‘Sharp Objects’ Episode 4 Recap: “Ripe”

That neither Richard nor Vickery seems close to making an arrest in Ann’s or Natalie’s murders hasn’t stopped the citizens of Wind Gap from making their own judgments in Sharp Objects Episode 4: consensus seems to be that the culprit is John. Camille’s on her way out to brunch with Adora’s friends when Amma, lying around with her squad, stops her to apologize for her behavior when she ran into Richard and Camille at the end of “Fix”: “Sometimes when I show off in front of my friends, I get carried away”; Camille then sees that the girls are cracking up at a meme of John, with all his teeth pulled, and the caption, “Smile! Ain’t Karma A Bitch.”

When Camille meets Adora’s coven, she learns that they also suspect both John and Bob (the latter maybe only because, according to Jackie, he’s always staring at her breasts).

John, meanwhile, is summarily fired from his job driving a forklift on Adora’s hog farm, and heads from there to check in at his parents’; he finds his mother asleep on the couch — though, when he investigates the kitchen trash can and hears a lot of clinking glass, it may be that she’s passed out drunk.

Adora herself blows off brunch: she sliced her hand open, in the last episode, dealing with the rose bush Amma destroyed, and says the cut is still giving her “fits.” But she’s well enough to entertain Vickery when he shows up to discuss the upcoming Calhoun Day. It’s a Wind Gap tradition that seems to have been established by her family decades ago, though Vickery wonders if it’s wise to put it on this year in light of recent events. Adora flirtatiously threatens to oust Vickery from his post if he cancels it, and they both laugh so that we know she probably doesn’t mean it, or maybe just that it’s in his interest to pretend she doesn’t. However, he’s also there to raise his concerns about her daughters: “One of them is dangerous, and the other one’s in danger.” We may know that Adora would say he’s describing Camille and Amma, respectively, though if Vickery agrees with her, he doesn’t spell it out.

Camille’s dangerous post-brunch activity is walking Richard through the woods to point out various crime scenes: for each one she shows him, he’ll answer a question on the record. It’s thus that she learns his origin story as a law enforcement official is that he volunteered at an animal shelter as a kid, and developed an interest in bringing to justice the sort of people who would mistreat its charges. They clash when Camille takes him to a clearing where members of the high school football team used to gang-rape girls after games; Richard is horrified that the boys took advantage, whereas Camille counters that it could have been consensual, and that a boy who had sex with five girls in a night would be regarded as a hero. We know from her flashbacks that she was one such girl; Richard suspects as much, but doesn’t press her on it.

Camille and Richard end up in the shack we first saw in Camille’s memory back in the series premiere, and in which, more recently, Ann and Natalie played. Richard tells Camille he believes the girls’ murderer staked out the place and lay in wait for them. Evidently the setting is still titillating for Camille. But when she leans in to Richard and he tries to kiss her, she pulls away and, instead, puts his hand in her pants.

Richard, bringing Camille home after dark, tells her he’s also leaning toward John as the likeliest suspect, based on all his public crying. They pull up just as Vickery is leaving, and it’s clear that both men are judging each other’s company. Only here does Camille allow Richard to kiss her, and not for long.

Inside, Adora is sitting in the dark waiting to confront Camille: “You were always so willful. Never sweet.” She tells a story of wanting to curl Camille’s hair for a school picture only for Camille to cut it all off instead, and keeps talking to prevent Camille correcting her: that wasn’t Camille, it was Ann Nash. Adora monologues about thinking, when she was pregnant, that Camille would save her, but Camille was a disappointment: “Even from the beginning, you disobeyed. Wouldn’t eat. Like you were punishing me for being born. You made me feel like a fool, like a– like a child.” “You were a child,” Camille replies. Adora goes on: “And now you come back here, and all I can think is–” “What. What, Momma?” “You smell ripe.”

John continues drawing suspicion: when he walks out on the joyless handjob Ashley’s giving him, she falls onto the floor and sees a red spot under the bed.

To me, it looks much too bright to be blood, but whatever it is, she cleans it up.

When Adora goes up to her room, Alan confronts her for having failed to appreciate that he also experienced the loss of a child. She blames Camille for unsettling Alan’s equanimity — and possibly has been complaining about her all day, as we see Vickery call on Jackie to ask, “What is Adora not telling me about the Preaker girl?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackie replies.

Then John runs into Camille at Sensors. When she says she doesn’t think he killed his sister, he confides a dark moment from her past: the reason the Keenes left Philadelphia was that Natalie, in a rage, stabbed a classmate in the eye with a pencil. (He asks Camille not to publish this story; she says she won’t, but since we’ve already seen her ethically questionable reporting on Natalie’s bedroom…who knows.) John thought Ann and Natalie were good friends to each other as fellow “weirdos,” and that even though they frequently fought, Amma kept peace between them, and that the three of them played together in the infamous shack.

We see Amma and her friends screwing around in a car and on roller skates as a panicking Camille races to the shack, imagining herself discovering Amma’s corpse inside. And while the final moments of the episode suggest unwelcome surprises for both Crellin women…

…we’ll be hanging off this cliff until next week.

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 4 ("Ripe") on HBO Go