YMMV / Sharp Objects

• Accidental Aesop: Women who meet traditional forms of femininity are probably shallow, control freaks, two-faced, bullies, and above all, catty gossip hounds not to be trusted. It's easier to sympathize with girls who are tomboys or women who want more than to be a housewife or enjoy the small town life. It's not hard to see why some readers, wrongly or rightly, thought Flynn may have an issue with certain types of women.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The show is ripe for this, notably:
  • Given the age gap between her daughters, her admitted lack of attachment to Camille, her unwillingness (inability?) to identify Camille's father, what we saw of Camille's adolescence in Wind Gap, and the fact that she had Camille out of wedlock, it's possible that Camille is the result of Adora's own adolescent sexual assault.
  • How much, if at all, did Alan know about Amma committing the murders of Anne and Natalie? While the series firmly implies that Alan acted as a quiet enabler to Adora’s Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy poisoning of her daughters, his knowledge of and involvement in Amma’s actions or lack there of are much more ambiguous.
  • Amma freaks out and runs away during Calhoun Day after Ann’s father and Natalie’s brother start fighting over suspecting the other of murdering their daughter/sister and cause a commotion. Was it because Amma, as the actual killer felt remorse after seeing how devastated they were, because she was upset that she wasn’t the center of attention, because she saw Camille and Richard talking and was jealous, or a combination of the three, heightened by her having taken drugs before the event?
  • Ashley ends up turning John over to the police, but was she doing this just because she was a Glory Hound who wanted her name on TV, or was is a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal from John ignoring her and putting no effort into the relationship but refusing to dump her because it would make him look suspicious?
  • Jackie O'Neill: is she so kind to Camille because she genuinely cares for her, because she feels guilty about Adora's treatment of her, or out of guilt for having essentially allowed Adora to poison her daughters until one of them died?
  • Camille's near-death at Adora's hands: was Camille willingly taking Adora's "medicines" to get proof that she was poisoning her daughters, to distract Adora from Amma, because she was finally getting at least some affection and love from her mother, or because her mental state had broken down so far that she just couldn't fight back?
  • Why was Adora so interested in Ann and Natalie? Could she have considered them potential victims for her Munchausens by Proxy compulsions?
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Camille struggles with severe Self-Harm and is clearly suffering from some mental illness but we never get an exact diagnosis. She mentions that there are a "gift basket" of medical terms for what she has implying that the lack of an obvious diagnosis might be because she has multiple mental illness; a real life phenomenon known as "cluttering".
  • In the book, Camille mentions having obsessively written down anything anyone said to her so she wouldn't forget it, writing on her clothes or her skin if paper wasn't available. This eventually escalated to her cutting. The habit she couldn't control and the upset she felt if she couldn't write could be indicative of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
  • While no one ever mentions Ann being diagnosed with a behavioral disorder, she was known for biting people out of anger, and once killed a neighbor's bird with a stick, neither of which are typical behaviours for a nine-year-old.
• Fridge Horror: Camille and Adora spend the whole series telling Amma that it's not safe to be out and about in Wind Gap. It turns out that they were right, but for the wrong reason: it's not keeping Amma safe from Wind Gap's local predator, it's keeping Wind Gap's young girls safe from Amma.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Jackie O'Neill's alcoholism is played for laughs, but it seems a lot less funny when we learn that Jackie knows the truth about what happened to Marian and has been wracked with guilt over it ever since.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In Episode Two Camille comes across a woman taking down Natalie Keene’s missing person posters, so that her family won’t have to see them around after her corpse was found, and she remarks that she did the same for the Nashes. It’s one of the few genuine expressions of empathy any person in Wind Gap shows the grieving families.
  • In the book, after a truly terrible day, a panicking Camille calls Frank. Realizing she's not okay, Frank sits up and talks to her, telling a mundane story about his life. Camille listens as she tucks herself into bed, feeling truly comforted, like he's her dad reading her a bedtime story.
  • The epilogue of the book, where Frank and Eileen take Camille into their home and treat her like the daughter they never had. They care for her in a way Adora never did, and Camille learns to accept healthy parental affection. She finds she doesn't panic or pull away when Eileen brushes her hair, or Frank gives her a hug good night, and, despite relapsing into self-harm following Amma's arrest, seems determined to heal, and even quits drinking. She also hasn't fully given up on Amma, even though she doesn't know what to do about the girl.
    Lately I've been leaning toward kindness.
• Incest Yay Shipping: It is very popular in the fandom to ship Camille and Amma despite them being sisters. The fact that Amma acts very possessively towards Camille and even calls Camille her soulmate at one point certainly doesn't help.
• I Knew It!: Quite a few readers will likely guess Adora's Munchausen's by proxy before Camille ever does, likely because the trope is so well known. In-universe, this is partly why Marian's death wasn't as looked into when it happened—back then, no one would ever think of a mother poisoning her daughter for attention outside of one overlooked nurse, while today multiple cases of such are in the national consciousness.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • A gif of Adora snatching Camille’s pen out of her hand as she’s trying to write has become popular to use as a response to someone posting or commenting something seen to be very ridiculous or inappropriate.
• Retroactive Recognition: Eliza Scanlen would later go on to play Beth March in Little Women (2019).
• Signature Line:
  • "A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort."
  • "I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters."
  • "Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom."
  • From the mini-series: "Don't tell mama."
• Signature Scene:
  • Amma's "Persephone, Queen of the Underworld" speech.
  • Camille seeing that the floor of Amma's doll house is made of human teeth and Amma telling her "Don't tell mama," signifying that she was the killer all along.
• Tear Jerker: At Marian's funeral, Adora won't comfort Camille, but turns away from her to grieve over Marian's body. Camille has to settle for her mother's cast-off eyelashes, and rubbing one against her cheek is the closest thing to comfort she's going to get from her.
  • One flashback shows Marian and Camille happily running to Adora upstairs... only for Adora to tenderly accept only Marian first and practically closing the door on Camille's face, who is just a foot away. The poor girl's face of devastation really shows how much Adora's emotional neglect has affected her.
  • Camille's heartwrenching breakdown over the phone with Curry and Eileen when she realizes that her mother had murdered Marian and had killed Ann and Natalie (or so she thought).
  • In the final episode, a desperately sick Camille sobbing in Curry's arms.

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