‘Sharp Objects’ on HBO Episode 3 Recap: “Fix”

In the series premiere of Sharp Objects on HBO, Camille tries to induce Vickery to tell her about the murder cases he’s investigating by suggesting that some publicity could generate some new leads. But in the days directly following the publication of her piece on Natalie’s funeral, that does not seem to have occurred. Bob Nash is still eager to talk, inviting Camille back into his bedroom to share his (negative) impressions about John Keene, but Vickery narcs on Camille’s interview to Adora, who storms in and orders Camille to leave; she still doesn’t respect Camille’s career or her assignment to report the story we may reasonably assume she hasn’t read. Richard has read Camille’s article, knows Mrs. Keene wouldn’t have let her into Natalie’s bedroom, and tells Camille, “The best thing for both of us? Stay out of my way.” (Richard comes into their conversation already frustrated: Vickery is convinced that the murderer is an outsider — a trucker, or a seasonal Mexican worker from Adora’s family’s pig farm — whereas Richard believes the murderer knew his victims.) Mrs. Keene has also read Camille’s story, and answers Camille’s attempt to interview her by slamming the door in her face.

However, it’s at just this moment that Ashley pulls up with John. Much more friendly, Ashley arranges for Camille to meet John the next day in her parents’ carriage house, where he’s temporarily living to escape the dolor at the Keenes’. Camille tries to be gentle, but John is still very raw: he clearly has unfavorable opinions about Ann that Ashley prevents him from airing, is ashamed of having insufficiently appreciated Natalie when she was alive, knows what people are saying about his lack of an alibi, and misses Philadelphia, a place where he could walk outside and see people who didn’t know anything about him. Without a care for the hurt it will cause Ashley, he tells Camille, “I hate it here. You know, if we’d never come here, Natalie’d still be alive.”

But the episode pivots on the evolving relationship between Camille and Amma, who flouts the town’s curfew for minors to go out with her friends and watch boys chase a terrified pig around a field; she drunkenly taunts John, also present, about his failure to participate: “Pretend it’s a little girl.” Amma then drives herself home in a golf cart, crashing it into Adora’s rose bushes. Camille, the only one who hears, brings Amma inside and tries to keep her quiet.

The conversation meanders, partly because Amma’s wasted, and also because Camille has to keep redirecting Amma’s inappropriately flirtatious energy. But Amma is also suspicious, asking Camille, “Why are you being sweet to me?” “Why shouldn’t I be?” Camille asks. “Because I’m not nice?” Amma reminds her. Camille says, “I wasn’t nice either when I was your age.” From what we’ve seen in previous episodes’ flashbacks, tween Camille was as nice as a child could be with parents like Adora (extremely narcissistic and cold) and Alan (absent). Through this episode, we get an idea of how Camille is approaching Amma through her flashbacks to another young woman who wasn’t nice to her, at least at first, and where their relationship went.

Sometime in the relatively recent past, Camille checks herself into a rehab center for patients who self-harm; her forearm is actively bleeding as she stands at Reception.

Camille’s roommate is Alice (Sydney Sweeney, recently The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Eden), who seems to reject Camille due to her relatively advanced age, and who lives for her tightly monitored access to the music on her phone. Camille isn’t pushy in her attempts to make friends, and after she helps Alice put on lip gloss, and Alice introduces her to all the artists Camille — who’d initially told Alice in the facility “That’s not really my thing, music” — is still listening to. Neither has a good visitor’s day: Adora throws a fit and stomps out when, it seems, she’s told she can’t give Camille the roses she’s brought because of their thorns, while Alice’s mother sits silently with a tiny French bulldog between herself and Alice. “Does it get better, with your family?” Alice asks her later, crying in their room. “Maybe when I’m older, like you.” “No, not really,” Camille admits. “So what do you do?” Alice asks. “You survive,” Camille replies.

Where Alice, in flashback, is tentative and anxious, Amma is bold and challenging. She knows Camille has tailed her to the hog farm where she apparently chooses the victim for the next nighttime hog hunt.

When Adora calls her downstairs to yell at her about being out past curfew (though less, one imagines, because Amma was out and possibly unsafe, and more because Adora was embarrassed that Vickery told her about it), Amma barely tries to camouflage her very short shortalls — far more revealing than the mid-length dresses Adora buys her.

Amma even tries to get Camille to come out and party with her; Camille declines, unsuccessfully trying to convince Amma to stay home too. They meet up again when, after last call at Sensors, a much friendlier Richard has Camille show him her Wind Gap, and the official parking lot hangout spot is still in use by Amma and her friends. Amma is immediately hostile to Richard, calling him Dick and telling Camille, “You could kill me right here, and you know what? Dickie-boy still couldn’t figure it out.”

The parties split up, and Camille drives — faster than is safe, but not fast enough to escape her memories of Alice’s suicide by drain cleaner the night of their mothers’ visit, and Camille’s own use of a toilet seat screw to gouge up her own arm at the horror. Alice’s specter has also followed Camille to Wind Gap, though Camille brakes before hitting her, next to a signpost that changes from “Spiteful” to “St. Louis” as Camille’s consciousness clears. As the episode closes, we also learn that the chaotic new mark Camille made upon discovering Alice’s body couldn’t render illegible the word she’d carved right before she first walked into the hospital seeking treatment.

Writer, editor, and snack enthusiast Tara Ariano is the co-founder of TelevisionWithoutPity.com and Fametracker.com (R.I.P.), as well as Previously.tv. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great and Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210), and has contributed to New York, the New York Times magazine, Vulture, The Awl, and Slate, among many others. She lives in Austin.

Watch Sharp Objects Episode 3 ("Fix") on HBO Go