Age of The Nerd
I wanted to wait a few days before I wrote a review to the HBO eight episode run of “Sharp Objects”. The reason I wanted to wait is because I found the series angered me and let me down, and I wanted to give it a few days to see if my anger and disappointment went away. It did not.
The story of “Sharp Objects” is a complex and sad tale about a reporter going back to her hometown to chase the story of two murdered girls and face her own demons. Amy Adams took on her first major role on the small screen portraying reporter Camille Preacher. Adams plays the character both tragically and brilliantly. As the story goes, Camille Preacher returns to Wind Gap, Missouri to her family home where she starts having flashbacks of her dead sister who passed away when she was younger. The Preacher family is one of the wealthiest families in Wind Gap as they run a pig slaughterhouse, where many of the townspeople are employed.
If your looking for an action filled series that gives women a positive disposition, then this series isn’t for you. The series is slow with most of the characters just sitting around drinking alcohol and wishing they could get out of the hum drum monotony of small-town life. As the series plays out viewers will forget that they are watching a criminal mystery and instead watching a love/hate relationship play out between Camille Preacher and her mom, Adora Crelin ( again, played beautifully by Patricia Clarkson) the matriarch of the Preacher clan. Adora is not a likeable character, nor do we feel she is meant to be and some of the dialogue she speaks will make some viewers question how she is even allowed to be out and about walking the streets and not locked up in an institution.
The eight- episode run would have worked perfectly if other characters within the story could breath, but the story falls short when this does not happen. Of course, Amy Adams gets the mot screen time but when you realize that the character is not going to step up and do something about the way she is being treated and the way her mother speaks to her, that is where I felt the story was starting to fail and was in a way, kind of unrealistic, especially given the feisty nature of Camille’s character with everyone else around her!
The director Jean-Marc Valle does an amazing job filming rich women on the California coast (Big Little Lies) but fails to bring the heart of a small town and can only show alcoholics and sweat stains when it come to this story. “Sharp Objects” would have worked a lot better if it was made into a four hour movie instead of a stretched out eight episode run with the only highlight being the big reveal to who the killer really is which I have to say in the end was good pay-off, but just not quite enough!
