Everything You May Have Missed in ‘Sharp Objects’ So Far

HBO’s latest addictive drama is full of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments that provide glimpses into Camille’s troubled psyche. Here are all of them so far.

It’s hard to pull your eyes away from Sharp Objects, HBO’s newest prestige drama. What with its bleak small-town setting, murder mystery plot, iPod-supplied scores and impressionistic editing, it plays something like the Southern-raised lovechild of the equally addictive True Detective and director Jean-Marc Vallée’s Big Little Lies (with The Miniaturist as a distant relative). Adapted from a novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn and starring Amy Adams as journalist Camille Preaker, it’s a dark look at the flip-side of Gone Girl’s Missouri setting: where the Dunnes’ drama played out against the blandness of the ‘burbs, Sharp Objects is set in a sultry Missouri town that feels like it’s slid down the map and fallen well into the Deep South.

It’s difficult to resist the charms of its evocative cinematography and immersive sound design, which work to throw viewers right into the oppressive, sticky heat of Wind Gap, MO. Lights reflect off each glistening, sweaty face, and every line of dialogue has to compete to be heard above the unbroken chorus of cicadas that scores nearly all its scenes. Sharp Objects’ sound brilliantly fleshes out its world in other ways, too: every clink and slosh from Camille’s vodka bottles is sharpened, every rustle of a bag transmitted in high definition to further heighten the show’s already intense atmosphere.

What with all this – plus sumptuous sets, loaded editing and captivating performances – every element of Sharp Objects feels designed to grab your attention and hold it for each hour-long installment. Richly layered as it is, though, even the most eagle-eyed viewers may find themselves too enchanted by Camille’s frazzled charm to catch the show’s less conspicuous details.

Camille is a deeply troubled person – self-harm, alcohol addiction, familial estrangement and decades-old grief all take their toll on her – and the show gives us ample opportunity to appreciate just how dark her frame of mind is by adopting her perspective and taking on some of that trauma. Hidden in each episode are unexpected little cameo appearances from Camille’s plethora of emotional problems, so quick they’re gone in a flash: a little shift in focus length here, an ever-so-slightly lingering shot of scene detail there, and Sharp Objects visually elaborates on something it’s hinted at before. Some of these illusions are so scarcely different from the “reality” of the show that even viewers who do catch them might dismiss them as evidence of their own lack of concentration (a clever ploy on the filmmakers’ part).

These moments aren’t “clues” exactly, and as such, they’re not absolutely essential to understanding Sharp Objects or predicting where it’s going. Think of them as bonus features for avid viewers; little Easter eggs that provide extra detail into things the show already establishes in more conspicuous ways. They are, too, a testament to the production’s stunning attention-to-detail, and to the power of carefully-placed props and meticulously-planned cinematography in adding supplementary layers to an already gripping show. With that being said, if you’ve looked away from the screen for more than a second while watching Sharp Objects, you might find this list all of the show’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments informative. Please be advised that spoiler warnings apply, as do trigger warnings for self-harm:

Episode One, “Vanish”

1. ‘BAD’, ‘DRUNK’, and ‘BLEED’

Scratched into Camille’s desk at home is her attempt to describe herself in three words. In three short syllables, ‘BAD’, ‘DRUNK’, and ‘BLEED’ summarise what her chief issues are: no self-esteem, a self-harm problem, and an alcohol addiction.

2. ‘DIRT’ and ‘DIRTY’

When we first see Camille’s car in St. Louis, there’s nothing on the trunk, but then, suddenly, ‘DIRT’ appears. In a later scene in Wind Gap, Camille hallucinates ‘DIRTY’ in the same place, a small shift emblematic of the way she feels the residents of her hometown view her – an idea supported by her self-identifying as ‘trash’ in an earlier conversation with her boss (Miguel Sandoval).

3. ‘Last Exit to Change Your Mind’

Unless someone in St Louis’s traffic department has a particularly dry sense of humor, this is another of Camille’s hallucinations. Its meaning is pretty clear: this is a manifestation of her reluctance to return to Wind Gap, the site of so much of her trauma.

4. ‘DON’T BE A VICTIM’

This sign, which catches Camille’s attention in Wind Gap’s police station, is more than a little objectionable, especially given the crisis the residents are going through. Much too wordy to be one of Camille’s hallucinations, it’s a reminder of the paranoia paralyzing the town.

5. Marian’s ghostly appearance

At this point in Sharp Objects‘ debut episode, we already know Adams’ character sees dead people, but the significance of her sister’s ghostly appearance here is that the camera isn’t adopting Camille’s perspective in this sequence; it’s her mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson) who we follow across the landing. Just a few minutes prior to this reveal, during a flashback of Camille and Marian in their youth, there’s a line of dialogue that might provide some explanation: Marian tells her older sister that “Mama said she saw a ghost once.” In scenes like these, Sharp Objects blurs the line between mind tricks and the genuinely supernatural, but the significance of this eerie scene mainly lies in its tacit suggestion that, despite their barely-contained animosity for one another, Camille and her mother may be more alike than they know.

6. ‘WRONG’

This is another clear hallucination of Camille’s, and it’s a great example of how Sharp Objects uses near-imperceptible shifts in focus to draw our eye towards evidence of its protagonist’s psychological problems. Usually, whenever Camille imagines a world where we know it isn’t – such as here when the car stereo reads ‘WRONG’ before abruptly switching back to ‘AUX’ – the false word is either an imperative command or an adjective with negative connotations. ‘WRONG’ is about as negative as you can get, and its appearance right after Camille sneaks out of her mother’s house to go drinking is revealing of her habit of severe self-policing.

7. ‘WEARY’

The night of post-drinking sleep Camille has in her car mustn’t have been restful enough, because when she looks down the street, we see this word emblazoned on the nearest-facing wall of a car wash.

8. ‘YELP’

Smack bang in the middle of the first episode’s gruesome reveal, the word ‘YELP’ appears on a door next to Chief Vickery (Matt Craven). Rather than Camille’s subconscious mind projecting an ad for a consumer review site onto her surroundings, this apparition channels her distress at discovering the missing Natalie’s body.

9. ‘GIRL’

Before disappearing in a returning shot, this word suddenly appears scrawled onto a painting in Amma’s (Eliza Scanlen) dollhouse replica of Adora and Alan’s (Henry Czerny) Southern gothic mansion. There’s a lot of talk of girls in Sharp Objects: missing ones, dead ones, and girls in danger of meeting those fates.

10. ‘INQUIRY’, ‘NUDE’ and ‘VANISH’

One of the final shots in Sharp Objects’ debut episode includes a reference to its own title (“Vanish”) in a scar on Camille’s body. This scene expounds upon all of the little hints Sharp Objects has thrown at us so far by dramatically revealing Camille’s history of self-harm and obsession with words. Just before the camera lingers on ‘VANISH’, we glimpse ‘NUDE’ and ‘INQUIRY’, which is an interesting one in that it both relates to her job as a journalist and harks back to the word ‘ASK!’ spelt out in pins we see on Camille’s felt board during an early St. Louis-set scene.

Episode Two, “Dirt”

1. ‘VICE’ and ‘FORNICATE’

Leading on from the revelatory finale of episode one, “Dirt” begins with a whip-fast shot of two more of Camille’s scars. As before, the words she’s chosen to inscribe on her body are self-admonishing, as if she’s reprimanding herself for something. The vocab is decidedly sexual this time — significant given her conservative background — and as such, it may be teasing future reveals of Camille’s past.

 2.’HURT’

As with other Easter eggs in Sharp Objects, this one is indicative of the way Camille’s emotions leak out into her visual perception: a church banner unexpectedly changes its tack during this episode’s funeral scene, immediately after Adora snatches Camille’s pen to stop her from taking notes. That something as relatively trivial as this could sting so much is explained in adjacent scenes that show Adora neglecting Camille when she was a child.

3. ‘BUNDLE’, ‘PUNISH’, AND ‘TANGLE’

While Camille is toying with the idea of self-harm in her car, Bob Nash (Will Chase) is unceremoniously ejected from the wake taking place at the Keenes’ house. She watches the action from her window, but observant viewers might be distracted by a curious bit of modification on the cars parked outside: their standardly-formatted plates suddenly switch to read ‘BUNDLE’, ‘PUNISH’, and ‘TANGLE’, more cryptic insights into Camille’s mysterious mind.

4. ‘SCARED’ and ‘SACRED’

After witnessing the aforementioned altercation between the two bereaved fathers, a scratch appears on Camille’s car door reading ‘SCARED’. In her memory of the event, this changes to ‘SACRED’, and it’s also worth noting that we see the beginning of a scar on Camille’s wrist just before this: only the first three letters are visible, and they read ‘SCA’.

As before, at least one of these hallucinations seems tied to Camille’s emotions: fear, whether that be in response to the fight she witnesses, or in relation to her overriding emotion at being back in Wind Gap. ‘SACRED’ is less straightforward, but its appearance could be an analogy to a scene that takes place moments before, in which Adora chastises her daughter for snooping around Natalie’s room: “You can’t just go into the room of a dead little girl. You of all people should know how private, how personal that is.”

Episode Three, “Fix”

1. ‘YOU ARE UNWORTHY’

Sharp Objects’ third episode lets us in on Camille’s history of self-harm. In a flashback that shows her being admitted to rehab, Camille’s eye is caught by one of the self-help posters on the wall, which an establishing shot shows is emblazoned with a customary self-affirmative slogan: ‘YOU ARE NOT INVISIBLE’. The deeply disparaging message that replaces it is, at this point, typical of Camille’s total lack of self-worth, but given the similar tone of her present-day hallucinations, it does suggest that the time since rehab hasn’t provided Camille with much in the way of healing.

2. ‘FUCK U’

The first thing Alice (Sydney Sweeney), Camille’s rehab roommate, says to Adams’ character is, “Don’t talk to me.” Camille obeys, but reveals a streak of dry humor when she exposes her midriff to deliver this succinct message, which can either be read as ‘FUCK U’ or ‘FUCK OFF’.

3. ‘Proverbs 11:17’

Although this isn’t a hallucination, it’s emblematic of how meticulously designed every inch of (the entirely fictional) Wind Gap, MO is. The small town is full of faded murals – the one of a housewife offering up a plate of “delicious, nourishing meat” is particularly eerie – but this oft-shown biblical reference stands out clearly in contrast. The verse it alludes to is as follows: “Those who are kind benefit themselves, but the cruel bring ruin on themselves.” Make of that what you will.

4. ‘BABY’

This one is fairly cryptic and could simply be the manifestation of another of Camille’s tattoos (as many of the show’s single-word apparitions are) — but we do glimpse it when Camille is following her younger half-sister Amma across town, so its context is somewhat relevant.

5. ‘CATFIGHT’

Chasing Amma up the drive to her mother’s pig farm, Camille spies an old piece of machinery that soon becomes a vehicle for her inner thoughts. Whether the argument she’s just had with Adora is still on her mind, or whether she’s predicting a confrontation with her sister, the gendered choice of word here speaks to the way Sharp Objects revolves around its women, irrespective of (or perhaps because of) the way the men of Wind Gap dismiss their female counterparts as mere gossipmongers.

6. ‘BELITTLE’

Tortured by flashbacks to her time in rehab, Camille sneaks out to the local bar again, where her disturbed psyche alters a sign for billiards so that it reads ‘BELITTLE’. Its context offers few clues, but given its associations with emotional abuse, it’s likely to be a random materialization of one of the many, many words Camille has carved into her skin.

7. ‘Spiteful’

After being provoked by her younger sister at the end of Sharp Objects‘ third episode, an inebriated Camille takes off in her car. As with so many of these Easter eggs, the modified sign on the road to St. Louis could allude to more than one thing: that Camille is still reeling from Amma’s goading, for example, or that she holds herself partly responsible for Alice’s death (the vision of Marian that accompanies ‘Spiteful’ is telling, too). As ever, it’s probably also a projection of one of the scars on her body, but the final shot of the episode — a scar on Camille’s arm reading ‘FIX’ (notably, another command) — suggests its appearance is tied to her guilt over the deaths of her sister and friend.

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