The Shards
Don’t You Need Me
Season 1
Episode 2
Editor’s Score
3 stars
***
Bret’s insistence that Robert is dangerous information goes ignored because the serial killer continues to terrorize L.A.
Picture: Ray Mickshaw/FX
“It’s laborious for individuals who haven’t lived in Los Angeles to appreciate how radically the Santa Ana figures within the native creativeness,” Joan Didion famously wrote. Bret has certainly learn that essay from 1968’s Slouching In direction of Bethlehem as a result of — as he confesses to Terry Schaffer over lunch on this episode — the writer’s writing has been a serious affect on his personal. And the Santa Ana winds are blowing in September 1981, talked about in a information report earlier than an announcement of the most recent Trawler sufferer within the season premiere. However Bret doesn’t have to have learn the essay to know “there’s something uneasy within the Los Angeles air,” and troublingly, he’s the one one in all his mates who senses one thing is off. When Debbie, Susan, and Thom come over for a double-date pizza evening, solely Bret is worried in regards to the spate of latest residence invasions, the lacking pets, and the desecration of the griffin mascot. Debbie mentions a brand new lacking lady, Julie Selwyn, however it’s simply in passing, and Susan is extra fixated on throwing a celebration for Robert Mallory than the rest. Dr. Croft has confided in her that Robert spent a while in a developmental heart earlier than shifting to L.A. and wishes mates to make him really feel welcome. Once more, Bret alone expresses alarm — the newcomer is a liar who was institutionalized in a loony bin. “That’s just a little dramatic, Bret,” Susan snaps. “You at all times embellish every thing.”
Bret’s insistence that Robert is dangerous information is already driving a wedge between him and his mates. He’s going through broad nonchalance from these he’s closest to — as a lot as his voice-over retains insisting the town is on edge, his mates don’t appear to care in regards to the Trawler or the cult. A decade after the Manson household murders, L.A. is contending with the Riders of the Afterlife, a gang of hippies who’ve been plaguing the area, from Ojai to the San Fernando Valley. They’ve gone from drug-infused rituals out within the desert to residence break-ins, the place random acts of violence in opposition to the residents have just lately escalated to homicide. With their work of bloody pentagrams on doorways and the black ski masks and turtlenecks the cult’s shape-shifting residence invaders put on, there’s apparent overlap between the Riders of the Afterlife and the Trawler, main some members of regulation enforcement to consider the serial killer just isn’t one particular person however a number of. In the interim, nonetheless, suspected crimes of the cult and of the Trawler are being reported individually, and Bret considers them distinct and pressing threats. On the nights he’s residence alone writing, he thinks he hears the doorbell ring or the storage door rise and clutches a knife by means of the halls of the empty home, simply to seek out there’s nobody there. A minimum of when his mates are over, there’s security in numbers. The date-night stress defuses when the {couples} transfer to the recent tub, the place Debbie passionately kisses Bret. She doesn’t appear to note he’s distracted by his determined eager for Susan and Thom, grinding on one another of their bathing fits to the Human League’s “Don’t You Need Me.”
To date, The Shards is doing a incredible job at making a vibe and capturing moods, however the plotting is already beginning to really feel a bit rushed within the second episode, which covers a variety of floor. We get a fast scene of the fraught relationship between Debbie and her mom — Liz retains frivolously hinting at their related style in males — earlier than Debbie picks up Bret for an evening out at a sizzling new music-video-themed membership. Music movies themselves are nonetheless model new on this world; MTV would have launched with “Video Killed the Radio Star” only one month prior. That’s the tune taking part in when Debbie and Bret enter the area, which is decked out in TV units and bathed in bisexual lighting. Debbie desires to introduce Bret to the proprietor, however as a music fan and cinephile, he’s extra all in favour of watching the movies. The Buggles tune fades into Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” as Bret finds a spot to take a seat, solely to find Robert is already lounging beside him. The dynamic between the 2 stays deliciously strained, and Robert’s insistence on matching Bret’s seen frustration with a simple smile makes these scenes a pleasure to observe.
It doesn’t assist that Robert begins the dialog by telling Bret he’s sorry about what occurred with Matt, having heard the 2 had a falling-out. Bret is straight away caught off-guard — is Robert accusing him of one thing? — earlier than explaining he’s simply been too busy for Matt since he obtained a girlfriend. Robert received’t let it go, although. “Perhaps you had been too clingy and also you turned him off or one thing,” he suggests. When Bret tells him to fuck off, he solely smiles. “There he’s,” Robert solutions. “That’s my man.” He’s continuously strolling on the knife’s fringe of flirtation in a manner that unnerves Bret and perhaps (although he’d be loath to confess it) turns him on. The dialog strikes to Susan with Robert asking why she and Bret by no means obtained collectively. They had been at all times simply greatest mates, he says. However didn’t he ever need to fuck her? For Bret, whose efficiency of heterosexuality is a continuing effort, this type of straight-male bonding is a overseas idea. As ever, it’s not clear if Robert is making an attempt to get beneath his pores and skin or just discover widespread floor, however the extra vulgar he will get, the extra disgusted Bret turns into. “I’d like to fuck her,” Robert says, the digital camera tight on his face. “Style her candy little pussy. Fuck her within the ass. Make her scream.” All Bret can do is stroll away. In voice-over, he admits he needs he’d stayed with Robert to seek out out his plans for Susan. Because it stands, “She was gonna let herself get misplaced in his insanity, and every thing would get ruined.”
As electrical because the trade between Bret and Robert is, the next scene is much less profitable. We’ve solely had an episode and a half to outline relationship dynamics, so when Bret heads to Matt’s for what turns into a dramatic confrontation, the entire thing feels oddly abrupt. To be truthful, Matt’s perspective comes out of nowhere for Bret too. He’s hostile and paranoid the second Bret arrives unannounced on the pool home the place Matt lives, demanding to know why Bret retains calling him and respiratory into the cellphone. He additionally blames Bret for draining his fish tank and drawing a pentagram on his Foreigner poster. Bret ought to choose up on these flashing warning indicators, however he’s distracted by the false accusations being hurled at him. He thinks Matt obtained too excessive and absent-mindedly did this stuff himself. Each boys subtly accuse the opposite of telling Robert an excessive amount of about their illicit relationship — Matt desires to know why Robert was asking him “fascinating” questions. Bret warns him to keep away from Robert, then makes a last-ditch try at tenderness by reaching out to Matt, who coldly slaps his hand away. “This was by no means a severe factor,” he says, scoffing. “You suppose we’re gonna be boyfriends or one thing? Are you fucking loopy?” It’s a merciless dismissal that sends Bret fleeing to his automotive, the place he sobs his manner by means of the drive again residence. I simply want the present had given us a couple of scene between the 2 to determine the emotional stakes earlier than this brutal blowup.
Bret doesn’t have an excessive amount of time to sulk. Nothing will cease him from maintaining his crucial lunch with Terry, even when Steven Reinhardt units an odd tone for the meal together with his ominous warning: “Everybody has an agenda, and typically these agendas don’t join with what we really need or what we’re gonna get.” Terry seems heat and pleasant, although, and asks pointed questions in regards to the novel Bret is writing. Will it make a great film? Does it have intercourse in it? “All the things’s about intercourse,” he explains. “All people loves a coming-of-age story.” Bret is shocked when Terry instantly presents to choice the ebook as quickly as Bret finishes it, however the lunch takes a flip towards the unprofessional as Terry pivots to private questions. When he flat-out asks Bret if he likes guys in addition to ladies, Bret can solely reply, “I’m not … restricted.” Provocative questions on Thom and Ryan show much less simple to deflect, and shortly Bret’s pushing again by asking how Liz would really feel about Terry having a dialog like this together with his daughter’s boyfriend. “You’re smarter than that,” Terry says. However is he? Bret’s perception that Terry had Steven organize this lunch out of real curiosity in his novel betrays a naïveté that’s destined to be shattered. That’s made clearer when Terry warns Bret to not inform Debbie about their assembly, even when he follows it up with a plea to begin collaborating on a script quickly.
We go from one harrowing meal to a different. When Bret meets up together with his mates at Hamburger Hamlet, Susan broadcasts Matt Kellner has been lacking for 5 days. (It should be a minimum of as lengthy since Bret final noticed him, however The Shards might do a greater job at articulating a timeline. Readability on how a lot time is passing may also assist issues really feel much less rushed.) Bret is clearly shaken, although he denies being mates with Matt, which Robert clocks instantly. It seems Matt was much more remoted than we realized — it took a couple of days for his mother and father to note he was gone. As a result of his automotive remains to be there and he didn’t go away a notice, they’re involved about his whereabouts, and Susan has been tasked with asking the scholar physique to return ahead with any data. “Isn’t it so unusual how his mother and father spent so little time with him?” Debbie asks the group. That is how so many Buckley college students dwell, although. Robert factors out that he hasn’t seen his personal dad in six months and that Bret’s mother and father stay on an limitless European trip. However as a lot as these youngsters consider they’re adults already, they’re not precisely thriving on their very own. Would Matt have gone lacking if his mother and father had been paying extra consideration? Would Bret spend each evening petrified of the noises he thinks he’s listening to if he weren’t at all times alone? With no reliable grown-ups to information or help him, Bret is latching on to a person he’s already been warned has ulterior motives. Nonetheless, when he sees Terry at lunch, he thinks, “He was skilled, an grownup, one thing to emulate and aspire towards. He was somebody I wished to be.”
In school, Bret and Ryan Vaughn are drawn again collectively by Matt’s disappearance, even when Ryan solely knew Matt as somebody he purchased weed from. Ryan is alarmed about the way in which younger individuals in L.A. hold vanishing. He wonders if it might be the cult, although Bret presents up the Trawler instead. Certain, the serial killer has solely focused ladies up to now, however perhaps, like Bret, he’s not restricted. “I’m glad we’re speaking. I like speaking,” Bret tells Ryan, dangerously risking a hand on his shoulder. Nonetheless nervous Ryan appears to be like, he doesn’t draw back, however the second is ruptured when Susan arrives with the most recent information on Matt. His blood-drenched backpack has been present in a car parking zone in Crystal Cove State Park. That’s an alarming growth, and what Bret discovers subsequent is way worse. At residence, there’s a tape ready for him in his mailbox. The audio is tough to decipher at first: sounds of whooshing and crackling, then a creepy voice urging somebody to “eat it.” The extra Bret listens, the extra he’s capable of image the scene. It’s Matt Kellner, crushed and bloody, being pressured to devour the still-living fish from his aquarium. He’s crying and pleading in between gagging on the fish, however the assailant in a black ski masks and turtleneck insists he eat all of them. “Did you want sucking the cock?” the person taunts him earlier than injecting Matt with a heavy dose of LSD. Bret listens in horror as Matt descends into insanity. He runs to the lavatory to throw up within the sink — however his sudden consciousness of what occurred to Matt might be more durable to purge.
• It is smart that the present would increase Liz’s position within the story, each as a result of the ebook is advised solely from Bret’s perspective and since you wouldn’t need to squander Evan Rachel Wooden. I like seeing extra of her dynamic with Debbie, one thing underexplored within the novel.
• I additionally suppose it was sensible to elaborate on the Riders of the Afterlife and supply extra concrete particulars, together with in regards to the chief guiding them, however I do query dumping all this exposition in episode two — notably on the subject of the apparent hyperlink between the cult and the Trawler. Within the novel, Bret overlooks the similarities as a result of he’s so fixated on Robert. If he’s already acknowledging the overlap, does that undermine eventual reveals?
• The scene between Bret and Robert on the membership performs out because it does within the novel, however I used to be shocked we didn’t get the assault by a cult member within the lavatory. I’d assume The Shards is saving that set piece for a subsequent episode.
• As I stated within the recap, it does really feel like we’re shifting by means of plot fairly shortly, and that features the arrival of the Matt Kellner tape a lot ahead of within the novel. My solely concern right here is in case you convey Bret to this degree of terror so early on, the place does he go from right here?
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