And even if you are super smug and figured everything out by episode 3 when everyone horrible started showing their true colors (and good for you), you can’t blame those of us that are a little slow on the uptake for thinking that all those loose threads were gonna make their way into the tapestry of this southern gothic mystery a little more clearly. They didn’t. Sure, those murders make sense. We all have Leave Camille Preaker Alone! bumper stickers on our Volvos now. But you have to admit, there are a LOT of unanswered questions. Questions that the book surely answers, and that we are all dying to read, but before that happens, let’s get them all out.
SPOILERS FOR SHARP OBJECTS AHEAD!
The Rhetoricals
Rhetoricals are the questions I don’t need answers to, but I would like them so feel free to discuss in the comments.
Why does Chief Vickery’s wife listen to cassettes?
What is up with all the ceiling fan imagery? Were there a rash of auto-erotic asphyxiation deaths a couple of decades ago that no one will talk about or forget?
Who does Adora think she is?
Are Alan’s balls hidden in one of Adora’s hat boxes? Or in a bowl like a decorative gourd?
Are Amma and her minions the only teenage girls in town?
Why is the foreshadowing so heavy-handed?
Am I the only one who noticed that Gretchen is David Wallace’s wife?
Is there somewhere online where I can get Jackie’s kaftans and former husband’s money and make it my BIG MOOD for my 40s?
Is the BDSM shed a shrine to Odin or beef jerky?
Why did Curry never appear in his office after sending Camille on her assignment? Was he catfishing her, pretending to be her boss when he was really a benevolent psychiatrist, fixing one effed up cutter at a time?
Should the FBI start profiling anyone who restores dollhouses?
Why was DB Sweeney in it so little?
The Conundrums
How did Camille get full words etched into the skin of her upper and middle back?
I can believe that as a supreme cutter, Camille could carve whatever she wanted into skin that she could reach. I could even believe that she could pull a Reverend Dimmesdale and destroy her back in her self-mutilation efforts. But I find it hard to swallow that she could get letters and words between her scalpulae without an assistant.
Did Adora bite her baby to get her to scream?
Because Camille is biting Richard when she wants to come, Alan is biting himself when Adora denies him and so Adora biting that baby to prove she has “another sick” one fits that motif.
How does Camille not suspect Amma?
Amma is creepy as hell from the first scene. We watch her haunt the entire town and every scene of every crime for eight episodes. Aside from Adora, she’s easily the most malevolent character, and has no problem with it. She and Jodes and the other one are practical specters on skates. After John Keene in episode 4 reveals that Amma was always with Anne and Natalie in the hunting shed (and Richard posits that the murderer had to have watched the two go there, hunting them in the hunting shed), Camille freaks out. But she never allows herself to consider that Amma is the culprit; sees her instead as a second Marian, maybe even a second Camille. And as a replacement sister, another victim of Adora’s s-mothering, she’s blinded to what’s obvious to the rest of us. But STILL. COME ON.
What did Alan know?
I know he seems as clueless as my terrier is that my husband hates her, but if the man is that fastidious about his cardigans surely he could tell his wife was feeding his children some rat poison for shits and giggles. So that leads to a related question: How is Alan not in jail? At the very least, he’s negligent, complicit. At worst, an accomplice.
What happens after those credits?
I cannot imagine how Camille handles the moments following, “Don’t tell Mama.” Does she cry? Cut? Call 911? How does she handle the revelation that her sister is no substitute for Marian, but just a worse version of her mother? And what happens to Amma? Mental institution? Does Adora’s sentence get commuted since she’s no longer on the hook for Anne and Natalie’s deaths on top of her other crimes? I’m sure I could read the book for this info, but feel free to spoil me in the comments if you know.
WHO BIT ASHLEY’S EAR?
I need to know.
