Sharp Objects
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Amma draws out the word love, letting it crackle at the end making it ripe with dangerous meaning.
If they werent sisters, Id say Amma was flirting with Camille.
Watch the way she melts onto her sister, her face growing soft.
Shes playing a role, the same way everyone in Wind Gap does.
Here, shes the younger sister, touchingly naive and desperate for affection.
But Camille bristles at Ammas overtures.
Is it because there is a flash of insincerity?
Is it because they are a twisted mimicry of the cloying love Adora bestows on Amma?
These aspects likely all factor in.
But ultimately, its because Amma is more right than she knows.
Camille is a woman both drawn to and haunted by dead girls in her past.
Fix deepens the knotted emotional terrain between Camille and the other women in her orbit.
Fix answers the question of this girls identity.
Shes Alice (Sydney Sweeney), the roommate Camille had when she checked into a mental hospital.
Shes another girl that Camille couldnt save.
Fix is most insightful and heartfelt and biting when focusing on Camilles relationship with Alice.
Like much ofSharp Objects,the totality of this relationship unfurls at a slow pace.
In this way, the show is astute about memory the way it is guided by emotion not logic.
Its one of the only actions of self-care weve seen Camille do up to this point.
Each stay remade me in a more pivotal way than the last.
Fix does so by charting the raw-nerved intimacy that blooms between patients in this case Camille and Alice.
(Shes either in high school or not that far removed from it.)
Dont talk to me, Alice spits.
Camille responds by lifting her shirt to reveal the thick scars on her abandon.
Im like you, shes saying with a gesture instead of words.
Camille treats Alice with the sisterly grace she doesnt grant Amma.
She helps her apply lipstick.
They talk about the nature of their cutting.
Alice promised herself to remain three inches above the knee so she can still wear skirts.
Camille hasnt worn skirts since college.
The scenes between them glow with the sort of tenderness entirely absent from the rest of the show.
While I havent talked extensively about Amy Adamss performance, she is a grounding presence.
Her performance is bruising.
Theres a cutting exchange between Alice and Camille that proves to be instructive.
Its in the wake of visiting hours, which proves to be a glorious mess for both women.
Camille watches Adora slam down a bouquet of roses in anger.
The thorns are a potential weapon.
(Everything is on this show.)
She refuses to visit Camille.
Its Alan in an all-white suit like some failed Prince Charming that brings the recently shorn roses to her.
Camille of course is privy to this entire exchange.
Alice sits awkwardly with her mother who seems more affectionate to the dog on her lap.
Does it get better with your family?
Camille doesnt say what Alice wants to hear.
But when Alice asks what you do to navigate fraught familial bonds, Camille does share some advice.
You survive, she tells Alice.
Its their bodies that have the most revealing conversation.
Turning over in their beds to face one another with the same bone-tired stance.
Alice is a mirror not only to a more tender Camille who doesnt quite exist anymore but to Amma.
Along with digging into Camilles background, Fix also considers the price of Wind Gaps facade.
Richard feels this is thwarting the investigation.
No one in Wind Gap could be capable of such violence.
These murders are crimes of passion, which Richard tells the ignorant Vickery isnt only contained to sex.
Passion doesnt always have to equal sex.
This jot down of thing can scratch a different kind of itch.
Fix demonstrates what happens when the various facades of characters reveal more fractures.
I cant see that happening.
[Camille] makes me feel as if Ive done something wrong … as if Im a bad mother.
Calling Adora a bad mother is understatement.
She has created a narrative that every ill that befalls her home is rooted in Camilles doing.
In her mind, Adora is a kind, gracious mother beset by tragedy.
Amma has adopted this cruelty.
She vacillates between adoring Camille and wanting to inflame her anger.
I heard Camille is a real hot ticket, Amma notes.
Shes clearly flush with alcohol and power knowing her friends would do anything for her.
She calls Richard Dick as a come-on.
She taunts Camille about stories that run through the town about her.
Amma pushes Camille by taking her red lollipop and rolling it in Camilles hair.
Its a childs way of taunting, a way to hurt and be hurt.
But even that couldnt save her.
Writer Alex Metcalf and director Jean-Marc Vallee hold onto Alices fate until the end of the episode.
Lets get out of here, she says affectionately handing her the headphones.
Camille curls up to Alice as the music hums.
But later, when returning the iPod, Alice makes a decision that surviving isnt enough.
We only see the aftermath of her suicide.
The drain cleaner bottle turned over on the floor.
Alice wilted in the middle of the room face streaked with blood, the floor marked with her insides.
Camille rushes to find something, anything to cut herself with.
She hones in on a screw on the underside of the toilet.
My heart lurched watching this scene.
Here, Fix shows how self-destruction festers and destroys us from the inside out.
Wind Gap Gossip:
What the hell is going on in the marriage between Alan and Adora?
Im assuming the iPod Camille is using was Alices.
What horrors has he witnessed?
The scene in which Camille follows Amma to their familys hog farm is deeply unsettling.
