This is a recap for the sixth episode of Sharp Objects, which means there are SPOILERS ahead. If you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know what happened, come back once you’ve seen it. You've been warned. A recap of last week's episode can be found here.
This episode of Sharp Objects, called “Cherry,” got the closest we’ve come to hearing the truth about what’s going on in Wind Gap. Despite weaving a bunch of different storylines together in every previous episode (and, let’s be honest, a little in this one too), the ways in which they all connect are becoming clear. And not a moment too soon: We’re coming down to the wire, with only two episodes left of the season.
Here are the biggest moments of this week’s Sharp Objects:
We see Chris Messina slightly naked.
It wasn’t really an important plot-point but he is looking fine as hell in this series as Detective Richard Willis. I’m sad there are only two episodes left. I will miss seeing him weekly.
Moving on...
Jackie knows more than she’s letting on.
For someone who positions herself as the flirty town drunk, Jackie has a lot of information. It makes me think that, like Camille, she’s trying to drown out what she knows with her poison of choice.
It all starts when Richard confronts her as she’s cleaning up Natalie’s memorial. When he mentions that Camille talked about Adora’s “episodes,” Jackie reveals that he’s “getting warmer—and not just because it’s hotter than a whore in church today.”
Later, he finds her at the bar and, after she’s been drinking, asks her why Camille was in rehab. “I know she was hurting herself, what I’m asking is why,” he says. Jackie shrugs the question off (she’s also plastered) and tells him that she’s very fond of Camille. “She’s sensitive, special, beautiful girl. She wasn’t the same after her sister died.”
Anne’s bicycle is found dumped in the pig factory lake.
Adora gets a call from Vickery and rushes to the factory (you’ll recall that her family has owned it for a long time), where Richard and Bob Nash are also waiting. It’s kind of weird that Adora gets a call at the same time as the detective, but she’s terrifying and probably also boning Vickery so let’s put a pin in that for now. Bob identifies the bike by the seat and breaks down.
Later on in the episode, Vickery gleefully informs Richard that a worker at the factory implicated John Keene as the bike dumper (though he admits the information isn't great) and they'll be seeking to arrest him imminently. Richard still seems to have some doubts.
Alan tells Camille to leave the house.
Camille confronts Adora about why she wasn’t told about the bike incident, and Adora scoffs. As Camille storms off, Adora tells Alan that she’s overstayed her welcome and he needs to handle it. It’s kind of sad, because even though Alan has been sort of creepy in the past, he’s also defended Camille to Adora. Camille basically rejects his suggestion to get out of town and flips him off as she catches a ride to the dreaded Girls’ Night at her high school friend Katie’s house, wife of Kurt Lacey, the creepy guy Amma was hitting on.
Richard is closing in on Camille’s backstory.
We know from the last episode that he’s been trying to get a sense of what’s wrong with her, what her demons are. It’s not clear whether this is helpful in any way to the case or whether he just wants to get to know her and she won’t let him, but first he visits the rehab center where Camille stayed with Alice. The doctor tells him, without specifically talking about Camille, that his patients at the center are usually suffering from some kind of trauma, and typically take it out on themselves more than others.
Later, he tells Jackie that he knows Camille checked herself out of rehab after her roommate killed herself—news that not even Jackie knows.
“Dead girls everywhere,” says Jackie.
Camille is still convinced it was a woman who killed the girls.
On the phone with her editor, Camille tells him about the bike and how “no one is looking at the women.” When he tells her that’s because women don’t kill like that, she says, “Until they do.”
Side-note: I love that Camille, despite a shitty home life, has a surrogate family in her editor and his wife. It makes it sadder that he’s sick.
A traumatic event is at the center of her certainty, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s clouding her judgment or showing her what others can’t see.
I know I said Calhoun Day seemed like the worst party ever, but actually Girls’ Night is the worst party ever.
Sharp Objects has much to teach us, but one of the main things is that no one should ever agree to attend any event. Katie—who saw her husband talking to Camille and is clearly suspicious about it—hosts what devolves quickly into a crying-fest, then moves onto being a guilt-fest directed at Camille about how you can’t really be a woman unless you’ve given birth.
The only upside is that Camille bonds with Becca, the only African American cheerleader they were "friends" with in high school (Camille later apologizes to her for being horrible), who is way too cool for these women.
We now know why Kurt Lacey’s been such a creep.
Turns out, the adult man that Amma was hitting on a few episodes ago—the same one who’s been trying to get Camille’s attention—has been torn up for years over the fact that he was one of the football players that had his way with Camille when she was a cheerleader, back at The End Zone in the woods. (We sort of already knew this about her, but here she has a flashback to that moment for the first time.)
He takes her aside at Girls’ Night to apologize, and she’s combative. “That day has haunted me,” he tells her, especially since he now has daughters that age.
“Well, looks like we both got fucked,” she replies.
Wow, turns out no one really knows how Camille’s other sister died.
In what's probably the strangest revelation of the night, Jackie tells Richard that Adora didn’t let them perform an autopsy on Miriam, who died because “she was a sickly child.” But since this isn’t a 1750s London orphanage, that sets off alarms for Richard. This is the first clear-ish sign that the murders of Anne and Natalie might not be quite as disconnected from Camille's family as we might think, especially after last week's revelation that Amma and the two murdered girls were best friends. (There's even a moment in this episode where John Keene seems to suggest that Amma will be next.)
Camille and Amma get closer. Like, maybe too close?
After a surprisingly incestuous game of Rollin’ Roulette at a party (that's a drug-passing game involving tongues), the sisters dance and roller-skate through the dark. This is an important moment, I think. Amma may be strange and tortured, but she tells Camille she only acts that way because she desperately wants to leave Wind Gap—something that makes her more like Camille than Adora would probably be comfortable with. “I’m so happy with you,” Amma yells. “You’re like my soulmate.” She asks Camille to take her back to St. Louis and they spin around on the grass.
While spinning, Camille briefly sees Amma become all the dead girls she’s known. She tells Amma that she’s allowed to sleep in her bed, and Amma tells Camille that Adora calls Camille’s name when she’s sleeping.
In the last scene of the episode, Camille hallucinates that Miriam is in her bedroom, whispering to her, “It isn’t safe here for you.”
