Sharp Objects
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Sharp Objectswas always leading here, right?
So much of the penultimate episode, Falling, feels like a reckoning.
The masks people wear slip.
Characters find solace in unexpected, even dangerous places.
Adora tries to care for Camille her voice in sweet and lilting tones, medicine in hand.
Even when she protests, she ultimately relents to Adoras narrative.
Even though the reality, as Richard finds out in investigating the family, is far different.
But he finds a startling truth that snaps so much ofSharp Objectsinto focus: Adora has Munchausen by Proxy.
But what has pushed Adora to do this?
What horrors visited her in her own girlhood?
But Adora comes across as no simplistic villain but something far murkier and complex.
She strangely synthesizes two different fairy-tale archetypes: the absent motherandthe wicked (step)mother.
For Amma, shes both saviour and torturer.
I found myself drawn to the graceful ritualism of Adoras cruelty.
When Alan sees Adora concocting her elixir hes touched by the fear of the inevitable.
But he doesnt stop her.
He doesnt get Amma help even though he knows exactly whats going on.
How could he not?
But Alan isnt alone; the entire town of Wind Gap is complicit.
The townsfolk who fawn over Adoras generosity and wealth.
Amma and Camille wrestle with Adoras influence in starkly different ways throughout Falling.
My heart hurt watching Amma see her friends skate away from the house unable to cry out for help.
Elsewhere, Camille doesnt suffer in silence.
But its not clear what shes looking for.
To collect new hurts?
When she finds John hes slinging back cheap beer and wallowing in his grief.
He jokes, bitterly, about suicide.
He laments the way hes been framed by everyone in Wind Gap.
Guys arent allowed to have soft emotions, Camille explains.
Then he tries to play the part the townsfolk have framed him with: the perverse killer.
See I can tell stories too, he counters.
He remarks on Camilles beauty, her face both incredulous and doubtful in response.
Then she follows him to the El Camino motel.
And when he grabs her in an achingly longing way, the whole episode spins in a new direction.
Let me see you, John whispers.
He knows of her scars and he wants to see all of them.
It seems John can see Camille clearer than anyone else.
Hes drawn to hurt because it reflects his.
He slowly undresses her, his eyes hungrily darting across her body.
But it isnt lust, so much as communion.
This is undoubtedly a bad idea on more levels than I can count.
Yes, John is 18.
But hes still a high school student with a target on his back.
Camille has never known how to love in a healthy way.
Look who shes learn how to live from.
The sex scene between John and Camille is sad and yearning and heartbreaking.
Her scars seem to leap from the screen in the harsh light of day.
Wicked, he rattles off the words that mark Camilles body as if hes searching for an answer.
Then the room tips into chaos.
Camille huddling under the sheets.
John halfway putting on his pants as hes arrested.
Richard with a stare a mile long.
The moment Richard and Camille kissed, the series was heading to this.
They could never last.
She has yet to fully grapple with her familial and mental health struggles; she guards her secrets.
He doesnt know if he wants to save her or force her truths into the open.
Richard closes the door, leaving them alone, and the room suddenly feels vacuum-sealed, teeth-gratingly claustrophobic.
Camille tries to play it off.
But he can see right through her.
This room stinks of you.
Believe me I know that smell, isnt the worst of his responses.
Is that what you discussed when he had his dick in you?
Hes hurt and angry.
Hes only cruel and biting and sexist in response.
I dont think youre bad, okay.
I think one bad thing happened and you blamed the rest of your shitty life on it.
People really buy it … your sad story.
But really youre just a drunk and a slut.
Is it any surprise no one cares for Camille?
That her pain is minimized or disregarded?
Camille shares a tense scene at the end with Jackie.
Asking for hospital records isnt enough.
So a town suffers in silence and a child dies.
Your health is not a debt you just cancel, Adora warns Camille in the beginning of the episode.
The body is the vehicle for so much ofSharp Objects commentary on the fraught, beguiling nature of womanhood.
For Camille and Amma, their bodies tell a story they are just now coming to understand.
Whether this story saves them or consumes them remains uncertain.
