1x08 Milk

[7.6/10] What if you like everything in concept, but not in execution? Structurally, I appreciate the finale of Sharp Objects a lot. It basically gives us a little red riding hood situation, where we see Camille playing the “what big eyes you have” game with her mother until Richard, the woodsman, comes by to save her. Then we get an extended epilogue, one that seems to wrap things up nicely, put Camille and Amma in a place of stability and healing, only for the series to pull the rug out from under us one last time at the end.

Hell, I even like that reveal a lot. Amma as the killer not only makes sense from the clues we’ve gotten -- her being friends with the victims, Ashley Wheeler’s comment that the killer would have to want to be popular, the erratic behavior, the obvious feints that only a man could commit this crime -- but it also makes sense as a pathological echo of Adora. We learn, in grave detail in “Milk”, that Adora’s munchausen mom routine was to make her daughters believe that they needed her, that she was their one source of solace and care, no matter how grown or capable they got.

It makes sense, then, that Amma would be the deadly flipside of that. When she sees another girl getting attention from the woman who’s supposed to be showering affection and love on her, she eliminates that rival. John Keene talks about how Adora never gave up on his sister. It’s easy to see how, given the already warped upbringing that Amma had, she would turn cruel and desperate to eliminate any threat to her as the center of Adora’s world.

When she goes away with Camille, it’s meant to be an escape from that, an exit from the toxic environment that Adora fostered within her home, and an embrace of something healthier with the sister who understands her pain in a way no one else can. Instead, it’s the chance for a repetition of the same routine, only this time, Camille’s simple note of approval for Amma’s new friend is the tip off for Amma to return to her old ways, and to take out anyone who might cause her star to shine a little brighter.

We even get a tag showing how Amma is the woman in white, a reflection of the infantilizing gowns that Adora dresses her girls in when she’s “healing” them. That, coupled with the extended exploration of why and how Adora does what she does, wraps almost everything up surprisingly neatly for a show that threatened to lose itself in ambiguity and nebulous symbolism.

And yet, it left me somewhat cold for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s just that the final confrontation with Adora felt like a fait accompli that dragged on for too long, While Camille falling on the grenade that is Adora’s “love” in an effort to save Amma is noble, the show just rubs the audience’s nose in the continued poisoning and abuse beyond what feels necessary.

Maybe that’s a good thing though. I will say full out that Sharp Objects made me uncomfortable in that act. There’s a soft brutality to everything we witness in Adora drugging and poisoning her daughters -- the march of years that lets us understand how, in her own deranged way, Adora views it as a kindness compared to her own mother’s treatment of her. It is hard to watch Camille struggle under that, to see the flashes of images of the pain it’s caused her, for so long.

But maybe that’s the point, to put the viewer in as parallel a state of discomfort as the meager flash of pixels on a screen can manage until the catharsis of a rescue comes. There’s aesthetic beauty in the violet and lilac flashes of light beaming onto the ceiling where Camille is gazing up as she once did with her poor murdered sister. There is symbolic weight to the fans that were constantly whirring in Wind Gap coming to an unexpected halt in Chief Vickery’s home on the day when those structures, those cycles, that had been held in place so long are seemingly ended.

And there is warmth in the aftermath, before the wind is robbed of our sails, when Camille returns home to her editor, pens her great story, and seems to start a new, better life that lets her reckon with her past and forge a new future. The relationship between Camille and Frank Curry is loving and sweet and familiar in a way that makes for the polar opposite of her relationship with her actual parent. The scenes the two share, of the life removed from all the ugliness and damage of Wind Gap with this new family, is a heartening one.

And yet it goes on too long, in a way that hints at the dark echo to come. It seems for much of that sort of extended epilogue that Sharp Object was wrapping things up. We get some Richard-led exposition about what Adora had done, a montage of sentencing and spiritual escape, and these scenes to let us think that things are going to be alright. There’s enough of an air of finality to make you wonder, “why haven’t they just ended this thing already if there’s not one more gut punch coming.”

Then it comes. It’s a solid, pulpy twist, one that allows Adora to have her comeuppance, but to reinforce the ongoing theme of this mini-series that the damage these women have passed down to one another is not so easily sidestepped or set aside just because of where you are or aren’t. The creative (if sometimes overly florid) shooting style, the impeccable acting from all sides, and that final twist come together commendably to deliver the idea.

It just feels like less than the sum of its parts somehow, something to be admired from a distance more than held to one’s chest. It may just be the cruelty or toxicity at the heart of the show, something deliberate in the DNA of the miniseries that is deliberately and intentionally off-putting and hard to watch at times. Or maybe it’s just the distinctiveness of the mini-series, the way it doesn't follow the usual rhythms of either film or television but instead wallows and wafts through its beats and characters.

Still, it earns that admiration in the end, for achieving what it sets out to do, even if it isn’t pleasing. Camille’s victory, her quick attempt at sacrifice, and unexpected rescue and deliverance, ultimately proves a mixed or even hollow one, having helped put away one killer but fostered another. Perhaps that sweetness mixed with bitterness, the kind Adora would approve of, isn’t meant to go down easy, for her or for us.

I have to admit, I was really confused during most of this. I don't get what Camille's plan was...? She realized her mom was the killer and was making Amma sick? So she went home and... pretended to be sick? So that her mom would poison her? And then she hoped she could get a message to Richard to come help? Or... what? Why didn't she... do... something else?

That aside, it was a pretty chilling climactic sequence and nice to have a final "confrontation" sort of, though I guess they don't really resolve much and we don't really get to hear from Adora. But I guess that makes sense since she's super repressed. Not much resolution for Camille and Richard either, but that also makes sense since their relationship never had anywhere to go. Nice to see a show take its time to have a proper ending though, nice little epilogue. I guess Amma is actually the killer in the end, so what does that mean for Adora...? She was guilty of killing her daughter and making her kids sick, but not of the other crimes? What's Amma's motive, other than just being messed up? Eh.

I didn't like this show very much, the style wasn't for me, and I couldn't relate to the characters.