Sharp Objects S1.04 — Calm before the storm
Spoilers below for Sharp Objects S1.04 — Ripe
Now that I’ve noticed the words in scenes where Camille is hallucinating or stressed, I can’t stop seeing them.
At the end of this episode, we cut quickly between shots: Camille driving through Wind Gap in a panic, Amma & her friends roller skating in front of a car, the boy in the car aiming a gun at them, and Camille’s step dad entering Adora’s room with hungry intentions.
In Camille’s scenes, before they begin to shift too quickly, we catch some more words: “hollow” in graffiti and “rubber” on the town sign:
And “can’t” on a barber shop sign:
These words connect to Camille’s cutting — she is unable to escape what is etched into her skin. Everywhere she goes, but especially when she is ripe with mania, she catches these words staring back at her. Just like “scared,” which was scratched into her car door as well as her arm, these words taunt her as she moves through the world.
We are seeing more glimpses into Camille’s unhappy past growing up in Wind Gap. With her sister’s passing, her mother’s depression led to neglect and disinterest in her surviving daughter. Camille, left to her own devices, took to playing with spiders (a big theme in tonight’s episode) and visiting the creepy hunting shed with a host of football boys. It’s pretty clear that nothing good happens in that shed, so I’m hoping we don’t need to go too in depth on those scenes.
They are playing up the odd relationship between Adora and her husband, Alan, in the show; it was not really present in the book. Some backstory: Adora got pregnant with Camille as a teenager and raised her for a few years on her own. Adora’s mother was always disappointed in Adora and Camille’s birth did not help the case. When Adora met Alan, they married quickly. Together, they had Marian (Camille’s sister who died when she was young) and Amma. Now, they don’t sleep in the same room and it does not seem like they are often “intimate” with each other.
Adora seems to always spite Camille for being willful, for never making it easy for her. Similar to last episode when she complains that Camille never considers herself at fault, she tells a story about how she wanted Camille to curl her hair for a class picture in elementary school and instead, Camille cut it off with shears. Except that story isn’t actually about Camille, it’s the one that Bob Nash told about Anne.
We also learn that Natalie Keene got in some trouble back in Philly. Upset with a classmate, she stabbed the girl in the eye with a pencil. John also reveals that Amma was close with both Natalie & Anne, before the girls stopped being friends. All three of them often played in the hunting shed. Interesting…
Let’s see what Dan thinks:
Amma’s a real freak. She was friends with the two girls, which we didn’t know before, that’s spooky.
So you think she did it?
…yeah. They’re really pushing the angle that it’s a man, though. The detective seems like he knows what he’s doing, but I still think it’s Amma.
Was there anything important in this episode?
We found out that Amma was friends with those girls, which is weird.
Thanks, Dan — short & sweet. To be fair, there wasn’t too much that happened in this episode. It felt more like it was setting the scene for the big event next week, which will be Calhoun Day. Until then!
Originally published at lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on July 30, 2018.