The combined excess of Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis only cuts so deep in The Shards — The A.V. Club

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

The combined excess of Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis only cuts so deep in The Shards — The A.V. Club | AIPROPX

Bret Easton Ellis has a knack for crafting unlikable protagonists. Over the course of his career, the author has captured the perspectives of people who lie and/or live behind a façade, like American Psycho ‘s murderous Patrick Bateman or The Rules Of Attraction ‘s self-indulgent, self-destructive college students . His characters are perversely fascinating because they hardly present themselves as who they truly are, which is as true of 2023’s The Shards as it is of the blistering books he published during the ’80s and ’90s peak of his literary fame. Inserting Ellis into an increasingly bizarre, absorbing horror tale loosely inspired by his Los Angeles upbringing, think of The Shards as a spin on Gossip Girl where the out-of-touch rich teens are hunted by a vicious serial killer, with Dan Humphrey as the POV. Or maybe it’s just a darker Riverdale . Once you accept the tone, The Shards becomes frequently riveting, challenging you to guess how flashy and twisty it can get. It also, considering the reference points above, makes a natural fit for a TV adaptation.

This glamorous, gothic 1981-set thriller is also an ideal fit for an auteur like Ryan Murphy , who is evidently drawn to and has a knack for writing obnoxious, over-the-top, and sometimes offensive characters, regardless of genre. Whether it’s Nip/Tuck and American Crime Story or Scream Queens and All’s Fair , as long as the actors and the scenery look extra stylized, almost anything goes with Murphy. It’s no wonder he teams up with Ellis for a bonkers take on The Shards that amplifies the bulky, addictive novel. In a move that is equally intriguing and ridiculous, the co-creators take a few too many departures from the source material to try and misguidedly drag out The Shards beyond a first season (and likely to shock book readers who think they know what’s coming next).

Our unreliable narrator is a n almost 18-year-old Bret (Igby Rigney), who’s starting senior year at a private L.A. prep school. He keeps his thoughts, desires, and fears hidden from everyone, including the fact that he’s gay. Instead, he plays the part of a dutiful boyfriend to Debbie Schafer (Hayes Warner, the series’ MVP). It’s partly to get away with intense crushes on and secret relationships with his male peers, and partly to get closer to Debbie’s creepy producer dad, Terry (Wes Bentley). Bret seems like a chill dude, but he’s plagued by paranoia and anxiety that he channels into loathing a suave new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere). After catching him in a lie, Bret is convinced Robert is the murderer known as The Trawler, who is gruesomely dismembering teens (and their poor pets!) around town.

Bret and Robert project their insecurities onto each other, quickly becoming enemies and engaging in sabotage, car chases, and stalking. In the process, Bret’s carefully curated friend group and persona gradually crumble. However, The Shards ’ writing doesn’t skillfully break down their motivations. The kids are shadowy, sleazy, and sexy, just like everyone else around them, but why do they want to bring each other down? Is it jealousy, attraction, obsession, or all three? The show merely toys with those ideas without purposefully digging into them, making both leads appear rudderless. It doesn’t help that Rigney and Gere are too stiff onscreen. Their characters demand it to an extent, but neither is given much room to bring dimensions to their roles. Rigney’s straightforward narration, with chunks of dialogue lifted straight from the book, doesn’t translate well to TV either.

The women of the cast fare better. Murphy and Ellis invent wacky subplots for the show—like a televised dance-off episode and an ode to Shakespeare—that deepen our understanding of Debbie beyond the archetypal mean girl she is on the page, eliciting a frequently moving performance out of Warner. You also don’t hire Evan Rachel Wood to keep her trapped in a mansion, so the Westworld star gets more to do as Debbie’s otherwise aloof, alcoholic mother. Then there’s Bret’s BFF, Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber), who gets entangled in a love triangle between Robert and popular jock Thom Wright (Graham Campbell), while wanting more for herself. Susan—a straight-A student and homecoming queen—seriously ponders the pressures of being too perfect and hot at one point. Mercifully, The Shards is wiser for letting Susan voice her problems and demand better.

While trying to evade The Trawler’s attention, Bret and company superficially navigate shifting interpersonal dynamics, drugs, alcohol, sexual escapades, and identity crises, cruising through tony neighborhoods in a Mercedes-Benz and attending parties alongside Hollywood. For a drama set in the early ’80s, though—and co-created by one of the premier chroniclers of the decade’s excess—it’s a real shame that The Shards ‘ fashion isn’t more transportive. At least the many period-appropriate needle drops from The Go-Gos, The Buggles, Blondie, and other acts Ellis name-drops in the book pick up some of that slack.

Ultimately, The Shards tries hard to be an exploration and even an indictment of the corrupting influence wealth and privilege can have on the young; Bret is an observer, hater, and active participant in the debauchery he longs to escape. But while Ellis has focused his satirical lens on these topics for more than 40 years, neither he nor his co-creator is adept at seriously dissecting the subject matter here. What they excel at is high-concept grandiosity—so much so that it starts to feel, well, campy. And as you might expect from the team-up of Ellis and Murphy, The Shards is as campy as the day is long. Even if it’s not as enticing or graphically violent as the book, the series proves that its driving creative forces are, in fact, a scintillating TV match...