1x03 Fix

[7.5/10] It’s a cheap crutch to latch onto other films and books and T.V. shows when trying to get your head around whatever it is you’re consuming at the moment. But watching “Fix”, I couldn’t get two other works out of my head: Twin Peaks and Lolita. In a way, that’s not all that surprising or novel. Any story that involves the sexuality of a young woman is going to catch Lolita comparisons, and any story about a small town with weird things going on is going to get Twin Peaks comparisons. But I’d like to think there’s more to the overlap than that.

For one, “Fix” brings Twin Peaks to mind because I’m intrigued by the rush of images that the episodes throws at the audience one after another, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what it all means or what the show is driving at, either in terms of its central mysteries or its larger point.

There’s dribs and drabs here and there. Obviously Camille is haunted by the memory of her sister Alice, and maybe is literally being haunted by her too. The sense of that unspeakable horror lingering with Camille and Adora pulses through the show from minute one. The fact that something supernatural seems to be lurking around at the edges of the frame (or in the reflection of it, to be literal here), gives off strong vibes of Twin Peaks’s early episodes when the other worldly hints could easily have been fact or fiction.

“Fix” also shares the sense of a town with a dark side being explored by outsiders and defended by insiders who like the way things are. The episode puts Camille and Det. Richard on one side, and Adora and Chief Vickery on the other. Camille and Det. Richard want to work the case, get to the bottom of it, and believe that someone who knew the victims committed the crimes. Adora and Vickery, on the other hand, are apt to pin the murders on some out of town trucker or minority, are appalled at their charges’ lack of decorum, and are just as suspicious about their motives. The town elders are closing ranks, ready to sweep whatever this is under the rug rather than have their town dragged into a blood spotlight.

“Fix” hints that it’s something sinister, but muddies the waters enough that it could just be the shamefulness of some affair between the chief and the town matriarch. Adora’s husband is clearly frustrated with his lack of affection from his wife, and maybe there’s something more going on than we’re privy to yet.

Still, what's most interesting is how Sharp Objects gives us Adora’s point of view a little here, framing her perspective as a loving mother who believes she’s made to feel like she’s done something wrong. She sees her daughter as a dangerous influence, a source of corruption, and a reminder of her failures. It ties into the other subtle theme of this one -- parenthood, with Amma’s question about whether Camille wants babies and Bob Nash’s reflection on how his wife didn’t want any children.

What does it all mean? Who knows. Maybe it’s just texture, but there’s gestures toward the idea that something more significant is connecting all of this, even if the show is being Lynch-esque cagey about what that is.

But at the same time, “Fix” is about a young woman testing the limits of her power and sexuality and ability to act like an adult. Amma seemingly taunts or even flirts with her sister; she makes lewd insinuations at Det. Willis, and she waxes rhapsodic about John Keene secretly wanting her. She declares, or repeats, that she’s almost a woman, and embraces a shallow version of what that means: drinking and expressions of sexuality and....taking a baby pig?

That latter point is one of “Fix”’s odder moments. It ties into the parenthood theme with the image of piglets suckling on their mother’s teat. And it fits with the Twin Peaks-esque bit of unexplained weirdness. Whatever the import, it demonstrates Amma once again testing her boundaries and playing some game that is beyond her mother or her sister, despite the games the two of them were party to in the past.

There’s also the scene with John Keene and his girlfriend, Ashley, who seems to want to be the adult. She puts on a show for the reporter, acts like the handler and dutiful partner of John, in the same way that Adora tries to handle Bob. With all this talk of certainty that a man committed these crimes, “Fix” spends a great deal of time showing the women, younger and elder, taking charge of situations despite their male counterparts nominally having the authority here.

And yet, there’s hints of abuse, of limits tested too far and risks that bold and fearless young people don’t understand that call to mind Lolita. Amma seems to be taunting her way into danger, having been stifled in her mother’s house as Camille was, and trying to emulate her older sister’s rebellion, in a style that seems dangerous.

But dangers can be external or internal. Part of what makes this episode a little bewildering in the middle of its run is the way that it cuts back and forth to a flashback of Camille’s stay in a psychiatric ward for her cutting. There, she meets a young woman with the same affliction, talks about how the problems you have as a young adult don’t go away just because you become a full adult, only to see her commit suicide with that caution from Camille in her head. The scenes are a little opaque, but the feeling of guilt and misery at the discovery, the way it lingers with Camille and makes her fear for Amma, persist.

The dangers that can consume girls who want to grow up too fast and are harmed by grown-ups who want to let them for their own, horrifying ends brings Lolita to the fore. And the town that champions innocence while harding the dark underbelly that draws young women into the abyss without giving them a chance to grow up calls Twin Peaks to mind. Hopefully, Sharp Objects can distill those influences into its own solution, one that hangs on to what made those stories memorable, while charting its own path through them.