Sharp Objects: Season One (Review)

Sharp Objects
Season One
HBO 2018
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

Recent media representations of the South, and small town America in general, have not exactly been kind. "Look at how awful where you live is!" say unimaginably wealthy people who live in such bastions of decency as New York City, and Los Angeles, California. That inclination shows no sign of stopping with HBO's eight episode adaptation of Gillian Flynn's mystery novel, Sharp Objects.
Sharp Objects stars Amy Adams as Camille Preaker, a troubled journalist sent to investigate a grisly murder in her small, Southern hometown, where her empathetic boss hopes Preaker will work out her many issues. The cause of those issues is immediately apparent, as the dressed in black reporter's social queen of a mother proves to be an abusive narcissist, and her hometown stocked full of drunk, wicked, and loathsome gossips.
I groaned at most of the interactions in Sharp Objects, not because they were true to life, or my life growing up in a small Southern town, but because few of them featured characters who were recognizably human. Indeed, it's difficult to believe the society in this fictional small town could function with the way each citizen seems only able to serve their basest impulses at every given moment. Yes, a sunny facade hiding a darker exterior is a very real thing in a lot of small towns, Southern or not. However, most people are decent, and want to help other people. In the world of Sharp Objects, maybe Camille and two other people are decent, and everyone else is strung out on drugs or is an alcoholic incapable of not acting like an evil little worm at any moment they're awake. That's quite a cynical and out-of-touch view, and I found it very difficult to find any level of identification with Sharp Objects, outside of a small handful of realistically difficult moments Camille has with her mother.
The only reasons to watch this show are Adams' brilliant performance, the incredible cinematography, and the hypnotic classic rock soundtrack. Adams' career shot out of the gate after her lead role in 2005's Junebug. Junebug also takes place in a small Southern town, but is a realistic look at actual human behavior, populated by complex, believable characters who have flaws, but also do good. I would be lying if I said I haven't had an affinity for Adams since that film, and even in the ridiculous, exaggerated and overblown world of Sharp Objects, she still shines. She believably portrays Camille's trauma, her functional alcoholism, her self-harming tendencies, and that tiny kernel within her that wants to survive. Miguel Sandavol also puts in great work as her cancer-stricken boss, the only real parent Camille has. Conversely, Patricia Clarkson, who I would have previously thought would be likable in anything, is saddled with the thankless mother role, essentially saying, "No, Camille, don't do that. There's something wrong with you, and there always has been," like clockwork every five minutes of Sharp Objects' eight hour runtime.
But hell, let me not blame Clarkson. She didn't create that character, or write those lines. That would be Flynn, and the show's other handful of writers. Clarkson also didn't come up with the show's laughably bad twist ending. I can't completely throw director, Jean-Marc Vallée, under the bus, either, as he at least makes the proceedings hypnotic and seductive, to the point that the show is actually worth watching. However, if I've got to sit through another Southern Gothic tale of how small towns are full of dirty little secrets, and we should all be ashamed with ourselves for our complicity in living there, I am going to go Red Ross on them.