Sharp Objects Recap: “Cupcake Kitty Curls”
Sharp Objects Recap Season 1 Episode 4 “Ripe”
First of all, I am happy to inform you that both rap and memes have found their way into Wind Gap: The former in a slightly retro-sounding track called “Cupcake Kitty Curls” apparently produced just for the show, the latter on a chunky computer in Amma’s room. It’s a picture of John Keene’s bloody, toothless face captioned “Smile! Karma’s a Bitch!” (I guess humor’s subjective, but…I don’t think it would really go viral beyond Wind Gap.)
On a more serious note, this episode suffers from a few problems due to the fact that we’re approaching the mid-season mark: Some characters are portrayed in a way that is beginning to feel a little bit repetitive: Adora (and the Jean-Marc Vallée) don’t fail to remind us that “Crellin women are slow healers,” and that Adora likes to verbally attack her oldest daughter; similarly, despite short reprieves, like when she dances tenderly with Adora to 2Pac’s “Dear Mama” in the kitchen, Amma is starting to become borderline cartoon-villaney: She bullies her friends, she tries to seduce a very gloomy-looking, frustrated young teacher (who I think is the same guy that’s been giving Camille meaningful looks at the bar while her former gang-rapists spew sexist hogwash at her) — and don’t you think I’ve forgotten about that lollipop in Camille’s hair from last week.
Meanwhile, we’re getting constant reminders of John Keene’s (obviously wrongful) pariah status in Wind Gap, and of the myriad ways in which Alan is dangerously overlooked and thus subtly humiliated by everyone around him. The most on the nose way Vallée sets this one up this week is when Kansas City, once again, repeats his theory that the killer is “someone who feels powerless,” followed by a shot of Adora ordering Alan to fix Sheriff Vickery a drink while she sits in the parlor and flirts with him. Or when she waltzes by Alan’s (separate) bedroom on the way to her own. Alan is constantly hovering at the sidelines, downtrodden, frustrated, seeming ready to burst (like a sad, ripe watermelon!). However, Vallée is also careful to include a sprinkling of scenes with other people who might be feeling powerless towards Adora, such as John Keene; whom she has fired from the Preaker hog farm; Vickery, whom she threatens to have fired if he cancels the town’s annual “Calhoun Day” celebration; and Gayla, whose employment choices beyond Casa de Creep are limited to say the least — and she doesn’t like pigs.
In contrast, Celia, I mean, Jackie, remains (almost suspiciously) fabulous as ever, both at lunch — oh, hello, aunt Zelda! You haven’t aged a day! — and later in the episode when Vickery tries to get her to rat out her girl Camille. And Curry, poor Curry, is unsurprisingly shown getting what looks like chemotherapy (or dialysis?) while on the phone with Camille, answering to her “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” with a too-close-to home: “Unless it kills you.”
It’s like the show is straining to check in with everyone on the giant, analog Wind Gap whodunit bulletin board in order to pin down current sympathies, surprise heroes, and red herrings in time for the twists and turns that lie ahead in its final episodes. It’s also obviously working these character’s traits up to a point that feels…wait for it… “ripe” for this episode’s threefold final cliff-hanger.
The only relationship that’s gaining what feels like some genuine complexity and traction this week beyond thinly-veiled plot machinations is Kansas City and Camille, who are still doing the typical “We’re-only-flirting-because-we-want-information-from-each-other-but-are-actually-emotionally-in-over-our-heads” thing, which includes some genuine action at the creepy shed and some probably less genuine making out in front of the Preaker mansion (creepily observed by Alan from behind the window, of course).
The two start their romantic date off with a romantic Crime Scenes of Wind Gap Tour, which ends with a matter-of-fact exchange about gang rape, and about Camille likely having been gang raped, at a place in the woods the football team had appropriately named “The End Zone”. It’s tough to watch, with Camille, who realizes, correctly, that admitting she was the “Cheerleader of the Week” here in a former life will either arouse disdain, or worse, pity, from KC; and KC immediately admitting that when a bunch of guys do something like that to a teenage girl, he would judge it differently than if the genders were switched around. We’re shown how talking about it still affects Camille today, as she gets hot and heavy with KC by the creepy shed, and we see that, like so many other terrible things in Wind Gap, like addiction and roller skates, its residents’ distorted relationship towards sex and intimacy has traveled down to the town’s younger generation, when Ashley tries to comfort John, who is obviously still in the throes of grief, by saying “I’ll let you put it inside me!” after a failed hand job, followed by a shot of her scrubbing her hands with bleach.
Incomprehensively, John doesn’t seem to be in the mood! Instead, he bonds with Camille at the beautiful dive bar, casually dropping a bombshell of intel while double-fisting whiskeys: Amma was BFFs with Ann and Nathalie. For a town where gossip flows quicker than the Missouri river, how in the love of god is this the first time we are hearing about this? Unfortunately, it kind of overshadows something else John says immediately after: that pigs are smart, and that they can definitely tell when they’re about to be killed. Oh, no, John, no!
Like every episode, there are also hints and comments about homophobia and wildly unreasonable gender expectations in Wind Gap interspersed throughout this one: Camille tells KC that a girl called Faith Murray was nicknamed “Fag Murray” because her mother was rumored to date women and have “passed it on” to her daughter; Adora goes absolutely off the rails on Camille for refusing to wear her hair in curls as a child (she was not into “Cupcake Kitty Curls”!); KC believes Ann and Nathalie were found and killed at the shed, which he finds a “creepy place for two young girls to hang out,”; and call me crazy, but I felt like, in a flashback showing Gayla taking care of Adora when she is immediately grieving Marian’s death, there’s a moment between them that could be interpreted as more than just a housekeeper seeing to the lady of the house. I don’t actually think there was anything going on between Gayla and Adora, but I do think the visual ambiguity is deliberate, in a similar way other reviewers have commented on Amma’s almost sexual embrace of Camille last week, and it is of course perfectly in tune with the general theme of tenderness vs. intimacy and repressed sexuality in Wind Gap.
Speaking of repressed sexuality: In this episode’s final scenes, things finally come to a boil, as several characters irreversibly seem to gravitate to a place of sexual fruition (or destruction?): Alan decides to make a move on his woman in white; Camille rushes to the creepy shed after speaking to John, who says Amma, Ann and Nathalie used to hang out there together, and Amma, out on her roller skates, gets caught in the headlights of a car…
