'Sharp Objects' Episode 4: Something's Rotten in Wind Gap
Sharp Objects upends the traditional narrative for dead girls on television; where most female victims get to be nothing but beautiful, mutilated corpses, these victims continue to evolve and develop. Natalie Keene was murdered, but she also put a pencil through a girl’s eye; her mother calls her a sweet girl, while Bob Nash calls her a devil child. In the land of the living, Amma is a delicate doll at home and a sharp-edged cool girl outside of the house. The girls of Wind Gap all seem simultaneously endangered and dangerous, and in the final moments of this week’s episode "Ripe," the nebulous connection between Amma, Natalie, and Ann finally solidifies. According to John Keene, the trio were inseparable best friends, their connection so intense and volatile that Amma frequently had to keep Ann and Natalie from “killing each other”-and they all hung out frequently in a creepy shed in the woods. A shed with a series of pornographic photographs displayed on its walls. The same shed where, years ago, something happened to Camille.
Camille bringing Willis to the shed is a disorienting moment, because this is a setting we’ve only seen before in a brief, nightmarish flashback during Episode 1, when Camille masturbated in her hotel room to the unsettling memory of it from her childhood. This place is intensely tied up with both trauma and sexual pleasure for Camille; after Willis correctly intuits that something happened to her here, he tries to kiss her, which is a pretty dubious piece of timing on his part. Earlier in the episode, Willis makes it clear for the first time that he is actively manipulating Camille, telling Vickery: “That woman knows something-once she tells me, I tell you.” There’s a mutual tit-for-tat going on between Camille and Willis, a flirtatious exchange of information where both are knowingly playing the other, but Camille also seems to genuinely like him and sees him as a bit of a lifeline. It’s not clear at all how mutual that really is, or how much Willis is knowingly exploiting somebody he sees as vulnerable.
In any case, Camille won’t let Willis kiss her, and of course won’t let him take any of her clothes off, so she takes his hand and puts it inside her jeans and lets him go to town. It’s simultaneously a very sexy moment and an uncomfortable one, and not only because of the conversation they just had. Earlier in their tour of Wind Gap’s seediest hot spots, Camille takes him to “the end zone,” the part of the woods where the high school football team bring cheerleaders to “have their way”; she demurs when Willis asks if she was one of those cheerleaders. When he correctly points out that a group of boys having sex with an underage girl could be called “rape,” Camille calmly tells him it could also be called consensual.
“Those guys took advantage of someone way too young to make an informed decision,” Willis argues. We don’t yet know exactly what happened to Camille, either at the cabin or in “the end zone,,” but it’s no coincidence that she initiates her first sexual encounter with Willis in this particular place; when she closes her eyes and gives in to the moment and bites his neck in ecstasy, it feels like she’s reclaiming something. This moment is for her pleasure alone. And yet it’s not untainted; as she orgasms, she sees flashes of blood, and corpses, and Adora cutting her hand on those garden shears. Sex is a release for Camille, but not an escape.
Wind Gap’s history is as integral to this episode as Camille’s personal past: "Ripe" centers on the planning of a town festival named "Calhoun Day," an annual celebration that has something to do with the Confederacy. Amma is starring in a school play which recounts the historical story, and has rewritten it to imagine an all-female militia rising up to defend the south. When her teacher Mr. Lacey objects to this feminist rewriting of history, Amma responds, “My mama says all history is written by men, so of course they’re gonna make themselves look good.” Adora has good reason to believe in a version of history where women rule; this episode makes it clear yet again that she-along with her network of society friends-is the real power in Wind Gap. Vickery is so wrapped around her little finger that when she openly threatens to remove him as sheriff if he cancels Calhoun Day, he simply chuckles fondly. He knows she could do it, and he’s okay with admitting defeat to Adora Crellin.
The fondness between Adora and Vickery borders on open flirtation, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Alan, who has his first significant scene in this episode. During an argument in which Alan accuses Adora of minimizing his own pain over losing Marian, Adora still tries to find a way to turn this around on Camille, spitting that her daughter “brings discord into this house.” Alan says that not everything can be Camille’s fault, and a touching flashback further illustrates his genuine fondness for her. Shortly after Marian’s death, Alan and the Crellin’s housekeeper Gayla present Camille with a birthday cake, and she cuts them off before they even finish singing "Happy Birthday." It’s a brutal moment which speaks to just how emotionally stunted this household has always been; the cracks in Camille’s teenage armor begin to show later in the episode, but in front of Alan, she’s nothing but sullen.
Alan seems to have always been an ineffectual figure in this family, and certainly in his marriage; he and Adora don’t share a bed, and her cozy meeting with Vickery spurs him into trying to reassert some sexual dominance over Adora in the final moments of the episode. In the same climactic closing montage, Camille discovers from John Keene that Amma used to play in the hut with Natalie and Ann, which-if Willis’s theory is correct-puts her in imminent danger. As Camille frantically drives through town searching for her sister and imagining the worst, the camera finds Amma in dreamy slo-mo, rollerskating along the darkened road until she’s suddenly flooded in headlights.
When Vickery tells Adora that one of her daughters is in danger and the other is dangerous, the assumption is that he means Amma and Camille respectively. Though this grand finale backs up that idea, Camille is absolutely in danger too-psychologically, if not physically, as her latest run-in with her mother makes clear.
Side note: Adora, alarmingly, now seems to be losing her grip on reality to the point where she’s creating false negative memories of Camille, or, perhaps, conflating memories of Amma with her elder daughter. She insists that when Camille was a child, she cut off all her hair rather than let Adora put it in curlers, and though Camille gently tells her, “No, that wasn’t me,” Adora doesn’t seem to be listening. Her persecution complex towards Camille is so overbearing that it’s warping her reality, and though this doesn’t feel like deliberate gaslighting, its impact on Camille is still devastating. “I thought you’d love me, and then my mother would love me,” Adora says in a rare moment of vulnerability, gesturing towards just how young she was when she gave birth; essentially a child, as Camille puts it. “All I can think"-Adora begins, and Camille becomes tearful, as though believing that maybe for once, Adora will have a tender word for her. And then, coming closer: “You smell ripe.” Camille choosing to stay in her mother’s house and subject herself to this psychological warfare is beginning to feel like another form of self-harm.
Key clues:
The big revelation of the week is Amma’s friendship with Natalie and Ann, along with the fact that Bob Nash hated Natalie and thought she was a corrupting influence on Ann. According to Jackie, Bob always had it in for the Keenes.
This may or may not be a clue, but it sure is strange: after John runs out on Natalie mid-hand job, she notices a bloodstain underneath the bed, and promptly cleans it up. She seems alarmed, but not exactly surprised. So… is it from the pig farm? John did go to work that day before being fired.
Why was John so intent on recapturing Natalie’s pet spider after Camille set it free?
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