[Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn]

I just read the book and honestly, whatever problems I had with it, the show was better.

 I was shocked at how little Amma was actually in the book. The show also fleshed our the relationship between her and Camille/Adora. I also liked that the show showcased Vickery and Alan a little more. Alan is just completely oblivious in the book.

Still hated the ending and thought it was stupid, but at least Amma was shown as being prone to violence a few times. 

And one of the strangest parts of watching the show first was how they played Amma’s creepy/incesty feelings for Camille as being all Amma. In the book, Camille is super fucking creepy. She talks (thinks?) about Amma’s breasts and legs multiple times, says she’s obsessed with her and licks blood off her finger. Yeah, Camille’s mind is a weird place

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8 minutes ago, Slovenly Muse said:

My partner and I were just talking about this as we have just started Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale. What he very smartly pointed out about shows based on books was, how long did it take the author to conceive/research/write/edit that book? How many drafts did it take? How many years did it take those half-formed ideas to really coalesce into a tight and compelling story? With really good books, the ones worth adapting, the author wasn't just writing for the sake of having a product to sell. They had a message, a point, an idea to explore that was meaningful to them and motivated the process. With the first season of a show like this, the entire season is already laid out for you through months and maybe years of dedicated, passionate labour by the author of the book (and betas and editors), plus the amount of pre-planning required to even pitch the idea of adapting it in the first place. But when you leave the book and try to do a season 2, you have a much more limited amount of time to write a new story from scratch that gives all the contracted actors something major to do, plan the visual style and presentation of the season, settle internal creative disagreements, make inevitable changes mandated by the network, and get filming so it can air by the next awards deadline. When you consider the amount of work required in the time given, there's basically no way a second season of a book-based show can ever live up to the first.

I'm working my way through Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale, and I'll give S2 of Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects a chance, but my expectations are not particularly high.

If you have all this talent under contract, even if Amy Adams doesn’t want to do it or just wants a limited commitment, I think you wring something else out of this.

If I was an HBO executive and I had a major talent like Scanlon under contract for probably pretty cheap, you’re damn right she’s getting an Amma spin off. She has superstar potential. It’s like having a star quarterback on a rookie scale contract.

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1 hour ago, scrb said:

Ratings?

Finale supposedly had the highest ratings so HBO might be willing to throw money at Adams to do another season.

Since she gets a lot of movie roles, even if she agrees, it might be over a year later.

The controversial finale and ending probably feeds into it.  Look at all the articles and discussions about it.

Controversy will probably trump good storytelling and if they can entice Adams with enough money, they will probably do another season.

Theoretically, you could time jump it to when Amma is getting out of prison and make her the focus so Amy Adams would have less of a time commitment.

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7 hours ago, Buttless said:

The viewer puts in time an empathy, trying to understand the main character, Camille. We think we are watching a drama, but when the abrupt shift in tone happens at the very end, the makers have essentially betrayed their audience and turned whatever came before it into a farce.  At that moment, when you lose respect for the creators of the show because of the trick tthey pulled on you, you lose all the built up empathy from what had gone on in the weeks before it happened.  That is my take on it, and how I felt.

It's not that we havent been shown how nasty Adora or Amma are. But that there is also a lot of purposeful misdirection, a lot of framing the men as shady or questionable when there neednt have been, and there had been a lot of the makers saying , We changed up the endingl y'all!  When you take out the stupid misdirection they put in there, youd have more of a cohesive character study, and the story wouldnt be as ludicrous and holey as swiss cheese, Im guessing.

The show actually had more than one theme, and the biggest one that the makers admitted to believing/misleading with,  was how the audience, like the people of Wind Gap , would not believe that girls would be violent. Which is a bullshit premise and only happens because the makers pull their punches. There is absolutely no development that shows Amma's rollerskating sidekicks to be sociopathic, which they would have had to have been to do what they did and be conscienceless. If it were the dudes Amma was hanging out with that had been her accomplices in murder instead of the girls, it would have been  exactly the same.  They'd have been underestimated the same, because there were no real clues to  makes sense of their behavior.  Look at all the posters on here who are complaining about this very thing, and how things that should have been explained or evident, werent. You dont go from,  'that girls a bratty bitch,' to , 'that girls a murdering bratty bitch.' That's not a logical leap to make. 

Same with the red herrings. take a look back in this thread. People have mentioned them all over. The whole purpose of throwing Mr Lacy in the mix was a red herring.  Excluding John from finding his sister, in that scene.  And on and on. Bringing in the MBP  so late in the show. Etc.

The ending song absolutely can just be about Amma, even though the song has been used fron Camille's perspective before in the show. Where do you get that idea that it cant? The use of it shifted from Camille's perspective to Amma's at the end.  Camille is caught in shock at the magnitude of Amma's betrayal, and the last person we are looking to is Amma, now. And her last line.  Before it's cut to black and the song kicks in.  So you can interpret that scene and passage in more than one way.  The way I took it, it can be argued that the makers balled up and threw out Camille, frozen in shock/horror,  at that point, while they simultaneously elevated Amma to a funny/cute/scary anti-hero stance.

It could have made more sense for both the story and the director's comments if the song had the lyrics, I need all your attention. But hey, they were pleased as pigs in mud that they got some Led Zepplin songs because it was such a catch for them, that they had to make that work; I get it.

Nothing about Adora or Amma is about love. Nothing. They are controlling sadistic psychopathic personalities and they consume peoples attention, and what normal people would call love; like Camille, who is shown happy with even the lowest spark of what appears to be love.   A& A are a different breed.   They dont love. They consume people. Adora consumed Marian. Amma consumed those girls she killed.

Again, go back to the scene where Amma tells Camille she could just "EAT" her. Nothing about that delivery is about admiration or love for Camille. Go back to Ammaa's reaction shot after she asks  Camille if she would be sadder if Amma or John died, and Camille says she doesnt want either Amma or John to die. Go back to Amma standing on the landing of the second story looking across the hall and glowering, those are all prescient of the ending. Those scenes are not meant to be overlooked or  given a soft interpretation.

I  guess this show can be called art. It's manipulative enough. I did like a lot of it, visually and in the acting, in some of the plot usage. And YMMV on some of it, because of that.

I agree with you that the tonal shift of the ending was the worst part. That one moment completely changed the show you had been watching for 8 hours from one about Camille and her journey into a show about Amma.

It only took two seconds to turn her into the most interesting character on the show. And I certainly think it was intentional as you do that she never looked prettier than she did in that moment

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7 hours ago, peach said:

That actress is so incredibly off-putting in that scene, and the glimpse of Camille's fear as she senses Amma's malevolence was just so scary.  The whole exchange was palpable.

She also gives her that look back at Adora's dinner table, when she asks Camille if she would be more sad if John died, or if she (Amma) died.  and Camille says, "I don't want anybody to die."  Wrong. Answer.

Someone mentioned that sticking a lollipop in Camille's hair was the act of a petulant 5yo, but I thought the WAY she did it was extremely creepy and menacing and almost sexual, as was all her behavior when she was mocking Camille and Richard.  Contemptuous and gleeful.  And Camille was scared of her then, too.

Amma was inappropriately sexual with Camille the whole time. There was nothing worse in that lollipop scene to me than what had come at the beginning of that episode when Amma was all over her in the bedroom.

I read it at the time, and still do really, is that Amma had a “crush” and kids who have crushes often act harsh or mean to the crush because they don’t know how to deal with it in other ways.

It isn’t even all that odd or completely inappropriate that a girl might have a crush on her sister, who she wasn’t raised with and doesn’t know and who has been described as his incredibly cool and wild person. It would almost be cute or sweet if Amma didn’t take it too far. Camille’s not blameless there. She allowed it to escalate every time to the point that Amma almost had her hand down her pants.

All of this is he sign of a girl without boundaries who needs psychological help. It did not signify a violent murderer who turns into the Hulk when she’s angry

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Apparently the finale hit a ratings high for the series so the hype worked at least. I guess there’s a question of whether most of those people liked it and would come back for more.

Also, Elizabeth Perkins said they’re all signed for season 2 so I imagine a dump truck full of money will pull up at Amy Adams’ house in the near future to see if they get a yes

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8 minutes ago, Slovenly Muse said:

Hmm. I guess the beautiful thing about art is that there's no one "right answer," and it can mean anything to anyone. I didn't read any of the book, or behind-the-scenes interviews or anything, and I wasn't on the forums very much, so my impression comes entirely from what was on the screen. And I thought everything was there that needed to be, as long as you were watching the story that was being told, and not trying to twist it into the story you expect. I saw this whole series as Camille's descent into the darkness of her past. All of her coping mechanisms (the cutting, the music, the drinking, etc) on display, and the deeper she goes, and the more she interacts with the people who helped create that darkness, the clearer WE see how she became the person she is. Finally she descends so low that she discovers the base level where her family and the deaths are connected. Her mistake is that she's Adora's child, and she stops digging, and just accepts the easy (well, easier) answer, and takes Amma home with her. She is wobbling between kindness and Adora's smothering, and is definitely leaning toward kindness, but the fact that she does make Amma's care about her own recovery (and doesn't see what's been right in front of her face the whole time) shows that she is wobbling indeed. I'm not sure what you mean that the ending flushes away our feelings for Camille. It seems like it only reinforces what we already knew (She's a damaged person trying to do her best despite the ways her family messed her up). Can you explain a bit more?

I'm also not sure what you mean by being "manipulated" by the creators into not seeing the girls as violent. The story was about Camille and the people of Wind Gap not seeing the girls as violent, but THEY had Bob Nash and John Keane to blame. We (and Camille) always had the strong impression that John/Bob were innocent, and I never thought I was supposed to suspect them. There weren't any red herrings thrown our way, everything was pretty much laid out for us, the show just didn't explicitly connect the dots until the end. What sort of manipulation do you mean?

As to the song, it can't just be about Amma, because it's used at least once before in the series just by (and about) Camille, and that song specifically is one of her escape mechanisms. "I need your love" applies equally to ALL the women in her family (and maybe Alan too). I think it is THEIR song, not just Amma's (and yes, everything Amma did was about needing love, because she'd never experienced real love, only Adora's murderous co-dependency, and would do anything to secure even that twisted version of love all to herself, including killing the friends who were intruding on Adora's affections.). I wouldn't say it's definitely a signal that Camille zones out to Led Zeppelin, I kind of saw it as more of an invitation to the viewer to adopt Camille's escape mechanism and pretend we never learned the truth, content ourselves with the easy answer. Whether or not that's what the director had in mind, I don't know. I can only say what it meant to me. But whatever he did, it worked on me!

I think Camille knows that her relationship with Amma is codependent and that she’s not just taking care of her because of “kindness”.

She’s not Adora and wouldn’t hurt Amma, but she definitely “needs” her in a way that goes beyond simple sisterly love.

Camille is a very lonely person. Her boss and his wife seem like lovely people but when they are your only friends that’s not a great spot to be in. Amma gave her a purpose. A reason to clean up her life. She now has a sister and a best friend again and even a daughter on some level. It’s not surprising at all that someone in her position, that has gone through what she’s gone through, would go overboard and maybe willfully not see what’s right in front of her because she doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t seem to have put Amma in any kind of therapy, maybe because she doesn’t want to learn that Amma is mentally ill and beyond her help which might get her taken away. She also hasn’t stopped the sleeping in the same bed thing. When she tells Curry about it, she doesn’t seem upset or overly concerned. It’s just a fact of life. On some level she probably doesn’t want it to end and would rather let Amma stay a baby or little girl for as long as possible. 

I haven’t read the book, but if I had to guess, Camille would be just as likely to set that dollhouse on fire and burn the evidence as she would be to turn Amma in

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I think part of my sympathy for Amma comes from Eliza Scanlon’s performance. She was great and despite the bad things that Amma did (prior the stupid reveal) I still kind of liked her and felt for her.

So definitely sign me up for a Scanlon led Amma show where she’s a Hannibal Lechter or Dexter type anti-hero

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12 minutes ago, Buttless said:

You mentioned the US's incarceration of children, so I went there. Although it's fictional, Amma hits every major point of sociopathy, and she's done extremely disturbing and violent things. Im A-OK with the US system locking these kids up for life, when there is no cure to this disorder. There is no mistaking that  she is solidly in the worst of the worst APD clusters. Knowing what we know, as televison viewers, ha.

 

The thing is, her problem isnt just related to her mom or Camille.  The traits she displays are classic APD, and if her mom and Camille arent there, she'll find another person to use.  And because she has these trait, we go back to the fact that there is no therapy to treat them. She's not going to get more self-aware, or grow a conscience, or see her therapist as anything more than a chump.  She may have irreparable brain damage, also. Altho she's shown to be healthy as a horse when not being actively poisoned.

You could live next to a child molester. Or a person who has some sociopathic traits.  You probably do.

But statistically  you will not be living next to a serial killer of little girls who tortured held and mutilated them, like Amma.

Perhaps you’re right. Whether Amma’s condition can be treated is something I don’t know. I’ll take your word on it since you seem to have some knowledge on the subject.

That being said, she’s still young enough that somebody should be given the chance to try and help her. She is going to live another 70 years or so presuming the poisoning has not done some kind of irreparable harm. Rather than just throwing her in a hole for that time (which costs a lot of money) it’s worth trying to help her. That’s really my point. 

Here’s an interesting reddit thread on this exact topic. Lots of book spoilers (and given what is quoted book Amma seems a lot worse than tv Amma)

I don’t know how to link the thread but anybody that cares can easily find it lol

[Media for Sharp Objects]

7 minutes ago, Buttless said:

I dont read crossover fan fiction, but Id make an exception here .

As Adora is being led away she turns to dust...

The editor and Amma have to go here too. Camille needs to lose everything. Lol

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14 minutes ago, Buttless said:

Then how about she lives next to you and your daughter's home when she gets out at 18 :D

There is no cure for that kind of violent sociopathic behavior. Therapy makes them smarter at working the system and getting  more victims.   These are among the very few people in society who you could say are "broken" enough to not be allowed to be free around other people. They are lethally dangerous, and you can see when juveniles who have committed violent acts were released  from jail or psych ward internment to go on and rack up more bloody victims.  Antisocial  personality disorders are nothing to fuck around with.  Ive yet to see evidence that anyone's been helped while a teenager, and no one just grows out of them.  When youre talking about an Amma, she's coldbloodedly killed, kidnapped and tortured and mutilated 3 young girls.  That is beyond the pale of the judicial system and the psychiatric system. That is special circumstances ,regardless of her poisoning or abuse. She was of sound mind when she committed all these acts: "Dont tell moma." 

That's another thing that is so ridiculous. That there are five -FIVE- little girls in this tiny town who are stone cold sociopaths. Amma killed cats with Ann and Natalie. Natalie was a menace to society, lol You want this kid living next to you  or anyone else? She kills cats. Bites body parts off. Slams her sharpened pencil into other girls eyes at the slightest provocation. Hey, John? It wasnt the town. It was Natalie.

Prison is no place for people who need help for addictions,  or mental health issues and some personality disorders. Age is not a factor here. Amma is in THE  most dangerous offender category.  If people think they can change these types, they are allowed to try it, while they are incarcerated in some type of facility.

I never said that Amma shouldn’t be incarcerated. She obviously should. And so should Kelsey and Jodes, who as far as I know have none of the mitigating factors that Amma has.

Whats their excuse? Peer pressure?

As for the cat stuff, I didn’t read the book and the show never mentioned it so I’ll take your word for it. As for wanting to live next door to Amma, no I wouldn’t. But I might live next door to one now. I have no idea.

All I know is that the show (I can’t speak to the book) did not show me any evidence that Amma is violent or dangerous to people outside of this specific trigger surrounding Adora and Camille.

Whether that can be treated or not I don’t know. Perhaps she’ll need to spend the rest of her life in a mental hospital. But I stand by my opinion that kids her age, particularly given the mitigating factors, should at least be given the chance to get better and prove that they can live a productive life without being a danger to themselves or others.

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57 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

Maybe not outright violence but she has shown a proclivity for childish rage and jealousy not to mention bullying behavior even against her own sister.  

She put a lollipop in her sisters hair. It was he act of a petulant 5 year old. It didn’t scream “murderer” to me at the time 

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4 hours ago, Buttless said:

Yes; youre correct; they dont formally diagnose them. And the term they use to describe them is antisocial personality disorder traits.  This is political,  imo, because they just have theories and no proof of any cure for real psychopathy (a weighted word they wont use anymore). Im a layman, and am discussing this in layman's term. There is a history of murdering children going back to Pomeroy and back further who we'd look at and call sociopaths/psychopaths.

Nurture is not edging over nature though.  Bioresearch in psychopathy is showing a strong in psychopaths they are studying. Whether born with a brain abnormality, brain interference through chemical or physical accident, and yes, though inherited clusters of disorders. Because Joya, Adora and Amma all showed strong strains of sociopathy, the last two murderous, I think most people would conclude that they passed on some genes that environment possibly triggered into a mix that tipped them into the personality disorder. I mean, this is fiction. It usually takes more than nuture to make a person who would kill for pleasure or profit.

Sociopaths arent mentally deficient in intelligence. They know that society deems it wrong in so many ways. Internally, they might think theres nothing wrong with it, and that victims deserve what they get too. Like you say, Amma knew to hide her behavior.  My bigger problem of this story is how rat poison is being used as the physical reason why she's a psychopath.

Locking up children for years is a uniquely American thing and one of the many, many serious issues in our criminal justice system that needs reform.

Amma deserves to be punished. I don’t think anyone is denying that. But she is also is young enough, and there are enough mitigating factors for me at least, that I do believe that she should get a chance at rehabilitation and given a second chance at some point in adulthood.

She doesn’t kill, or even show violent tendencies, randomly. She has a very specific problem right now. Perhaps there is a therapy/medication combo that can help this. Maybe just being away and having less contact with Adora and Camille will help. I don’t know.

I’m just not willing to condemn a 15 year old girl (or however old she is) to life in prison where there are these many mitigating factors 

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5 minutes ago, ferjy said:

And how in the world are we supposed to infer that from that scene? (Not irritated with you, but with the writers.) The writers are writing for themselves, not for the viewers. I prefer Moxie Cat's rendition of the situation.

Oh there’s no way you could’ve inferred it and it’s completely stupid.

Just a terrible job all around by the creative team. Not the actors. They can only work with what they’re given but Noxon, Flynn And Valle showed their asses with this finale.

I just still can’t believe that we’re expected to swallow that Amma (and Kelsey/Jodes for that matter) who showed absolutely zero predilection for violence the entire series suddenly turned into the Incredible Hulk

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4 minutes ago, Moxie Cat said:

IRT Mae's hand, it looked like normal reminders a kid might write on her hand in pen. I could make out Call Mom and Text A (Amma?). I don't think they were meant to be weird for Mae, but just serve as a reminder to Camille that as normal as that dinner was, her background and issues will always be in her head.

So many unresolved questions. Just so disappointed in this. Last summer I stuck with Twin Peaks all summer. This summer, this show. Both had some redeeming scenes and high points, but overall both were serious let downs. I hope I will have better judgement about what deserves my TV time next summer!

I saw on Reddit that the girl who played Mae answered a fan on Twitter who asked what the writing meant and she said that it was to show her growing fascination with and interest in Camille.

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14 minutes ago, DangerousMinds said:

Amma had to let Adora poison her in order to receive her motherly love and attention. Adora was giving that to Ann and Natalie for “free.” That must’ve made Amma extremely angry and hurt.

Right. To Amma, she and Adora had a deal and the attention Adora paid to the other girls was breaking the “deal”

Its not completely dissimilar with Camille. I’m sure that Amma “loves” her in her own way but again it’s sort of transactional. Amma is giving Camille everything she’s wanted. A sister, a daughter, a best friend, etc. And at an age when most kids rebel against their parents and chafe at their rules, Amma lets Camille dote on her. But Amma expects 100% of Camille’s love in exchange for this. And she doesn’t understand that her friend liking Camille doesn’t mean that Camille loves her any less.

Again, in Amma’s mind this is a zero sum game with a winner and a loser and she takes the ultimate step to “win”

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4 hours ago, peach said:

Right?  Mae would still be alive.  This show made me think of I, Tonya in a way.  I left that movie feeling a huge amount of compassion for Tonya because of her upbringing, and still thinking she was terrible.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

True, but Tonya Harding was an adult who clearly knew what she was doing. That’s not clear with Amma.

While she might not be legally insane, as she seems to understand right from wrong given that she tries to hide the crimes, her upbringing is certainly a mitigating factor for me. All the more galling that Camille didn’t seem to have her in any kind of professional therapy.

 I mentioned this in another thread but Amma just doesn’t understand that love/attention/affection is not transactional and can’t run out. This is just how she was taught by Adora.

In her mind Camille, or Adora for that matter, only have so much love to go around and that any that she is not getting she’s lost. It’s a zero sum game to her. This is partly why not being given any real understanding as to her “triggers” was frustrating. We don’t really know what Ann or Natalie did that made her think she was losing some of Adora’s love and attention that was finite.

Same kind of thing with Camille. The new friend didn’t really do anything but Amma wants all of Camille’s love and any attention she pays this other girl has been lost to Amma. Camille’s answer about just wanting Amma to be happy and that she didn’t care if she was a writer or whatever obviously wasn’t enough for Amma. She even went back to her creepy, incesty well for a moment there.

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Just listened to the Vanity Fair recap podcast. Listen if you want to be further enraged by the obliviousness and cluelessness of Noxon and Valle. And the hosts fawning over them was really embarrassing.

And poor Eliza Scanlon did he best she could explaining his dreck as a 19 year old kid thrown to the wolves. One interesting thing she said was that she intended to play Amma as somewhat relieved that Camille found out as she thought that Amma doesn’t want to do this but can’t help and wants to be caught.

If only the genius director had actually let her show that instead of the nonsense we got.

 I can’t believe how poorly this thing ended with such a ridiculous tonal shift. Spent 8 hours setting a tone and mood and completely erased with a jump scare.

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3 minutes ago, LydiaE said:

I was under the impression that she ramped up her regular alcohol use/abuse in order to cope with old feelings/trauma resurfacing due to the fact that she was going back to Wind Gap.  She didn't know or recognize Amma, so I assume she left Wind Gap at a young age and never went back to visit, etc. 

I don’t know if Camille is “clean” (or Amma for that matter) but she’s definitely down to a more reasonable level. She actually looked really good, healthy and happy.

Even Amma, I never really understood why she was such hot stuff in Wind Gap but in the St. Louis scenes, with her hair done and more normal clothes I actually thought she was really pretty.

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I know this really doesn’t matter for a fictional drama, but as someone who likes a little realism, is there any explanation for how, legally, Camille is allowed to remove Amma from her home and take her to a brand new city hours away?

As far as I know, Alan has not been charged with anything. Did he allow this? Give up guardianship? Presuming he gets cleared of criminality and that his only crime is being oblivious, he should probably get his kid back. 

You can’t just show up with a kid and enroll them in school, put them on your insurance etc. Camille has to have some kind of legal paperwork to do that. When did that happen?

Also, is anyone from the state checking in on them? I know CPS can order temporary guardians to provide psychiatric care to their charge. Doesn’t seem like Camille is doing that (or it isn’t working considering Amma still won’t sleep alone).

Further, the Crellins are really wealthy. I presume they’ll get sued by the Keene’s and Nash family at some point but old money families like that usually have a trust for their kids that wouldn’t be collectible. Wouldn’t Camille have some access to that? Why can’t she buy a decent car? Or a small house that’s more appropriate for the two of them?

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2 hours ago, CheezyXpressed said:

I read the book and also thought the ending of the show was pretty bad. I knew who the killer was and was waiting for it to play out, but it kind of just fizzled there. Putting the book aside, just from the show I wondered why no one was questioning Adora about all this. Sure, she's a sick person, but would she pull the teeth of the girls just because they're biters? That's not Adora's MO, so I was hoping someone would bring this up as they try to figure out who the real killer was.

Only none of that happened. I did like the closure between Richard and Camille. I also liked how the editor's wife clearly didn't like Amma. But that ending, for a mystery show, was incredibly lacking. It just made me think of all of the other plot holes in the show.

Also, the show teased that Amma was into Camille's rapist, but nothing happened there. Did Amma just get close to him because she figured out that he was close to Camille? If so, how did she find out?

I'm bummed that they didn't adapt the epilogue. It would have helped wrapped things up and provided some semblance of closure as oppose to "Don't tell mama."

I didn’t notice anything between the editor’s wife and Amma. Amma seemed charming enough during those St. Louis scenes

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14 minutes ago, preeya said:

‘Sharp Objects’ Author Explains That Brutally Abrupt Ending

Alan Sepinwall's post-mortem of the series here:   https://goo.gl/gQHKt3

"Rooting for" is a great choice of words given the dental aspect of the ending.

That interview with Flynn is obnoxious. She even admits that they didn’t really leave any clues that you’d notice in rewatch and then said that she consulted with people on the “physics” of Amma being able to commit the murders. 

Please

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I can’t believe that the critics/recappers seem to have liked this. And frankly, the explanations from Valle, Noxon and Flynn just make it worse.

They still made no effort to explain what exactly triggers Amma or how she roped her friends into her plot. I mean, she’s a decent manipulator, but not that good.

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1 hour ago, Buttless said:

Oh I didnt mean the posters screencaps. I thought they were being pulled off a search engine.  Like, they were popping up all over the net now, because viewers were just as confused as we were, as to what really was happening in that montage edit.

 

 My criticism was directed at the makers of SO. Thye didnt want to exloit little girl's murders, and by throwing that smash edit up there, they guaranteed these stills of screen caps would be out there. That people would have to pause and inch over what was happening, which makes their deaths very gruesome. 

What TPTB ended up doing on this show, was be disrespectful of the little girl's deaths, and raise Amma to some kind of charming anti-hero, especially with that quasi-comedic ending.

They definitely (and I give Scanlon more credit for this than the writing) did turn Amma into someone actually worth rooting for in this last episode.

Which is another reason the ending is so cheap 

[S01.E08: Milk]

6 hours ago, peach said:

Yeah, that part was like...wut?  Didn't really fit with the character, either, imo. I would think Camille's struggles in raising Amma would be related to her own lack of boundaries and immaturity, like when she did drugs with Amma.  Amma was psychologically the more powerful of the two, she was just limited by having a 13yo mind.

Edited to add that Camille was also drunk when she was running around with teenagers, and they clearly portrayed her as sober and functional back in St Louis

That part of her article was interesting and again might’ve been a good idea to further explore. I took it more that Camille is self aware enough to understand that she’s not just taking care of Amma because she loves her or it’s the right thing to do or whatever.

She understands that amma is filling a very large emotional void for her and that she likes that void being filled. Camille made an Adora like comment at dinner when Amma mentioned being an anchorwoman or something and said to the effect “let’s worry about high school first”. That’s not a completely abnormal thing to say to your kid but given the context of the article I think it was meant to be more literal that Camille doesn’t want to think about college because Amma just got here and she doesn’t want to let her go lest that hole in her heart come back.

Again, this was all really nice stuff that could’ve been wrapped up in a very satisfying way instead of Amma hulking out