them to him.
Present[]
Nearly two decades after the accident, Elmer starts experiencing migraine episodes with a ringing in the ear, blurred vision, vertigo and ultimately fainting.
A second episode occurs during the cocktail after the Gardener of the Year ceremony. He flees the crowd and comes out onto the street to collapse. A concerned Violeta comes to his rescue. Because she assumes his trouble stems from low blood sugar, she takes him out for coffee and pastries. This occasion is the first time Elmer experiences emotions again.
Later, at home, he erupts in sobs after watching Titanic.
He tails Violeta into the woods with the intention of swallowing his feelings and assassinating her. Yet, when she speaks to him, he invents an excuse for being in the same remote location as her. They spend the afternoon together and kiss.
When a friend of Xoan’s (Violeta’s dead boyfriend) insults her and tells him she is a killer, she leaves. Angry for the first time, with the intensity of someone who has never had to contain himself, Elmer tracks Mons and kills him that very night.
With things spiralling out of his control, he confesses the changes to his mother. A brain scan reveal his new emotions along with his other neurological symptoms were caused by a tumor growing in his brain.
Elmer goes to great lengths to protect the love he just found and his new emotions. To ensure Violeta won't be killed, he kills Sabela who refused to terminate the contract. He also refuses treatment for the growing tumor in his brain even though that ailment is sure to kill him eventually.
Heartbreak completely reverses his feelings. He comes to hate his girlfriend for cheating on him. So much so that he prefers not to feel anything anymore. He feels no remorse in completing his mission, following her a second time to kill her. He is only stopped by Violeta's heartfelt speech and kiss, reassuring him that she loves him.
Elmer escapes criminal charges because his mother dug up the bodies before investigators could obtain a warrant.
Murder-for-hire[]
Modus Operandi[]
Almost all of Elmer’s victims are killed using strictly the same M.O.
Upon knowing the target, he stalks them for several days until their habits are known to him.
He then follows them to desert locations where a car or van may look unconspicious. He uses a plant-derived poison he synthetizes himself to inject his victims with near the carotid. As they go limp in his arms, he quietly pulls them into his van. He leaves the crime scene neat, rearranges their belongings and doesn’t take any trinkets. The absence of signs of foul play make it look like his victims vanished into thin air, they are all reported as Missing People, hence the saying he ‘disappears people.’
At the nursery, he disposes of the corpses by burying them on his mother’s property and building plant arrangements on top of them. The decomposing organic matter fuels the growth of the plants.
Interestingly, it is the polished technique of the hits that eventually led to suspicion. The compulsive orthogonal repositioning of the victims’ personal items and the lush, vivid green health of his plants (distinctive characteristics of ‘decomposition islands’) are what betrays him to the police investigators Carrera and Torres.
Victims[]
In total, eleven of his victims were targets in a contract.
Three exceptions are made :
His first victim is a premeditated crime to get rid of the violent and foul-mouthed former agent of his mother.
In what is almost a crime of passion, he follows Mons to a pier and kills him with the syringue meant for Violeta.
His last on-screen murder (Xoan’s mother) is the only one committed with a knife, on accident, due to the victim resisting him.
Legacy[]
Elmer’s gardening work earned him several accolades, including Gardener of the Year at the beginning of the series.
'El Xardineiro' has garnered sufficient reputation that people know to come to them without solicitation.
It is implied Elmer will resume his activity when Violeta comes to him with a new target at the end of the series.
Quotes[]
| “ | He’ll never make you suffer again. | „ |
| ~ Elmer to his mother after killing Tony. |
| “ | You called to tell me you were having issues with Milky? That's why you ghosted me, too? Why you kicked me out of your house that day? | „ |
| ~ Elmer's angry tirade, determined to kill Violeta. |
| “ | I come here when I need a bit of inspiration. Like sunflowers for Van Gogh or Monet with his waterlillies. | „ |
| ~ Elmer, lying to Violeta about following her into the woods. |