‘Sharp Objects’ Episode 5 Recap: “Closer”

As everyone probably expected from the ambiguous ending of “Ripe,” Amma is fine as we begin Sharp Objects Episode 5: it seems as though it was Camille, and not the killer, who found Amma roller skating on the road. Exactly what happened between Alan and Adora, however, isn’t part of the narrative, leaving it to us to determine whether her flirtation with Vickery sparked real anger in Alan, or if that’s just foreplay for the Crellins.

Adora would no doubt disapprove of my even speculating about such things — on Calhoun Day?!? The town’s biggest party is not just bankrolled by Adora but held on the Crellins’ front lawn. Frank, high on the clicks of Camille’s last article, tells her to stay on it, expecting a lot of color from the locals in their problematic Confederate uniforms. Camille’s on her way downstairs when she drops her water (vodka) bottle and it rolls into Adora’s bedroom. This sends her into a reverie from when Marian was still alive, and a photographer from Southern Home magazine came to shoot Adora’s prized ivory floors. Camille pulled a Camille by sneaking in to check out his camera, tracking mud in the process.

Adora still has the cover and story framed on the wall. Marian got to be in the photo; Camille did not.

At the barbershop, Richard lets Vickery know he thinks the Calhoun Day event should have been cancelled. Vickery lets Richard know he’s called in extra officers from out of town to be on site, and also that he’s read Camille’s latest piece, which casts suspicion on both Bob and John. Vickery leaves with two warnings for Richard. First, he should stay away from Camille: “Good tree, bad apple.” Second, if he comes to the Calhoun Day barbecue, he shouldn’t come dressed like a Union soldier.

The barber concurs.

In the Crellin kitchen, Adora, Amma, and Camille discuss the history pageant, in which Amma will star as the heroic Millie Calhoun, set upon by at least one “Yankee rapist.” Amma says she tried to change it — and we did see, last week, her entirely fantasized rewrite, in which Millie formed the country’s first all-female militia, and which their director, Mr. Lacey, roused himself from his apparent hangover to reject. When Adora complains about Camille’s all-black outfit and stomps off to arrange a “field trip” to get her something suitable, Amma reaches into her bra.

“My other phone,” Amma tells Camille. She then calls out the truth behind Camille’s “sisterly” attempts to get her to talk about Ann and Natalie — “On the record?” — before offering that it scares her to think about them, and she feels bad that they weren’t still friends at the end. Then she gets furious when one of her friends sends her Camille’s article and she realizes she’s not the first to see it.

Alan drives the ladies into town to shop at Sarabeth’s, which Sarabeth herself appears to be opening — on Calhoun Day!!!!! — at Adora’s request. Sarabeth has never heard tell of Camille before, Adora dismissively saying, “She takes after her father — his coloring, his temperament.” Sarabeth has heard about the cut on Adora’s hand, about which Adora seems finally to have stopped mooching sympathy — at least until she starts feeling oppressed by both her daughters. Camille comments that what Adora just said to Sarabeth is more than she’s ever told Camille about her biological father, and Amma claims Camille’s latest article states that “Wind Gap kills its children.” Adora growls at them to stop before seeing that the cut has opened again: “Oh, you’ve made me bleed! Both of you!”

Then it’s time for Camille to go into the fitting room with the two strappy slip dresses Sarabeth has pulled for her. Camille keeps begging for a longer, long-sleeved dress she’d requested, particularly after her own clothes are pulled off the fitting room door; an impatient Adora orders her to put something on and come out, and in frustration, Camille emerges, in nothing but her underwear.

After sending Amma to the car, a breathless Adora says the scars are worse than she remembers, but extracts Camille’s confirmation that “it’s over” before sighing, “It hardly matters. You’re ruined. All out of spite. You want to know who your father was? That’s who he was. All spite. I’m glad Amma saw.” Adora leaves Camille to jam a slip dress in her mouth to muffle her scream.

Back at the house, Amma finds Camille packing up to leave, asking if Amma’s name is on her anywhere. “I don’t do names,” Camille replies. “Not even boyfriends?” Amma asks. “I don’t do boyfriends,” says Camille. Amma does have a more modest, old-fashioned dress — possibly a costume from the pageant — that will satisfy Adora and cover Camille’s skin, and asks Camille to stay: “If I can, you can.”

Adora, meanwhile, is on the veranda greeting her most VIP guests: the friends she ditched at brunch, and some very young developmentally disabled girls enjoying the shade with their mothers. Adora coos over them with the most warmth we’ve seen from her so far, then plays hostess with her peers, maintaining her grande dame airs while waving off Jackie’s suggestion that she read Camille’s article.

Camille, upstairs on the phone with Frank, cries as she tries to get him to release her from the assignment. Frank, distressed, says “I forget sometimes how, how parents aren’t always good for their kids,” and assures her that, no matter how Adora makes her feel, she’s not a bad person. Camille decides to see the story through.

There’s not a lot of cover on the lawn, but a lot of shade. Adora’s friends note Camille’s proximity to Richard: “My my, those Crellin girls sure do like their boys with badges.” A drunk Bob tries to start shit with Richard about the case. Ashley confronts Camille for not having quoted Ashley in her article: “You don’t want to burn this bridge. I know things, Camille.” Camille’s predatory old male classmates try to get her back in the woods.

When Richard gets her away, she tells him the Calhoun Day origin story: town founder Zeke married Millie, who came from a union family, when she was a child; Adora, Camille, and Amma are her descendants. When Union soldiers came to capture Zeke, Millie — who was pregnant at the time — was tied to a tree and “violated,” and though she miscarried, she never divulged Zeke’s location. “And this is a holiday,” says Richard drily.

While Camille is being waylaid by her bitchy female classmates — Gretchen makes sure to throw some side shade at Amma for drinking — Adora is introducing herself to Richard and inviting him for a tour of the house. Inside, she sees that Amma has brought in one of her pageant co-stars, who we presume she wouldn’t approve of, given his mullet, so she can show him her elaborate dollhouse, a precise replica of Adora’s Victorian mansion. Jackie then interrupts a charged moment between Mr. Lacey — Kirk, as Camille knew him when he was among her rapists — to warn her that Adora is alone with Richard.

The tour appears to culminate with the famous bedroom: “This ivory floor, all ivory, was a wedding present for my great-great-grandmother, before anyone knew what ‘endangered’ was. It was supposed to last forever, and it has, just.” Adora requests that Richard take his shoes off before stepping on it, and asks if he knew Camille lost a sister. He does, and expresses condolences. “Camille’s strength went with her,” Adora tells him, adding that Camille is “recovering from a recent episode. She’s delicate. A rare rose. But not without thorns.”

Then it’s time for the pageant, which its cast prepared for by taking pills of some kind, by the dollhouse.

Rejoining Camille, Richard dodges her many requests that he tell her what Adora said about her, focused on how strange it was for him to stand on an ivory floor when he had, in his youth, wanted to work with animals.

Despite whatever substance she took, Amma delights the crowd when she staunchly warns the Union soldiers, “My scars will armor me!” But when the play is over and the teens are closing with “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic,” Bob attacks John; in the chaos, Amma runs into the woods.

Later, as resources are being scrambled to locate Amma, Camille notes that she left without her phone, but may have her “other one.” Adora doesn’t know about another phone and is beside herself screaming hysterically. Camille joins the search party and locates Amma in the hunting cabin, scratched but unharmed.

When Amma’s safely in bed, Adora brings Camille out to the veranda for a drink, and to apologize. First Camille wants to talk about Amma, but when she alludes to some of the trouble Amma’s getting into, Adora dismisses it as “just being a teenager.” Camille is grateful that Adora didn’t tell Richard about her scars, but Adora wonders, “He’ll find out, won’t he?…When you get close?” “I won’t get close,” Camille tells her. “I don’t– I never get close.” Adora says that’s what she wanted to apologize for: “You can’t get close. That’s your father. And it’s why, I think, I never loved you. You were born to it, that cold nature. I hope that’s some comfort to you.”

Finding out her mother never loved her is not, in fact, a comfort to Camille, but she goes seeking what she can in Richard’s hotel room, keeping the lights off, her clothes on, and his hands off her skin: “We do it my way. We do it my way.”

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.

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