Sharp Objects Episode 7: Adora's True Colors Are Finally Revealed
The toxicity in the Crellin household is no longer figurative. Adora is no longer destroying her children in a purely metaphorical sense. As of the end of this week’s episode, "Falling," Adora has been revealed as the presumed murderer of not only Ann Nash and Natalie Keene, but also of her own daughter Marian, who died not of a disease but from poisoning. Adora’s Munchausen By Proxy syndrome (a truly horrifying mental illness made famous in pop culture by The Sixth Sense) has now resurfaced with Amma, who appears close to death by the end of this episode. The opening dream sequence, in which Camille looks at a dollhouse that gradually reveals itself to be a perfect replica of the Crellin mansion, is all the more deeply unsettling if you happen to have seen Hereditary, a recent movie very much about mental illness in families.
Adora’s fury at Camille for her wilfulness, and her hatred of any mention of Camille’s job, take on a whole different meaning in light of the revelation that she has been poisoning her daughters: per Jackie, Camille “made it hard. Marian was easier. She’d just lie back and take it.” Amma is caught between the two extremes – conscious that she will never live up to Marian in her mother’s eyes, but also wishing to emulate Camille, the wild and independent sister who got away – and so she tries to refuse the medicine, but is ultimately bullied into submission by Adora. Even when Amma admits that she’s not sick but hungover, and just needs some sleep and maybe a grilled cheese, Adora refuses to act like a mother to her unless she takes the medicine. She does not want any of her children to grow up, and she would rather they die in her arms than outgrow their need for her.
Despite Adora’s best efforts to convince her that she is genuinely sick because of her own self-medication – “Your health’s not a debt you just cancel. The body collects.” – Camille refuses to lie back and take it. She refuses to let Adora infantalize her, warding her off with the repeated and telling line “I have to get some work done”. Camille’s work, as objectively bad she is at journalism, has become a lifeline and a defence mechanism for her. Curry, along with his wife, remains her only true ally, urging her to get on a plane when he hears her tearfully confess “My mother did it.” He thinks, understandably, that she’s having a mental breakdown, rather than discovering the unthinkable truth about her family.
The Everly Brothers’ ‘Down In The Willow Garden’ might be the most on-the-nose musical choice the show has made yet, which is not to say it’s anything less than mesmerizing: such a charming folksy ditty, until you listen to the lyrics about poisoning a little girl and throwing her in the river! And the context for this particular track is Alan’s record player, yet again, which he’s now openly using as a means to block out reality at Adora’s behest. There are these glimpses from Alan’s past – the birthday cake for Camille, and dancing with little Amma in the final moments here – that suggest genuine love and affection on his part. And yet he trudges off to his study and buries his head in the sand (aka blasts some classical music through those noise-cancelling headphones) while Adora poisons Amma, seemingly willing himself to ignore the truth of what’s going on in his house.
Having shifted his focus from Camille to Adora, Richard finally discovers the truth when he visits the hospital where Marian was treated, and looks over records not just for her, but for Amma, who has been treated for a variety of alarming symptoms. At some point in the recent past, she’s also been given a feeding tube, effectively allowing Adora to pump a “liquid diet” directly into her stomach. Richard is deeply disturbed by all of this, and ends up leaving , which reveal that Jackie repeatedly tried to request information about Marian’s death in the past, all to no avail. This entire town, led by Vickery, exists in the palm of Adora’s hand, and nothing happens without her approval. Not even an autopsy on the daughter she clearly murdered.
Adora’s version of Munchausen By Proxy seems rooted in a deeply antiquated idea of women’s work: as a nurse puts it to Richard, she wants to be seen as caring for her child, trying to save her. She wants to endlessly remain the mother to a needy infant. That maternal role puts Adora above suspicion, in a town where nobody wants to even contemplate the idea that a woman could be a murderer, and a town where everybody is willing to believe John Keene killed his sister just because he showed open emotion.
John and Camille’s long-simmering connection finally boils over when she finds him in a bar, a condemned man enjoying a couple of last drinks before his arrest. She tries to goad him into confirming, once and for all, that he isn’t the murderer, and instead he spins her a deliberately unconvincing fake story, trying some serial killer cliches on for size. Finally, he confesses the true story – that he’s just a brother who misses his murdered sister so badly that he wants to die – and it’s clear Camille is deeply affected. She takes his hand, and he says he’s dead already and she is too, then challenges her to prove him wrong.
This motel room hookup that follows should be nothing but seedy – John is 18, close to half Camille’s age, and Camille notes that he’s too drunk to risk being interrogated by police, which probably also means that he’s too drunk to give consent. And yet, as fucked up as it is, this is the most genuinely tender scene that’s happened on Sharp Objects since Camille and Alice bonded over that iPod back in episode three. He asks to see her, in the daylight, and after some resistance she lets him undress her, and cries as he slowly reads out all the words that she’s cut into her skin. Just like in her sex scenes with Richard, Camille’s pleasure is the focal point – John goes down on her after taking an inventory of her scars – and for just a moment, it seems like Camille might have found something like real intimacy.
Until, that is, the police burst into their room to arrest John, and Richard is confronted by the sight of Camille in bed with him. It hasn’t been completely clear how invested Richard really is in this relationship, and how much he’s simply manipulating Camille, but his vicious – and unpleasantly slut-shamey – reaction here suggests that he has, or at least had, real feelings for her. When Camille tries to downplay what happens, he spits “This room stinks of you. Believe me, I know the smell,” and takes pleasure in telling her that he’s been investigating her. When Camille begs him not to hate her, literally clinging to him as he tries to leave, he seems to relent, telling her he doesn’t think she’s a bad person, just “a drunk and a slut”. In a series full of brutal moments, this one still really stings.
Richard does leave the folder of incriminating medical files in Camille’s car, allowing her to finally figure out the truth about Adora. But this gesture feels like he’s washing his hands of her, just when she’s most in need of someone to be her lifeline out of Wind Gap. Having approached the dollhouse version in her dreams, Camille is now driving back towards the real Crellin house yet again as this episode concludes, having realized what imminent danger Amma is in. Is she ever going to make it out of this place again?
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