‘Sharp Objects’ Episode 6 Recap: “Cherry”

Camille wakes from another restless night to do what any of us would: gaze at Chris Messina’s pristine back and peachlike butt, I MEAN SHE’S ONLY HUMAN. When he rolls over and sees her already up, he rhetorically asks, “You slept in your clothes?” He says he has an old flannel she can wear, and when she warily comments, “Sounds like you’re halfway to a question you wanted to ask,” he says it’s just an offer.

The rest of Wind Gap is getting up, too: Vickery going through his regimented, possibly superstitious morning routine; Alan in his study, folding up the sofa bed he sleeps on, a clutch of LPs with vintage cheesecake covers nearby…

…and Adora getting an upsetting call. She comes downstairs, where Camille is eating cherry pie left over from Calhoun Day, and dodges Camille’s offer to drive her into town to the pharmacy. Her comment that it’s the first time she’s seen Camille eat since she’s been there sends Camille into a memory of proudly showing off her new red and white middle school cheerleading uniform. Marian says she’s beautiful and asks if Adora couldn’t just take a bite out of her. “Like a plump, juicy cherry,” says Adora, without looking up. Aaaaand present-day Camille is done with the pie.

Camille checks on Amma, advising her to treat her cuts. Amma excitedly shows her two on her forearm that, with one more small cut, could turn into a “C” for “Camille.” Camille makes Amma promise never to do it. “I get funny ideas sometimes,” Amma replies.

Richard apparently hasn’t stopped thinking about Camille, and is approaching the question she thinks he was about to ask her that morning. When he sees Jackie putting fresh daisies on Natalie’s memorial — she finds that bloom more appropriate for a young girl than the roses Adora favors — he asks her about Camille, but Jackie says she’s “not one to talk about people’s touchy areas. Not when I’m sober, anyway.”

Richard’s just requested Camille’s medical records when he gets another call about a break in the case. Evidently it’s the same call Adora received earlier, as we watch Vickery support her while a girl’s bike is pulled out of a waste lagoon at the pig farm. That Ann’s bike was never found has been one of the reasons suspicion has pointed to Bob — who is also present, and confirms it is hers.

Meanwhile, Amma’s gone over to Ashley’s house — her sister Jodes is a member of Amma’s squad — to flirt with an uninterested John, who darkly tells her, “Just know I always got an eye on you….It’ll be your day soon.”

Camille eavesdrops before her follow-up interview with Ashley, who says of Natalie and Ann, “They were darling little girls. Very well-behaved. Sweet little things. It’s like God plucked the very best girls from Wind Gap to take to heaven for His own.” Camille turns off the tape recorder and starts to pack up, explaining to a protesting Ashley that she’s wasting Camille’s time. Ashley babbles that she was just trying to protect John, but that she’s sure he’d never kill anyone: “Because it would make him popular.” Camille also notices an old scar on Ashley’s ear.

Seeing Ashley back in her uniform reminds Camille of herself, at practice, getting a cramp in her calf. While her teammate Becca tries to work it out, Katie teases her about having her period — something Camille doesn’t deny when she gets up and they see a stream of blood running down her thigh.

Richard then calls to tell Camille about the bike, and she speeds home to confront Adora about having lied to her that morning. “I’m your mother,” murmurs Adora. “I’m not a source.” What Richard did not tell Camille on the phone is that he’s on his way to the hospital in St. Louis to learn about the kind of patients her doctor treats there, claiming it’s about his case. Dr. Hafia says his patients are rarely violent: “Whatever is going on with them, they take it out on themselves more than other people.”

Camille listens to the end of her interview with Ashley and herself asking, “So is that why you think that the killer is doing this? For popularity?” “What other reason is there?” Ashley replies. Then Frank calls, still certain the murderer isn’t female: “Women don’t kill like that, that violent.” “Until they do,” she intones. She’s suspicious about why he’s not at the office, and though we’ve seen him getting chemotherapy during a previous phone call with her, he dodges the question…

…while Camille speculatively sketches Ashley’s injured ear.

Camille’s on her way back out when Alan stops her to be bad cop, at Adora’s direction, and get Camille to leave. He claims she’s making Adora ill by aggressing her with details about Wind Gap’s dead children. When Camille sarcastically comments that she’d ever been dismayed that she and Alan don’t communicate, he tells her, “You really are like your grandmother. She would stand guard over this house like a witch. The only time she ever smiled was when you refused to nurse from Adora.” As evidence for his claim that Adora’s had a hard life, he adds, “Joya would come into her room in the middle of the night and she would pinch her. She said that she was worried that Adora would die in her sleep. You know what I say? She just liked to hurt people.” Camille will leave as soon as she can.

Fortunately, by this point Camille’s old frenemy Angie has arrived to take her to Katie’s “pity party.” She pries for details about Camille’s dating life, gossips about their other friends’ miserable marriages, and concludes by squealing that they’re going to have fun…before walking Camille in to a great room where everyone is sobbing at the climax of Beaches. After the movie, Gretchen breaks down about her recent decision to go back to work, while Lisa weeps over her husband’s unwillingness to have any more children. Becca, to Camille, “This shit happens every week.” The two go outside for a respite, which doesn’t last, as the rest of the coven comes out to suggest that Camille wouldn’t be able to report on the murders if she had kids. “I don’t mean to sound cruel, but I don’t think part of your heart can ever work if you don’t have kids,” says Gretchen. “I didn’t really become a woman until I felt Mackenzie inside of me,” Katie agrees — though she might not be so sanctimonious if she knew Camille would be heading from this discussion to ambush by Kirk, Katie’s husband, in which he feebly tries to apologize for having joined in Camille’s gang rape. Camille won’t give him absolution, instead recalling that he couldn’t actually get it up and concluding, “It looks like we both got fucked.”

At Sensors, Richard has apparently gotten Jackie nearly drunk enough to talk about people’s touchy areas, but all she can say about why Camille self-harmed is that she wasn’t the same after the “sickly” Marian died. When he asks if there was an autopsy, she snorts, “Adora Crellin wasn’t going to let them carve up her little girl.” “That’s an interesting choice of words,” says Richard. He adds that Camille checked herself out of rehab early, following Alice’s suicide.

Becca drops Camille at the convenience store, Camille still feeling guilty for how she and the rest of the white cheerleaders treated Becca, who is black. Becca says Camille wasn’t as bad as the others, adding that she knew what Camille was going through. When Camille got that cramp, Becca saw that Camille had cut “cherry” onto her leg, which she chases with one of the clunkiest lines of dialogue so far: “That makes sense. We were so shiny. Luscious on the outside, but on the inside there’s that dark, hard pit.” [Groan.]

Then Amma rolls up on her way to a high school party, to which she forces Camille to come. Amma’s already taken some Oxycontin and urges Camille to do likewise, which she declines. She still has her wits about her at the party when — scandalously — John and Ashley arrive. Ashley and Amma nearly come to blows before Camille breaks it up (though she can’t stop Amma yelling “Bye, murderer!” at John). Ashley eagerly asks about Camille’s piece and is furious to learn Ashley won’t be in it; Camille’s a lot more curious about Ashley’s ear, and whether Natalie’s the one who bit her. “You want to know about Natalie, you should ask your mom,” says Ashley. She and John are shamed out of the party shortly thereafter.

Upstairs, Amma involves Camille in a game of Rolling Roulette with a dose of ecstasy, which is when we flash back to the car and see Camille ultimately did take a pill there. The ecstasy is passed from tongue to tongue until Amma forcefully inserts it into Camille’s mouth.

While Richard hears from Vickery that he’ll be going back to Kansas City — a Mexican worker at the hog farm says he saw John dump the bike in the lagoon — Camille is roller skating home with Amma. Camille asks if Amma cuts herself, but Amma changes the subject to how happy she is with Camille, asks Camille to bring Amma home to St. Louis with her, and throws a fit until Camille agrees to let Amma sleep with her that night.

Camille and Amma creep inside — Camille flashing back to the dream or memory of her younger self creeping inside with Marian, the sequence that opened the series — though Camille must grab Amma to stop her going to visit the dollhouse. Upstairs, they fall onto the bed together, Amma mumbling, “Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen to you, you can’t stop them, can’t do anything, just have to wait?”

If the bad thing is Adora, she has decided not to strike tonight, but maybe soon: in the mirror, Camille sees a spectral Marian, who warns, “It’s not safe here for you.”

Writer, editor, and snack enthusiast Tara Ariano is the co-founder of TelevisionWithoutPity.com and Fametracker.com (R.I.P.), as well as Previously.tv. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great and Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210), and has contributed to New York, the New York Times magazine, Vulture, The Awl, and Slate, among many others. She lives in Austin.

Watch Sharp Objects Episode 6 ("Cherry") on HBO Go