“The Shards” is a familiar coming-of-age story in that it’s set during our protagonist’s senior year of high school and revolves around ardent romances, personal betrayals, and profound discoveries, all of which open our lead’s eyes to an adult world he only thought he understood. But “The Shards,” as adapted by Ryan Murphy from Bret Easton Ellis‘ fictionalized “memoir” of the same name, is unlike most coming-of-age stories because it’s also about a serial killer who abducts students and murders them (typically, alongside their pets).
As in Ellis’ 600-page novel, many, many words are spent stitching these typically distinct genres together (most noticeably via omnipresent narration), but for as beguiling as Bret’s emotional journey can be, his external one steadily gives out, along with the series’ sense of ambition. What’s left is another all-too-typical tale: a Ryan Murphy production filled with potential… that has no idea what to do with it.
When we meet “The Shards’” version of Bret (played by Igby Rigney), he’s preparing for his senior year by savoring his friends and his freedom. There’s Susan (Kaia Gerber), the most popular girl in school who’s not only a Cindy Crawford lookalike but also the class president and a straight-A student. She’s been dating Thom (Graham Campbell) for most of high school, a popular jock with long, blonde, curly locks dangling over a hollow dome. Together with Bret’s girlfriend Debbie (Hayes Warner), the foursome are thick as thieves — in part, because they have to be.
Save for Debbie’s parents — her dad, Terry (Wes Bentley), is an Oscar-winning film producer who hides his affairs with men to preserve his industry status, and her mom, Liz (Evan Rachel Wood) is an actress turned socialite turned drunk (for obvious reasons) — these kids’ guardians are never around. The adults, we’re told, are all rich enough for months-long vacations or paid enough to work 80 hours per week year-round. Either way, their kids are left to their own devices, which means snorting coke off the coffee table, doing homework during happy hour, and hosting lavish parties at their big empty homes in the Hollywood hills.
“We were the family,” Bret said of his friend group. “We raised each other.” But that doesn’t mean they share everything, and Bret, in particular, is holding onto a few secrets. For one, he’s only dating Debbie because it suits his public image. In private, he’s in love with a stoner named Matt (Owen Painter) and open to hooking up with more guys, so long as no one finds out. (“You have to remember,” Bret narrates, “being gender fluid was not something that was allowed back then.”) He’s also in love with Susan, or at least infatuated with the woman he describes as “the person I think I’ve loved the most in my entire life.” While Bret harbors no ill will for Thom, he immediately rankles over a new kid’s not-so-subtle attempts to steal Susan away from them both.
“The boy,” as Bret first calls him, is named Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), a transfer student from Chicago who came to L.A. to live with his aunt after his widower father tried to send him to military school. Right away, Bret clocks him as “a complete and utter liar,” mainly because Robert refuses to admit he saw Bret a year earlier, when their eyes locked at a midday screening of “The Shining.” But Bret’s suspicions soon grow darker and more intense when Robert’s arrival coincides with a string of teen murders within their cozy Beverly Hills bubble.
Whether Robert is a physical threat to multiple lives or just a personal threat to Bret’s vanishing innocence, he’s the linchpin holding “The Shards’” disparate halves together. In the coming-of-age half, he’s a destabilizing element to Bret’s privileged childhood; the change that’s coming sooner rather than later, pulling Bret’s chosen, beloved family apart. Given that Bret’s already lost his parents — whether they’re alive and absent or dead and gone is teased throughout the first season — it’s easy to empathize with Bret’s desire to preserve the fantasy version of adulthood he’s prematurely concocted with his best buds. It’s even easier when you consider Bret’s closeted sexuality, his attraction to Robert, and what each revelation could mean for his dream future (which, sickeningly, he sees in Terry).
“The Shards” is at its best when living within that relatable tension, and its worst when tracking a serial killer who force-feeds living creatures to his victims. For one, Robert is too ethereal to evoke the fear enveloping the city. Gere (the son of Richard Gere, who Ellis obsessed over in “American Gigolo”) isn’t bad as a creepy stranger whose opaque blankness reflects the worst of Bret back to himself, but when asked to provide palpable menace, there’s no edge to his performance. Plenty of blame rests on scripts that refuse to define Robert in order to preserve his mysterious backstory, as well as direction that undermines the terror supposedly permeating Los Angeles. (Too many scenes are shot and staged for campy laughs when they need to elicit actual horror.)
But the serial killer arc feels more and more tacked on as the season collapses into itself. Early episodes successfully immerse you in Bret’s increasingly troubled perspective (his narration can be extraneous and grating, but it effectively roots you behind a character who’s not always easy to follow — or trust), while later episodes try to extend the story by expanding to thin, trivial perspectives, breaking from what happens in the book, and taking desperate, lazy swings at profundity that never materialize. (The Shakespeare motif in Episode 8… to thine own self be ew.)
Long before the finale introduces a fresh mystery no one cares to solve — just like Season 1’s broader questions, for that matter — it’s clear “The Shards” isn’t coming together. Rigney’s knowingly performative lead turn is solid, and there’s thankfully more on Murphy’s mind than his sloppy “Substance” knock-off, “The Beauty.” But watching the first season is like watching someone lose interest in a story as they’re telling it. The deflating feeling is extra frustrating considering Murphy and Ellis’ work shares so much in common: gratuitous violence, heavy music cues, obscene wealth, improper parents, disaffected teens, and on and on.
Perhaps that’s the problem. They’re too just too damn familiar.
Grade: C
“The Shards” premieres Wednesday, August 5 at 9 p.m. ET on FX and Hulu. Two episodes will be released for the premiere, followed by two episodes on August 12, one on August 19, two on August 26, and one per week through the finale (Episode 9) on September 9.
