Sharp Objects season 1, episode 4 recap: ‘Ripe’

Sharp Objects makes everyone examine their unpleasant memories in “Ripe”.

We are greeted with the four most prominent main characters in Sharp Objects waking up and starting their day; in what is by far the homiest of the morning rituals, Chief Vickery wakes up, gets ready for work and his greeted by his wife who makes him breakfast and hands him his lunch.

Meanwhile, Adora wakes up in her posh bedroom, Richard wakes up in his motel room, and Camille seems to have spent another night in her car.

Richard and Vickery talk and come to an agreement to share any information they find. Speaking of getting information, Camille meets her mother’s friends including Jackie at a fancy restaurant in town.

Adora uses her wounded hand as an excuse and Camille goes without her. Jackie laughs at her excuse and calls it for what it is. The women then gossip about the murders, with Jackie suspecting Bob Nash and another one of Adora’s friends thinks it’s John Keene.

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Camille has a flashback to a birthday soon after Marian died; where Gayla the maid and Alan her stepfather surprise her with a cake while Adora is sobbing in Marian’s room.

The scene has been alluded to before, but not in it’s larger context. Young Camille gets upset and flees the house.

What young Camille and present Camille experience in the woods is juxtapositioned when she agrees to take Richard there in exchange for him answering questions on the record, which her editor Frank Curry approves of when he checks on Camille like he periodically does.

Before she leaves for work, Amma apologizes to Camille for her behavior and claims she thought her sister was blowing her off. She and her friends think there is something between her and Richard.

After Amma offers her a joint and asks her not to tell Adora, Camille leaves them to whatever they were doing in Amma’s room.

Later, the girls are seen at school practicing for some pageant, which is most likely Calhoun Day. The man instructing them is Kirk Lacey, who seems to have bitter memories of something. Knowing Wind Gap, there is no telling what it could be. Amma tries to comfort him, but it doesn’t seem to work.

On their tour of the woods, Camille shows Richard a spot where a local girl either killed herself or was murdered and a clearing where the local football players would regularly have their way with cheerleaders on Friday nights.

Camille alludes to Richard that she was one of them, a fact which makes sense since because in flashbacks, young Camille is regularly seen wearing a cheerleader uniform. Present Camille thinks that the girls were killed by different people, an idea Richard finds intriguing.

In their tour of Wind Gap’s dark underbelly, Richard reveals that he became a cop because he once wanted to become a vet but when he saw the trauma people inflicted on animals he lost interest in treating animals and got more interested in perusing the people who did it to them.

The two continue to talk interchangeably about themselves and the case. They both think it was someone who knew the girls and Richard comments it was someone who feels powerless. He also adds that Bob Nash’s alibi checks out.

Camille then shows Richard a creepy, broken down old shed that she has bad memories of. Richard senses it and asks if something bad happened to her there, something that she doesn’t deny. It turns out Ann and Natalie would both play there.

Eventually, Camille and Richard get incredibly intimate in the woods, with Camille taking the lead. Later when it gets dark he drops Camille off at home, kissing her before leaving in Sharp Objects.

Meanwhile, Vickery pays a visit on Adora at home. After serving drinks and exchanging pleasantries, Vickery reveals that he doesn’t think celebrating Calhoun Day is a good idea under present circumstances. Adora replies saying it could be could for the community and hints that certain people in town could have him removed from his position.

Vickery and Adora both chuckle at this, with Vickery commenting that Adora doesn’t pull punches.

But then he gets serious and tells Adora that they need to discuss her children, because one is dangerous and the other is in danger. What they say isn’t told, but it goes on for a while and from whatever is said, it’s clear that it upsets Alan (Henry Czerny).

Not much time has been devoted to Alan before now, but he is the only character in the show who listens to music as much as Camille does. He is almost always seen listening to his records on his stereo.

On his way out, Vickery sees Richard and Camille returning and the two men make plans to discuss their day. After leaving Adora, Vickery visits Jackie at home.

He asks her what Adora isn’t telling her about the Preaker girl, aka Camille, to which Jackie says she doesn’t know what he means. Vickery merely nods and this and leaves.

Speaking of the Preaker girl, Camille is going upstairs when her mother surprises her. Adora abruptly reveals that Camille was always so wilful even as a child and she thought once she had Camille, Adora’s own mother would love her.

But apparently, things didn’t turn out quite as Adora planned. As befitting the episode’s title, she then tells her daughter she smells ripe after her time with Richard.

Later that night, Alan has a few drinks and confronts Adora, saying that she never shows him any sympathy and she isn’t the only one who lost a daughter. Adora promptly blames their fighting on Camille, claiming that she causes discord wherever she goes.

Alan promptly defends Camille, saying everything isn’t her fault and Adora knows it. Alan is last seen leering at Adora while she lays in bed, with the last shot showing him hovering over her like he is about to kiss her or kill her. In Wind Gap, both seem like plausible options.

But no one in Wind Gap is having a worse day then John Keene. After being fired from his job, which turns out to be working for Adora at the hog plant, he comes home to find his mother passed out on the couch.

He then finds the telltale sign of functioning alcoholism; hidden bottles that have been carefully hidden.

That night after losing interest in sex with Ashley, John goes out to some abandoned field, which Vickery sees because he is following him. But his day is about to get worse because Ashley finds something under his bed; something that freaks her out and makes her wash her hands and grab a bottle of bleach.

John eventually winds up at the bar where Camille can usually be found on Sharp Objects. Of all the characters in Wind Gap, Camille and John actually have the most in common; they are both unusual characters who hate the town and the two bond over their admittedly being “weird.”

John then reveals that Natalie liked spiders and once jabbed another girl in the eye with a pencil and that Bob Nash thinks that his daughter was on the right path until she met Natalie.

But then he drops another piece of information; not only did Adora know Natalie and Ann, but Amma was friends with both. They even used to hang out in that disgusting old shed Camille showed Richard.

After hearing this, Camille rushes home and goes straight to Amma’s room. She isn’t there, because she is out with her friends shooting a handgun at street signs, which matches the street sign Vickery noticed earlier and was puzzled by.

This episode of Sharp Objects features the visitors and citizens alike of Wind Gap alike reliving awful memories. While talking in the woods, Richard tells Camille that he is getting close to something because people are nervous. We’ll find out soon enough if he is right.