“Though she returned to school, Rhonda did not come back,” Bret Easton Ellis gravely intones near the start of this episode of FX’s The Shards. “What she felt, she felt alone. The world was lost to her, and her to it.
“I deeply related to this feeling,” he concludes.
I’m sorry, but this show is a goddamn scream. You can feel however you want about Bret Easton Ellis the real person, but Bret Easton Ellis the co-creator of this show has helped craft “Bret Easton Ellis,” a hilariously pretentious and self-serious know-it-all whose good intentions regarding the murder and kidnapping victims now dotting Los Angeles’s tonier districts don’t keep him from planting his head firmly up his own ass.
And that’s not uncommon, as far as ambitious young people go. Bret himself makes that point, albeit in his own uniquely egomaniacal fashion. “I had to take action — no one else was,” he says of his attempts to stop the serial killer known as the Trawler, who he is one hundred percent convinced his his high school arch-nemesis Robert Mallory. “I deeply understood this feeling, as many young people do: being alone in it.”
When you take out the delusional idea that only Bret Easton Ellis, Boy Detective can stop a vicious murderer, he’s not wrong. Teenagers often feel no one can understand their unique discomforts and dysfunctions. They’re not even wrong: Even if adults or other kids have a vague idea of what you’re going through, no one can truly feel what you’re feeling except you, the person feeling it. The quest to convince people of Robert’s guilt works on this metaphorical level, in addition to being a key component of The Shards’ satire of murder mysteries involving the rich and indolent.
Bret spends his portion of this episode — the first of two shorter “Homecoming” eps debuting back to back, subtitled “Part One” and “Part Two” — digging deeper into the case. He first visits Matt Kellner’s dad, risking potentially outing himself as the missing kid’s secret boyfriend in an attempt to convince him that Robert is responsible. But the father produces a book from the Riders of the Afterlife cult that the cops found beneath his mattress, with the words LET ME DIE scrawled on it. He loves the son he barely knew, just as Bret does, but he blames the cult, not some teenage serial killer.
Bret’s next stop is Dr. Croft, the high school principal. Croft is fresh from weathering a surprisingly united front by the otherwise divided Schaffer family in their attempt to keep their delinquent daughter on the path to college; watching that terrible trio realize they actually do care about each other and appreciate one another’s efforts, at least for long enough to help one of them from escaping the consequences of their actions, is actually rather touching. But it’s left Croft in no mood to hear Bret’s cockamamie theories out. Neither Dr. Croft nor Mr. Kellner can locate the missing psych evaluation done on Robert following his mother’s death and his own institutionalization that Bret is so desperate to find, either.
Pretending to be a crime reporter (shoutout to Debbie’s fake ID guy), Bret visits the detectives working the Night Stalker case, which in this fictional universe is being used by the cops as a catch-all for the crimes committed by the Trawler as well. One such murder victim is staged on a playground swing set, a pentagram carved in his back. Crimes like this are bolder, more theatrical, and obviously targeted than those committed by the Night Stalker, not a matter of a guy committing random break-ins and killing the old ladies he finds inside. This killer, Bret theorizes, is someone targeting people who make him feel socially inferior, like Charles Manson and his followers did.
“Didion covers all of this,” he says, not wanting to waste anyone’s time. When the detectives stare back at him blankly, he clarifies: “In her book? The White Album?” But they’re not hearing it, and the only result of him naming Robert Mallory as a suspect is that they put a tail on Bret instead.
We do get some real intel on the killer, however. When she returns from wherever she was being held, the only thing Really Rhonda is capable of remembering is her abductor’s “girly smell,” a phrase she repeats over and over. And wouldn’t you know it: Terry Schaffer is wearing Giorgio, the new unisex fragrance from Armani, which is wife Liz mistakes for straight-up perfume. And while he’s in the process of designing a homecoming float for the senior class that’s a deconstructed tribute to the work of cutting-edge production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti on American Gigolo — an idea he insists upon no matter what these little philistines think of it because he’s an artist — Terry’s increasingly embittered assistant Steven reveals that he wears it, too.
But Susan is also growing ever more uncomfortable with her role in the pecking order, even though she’s on top of it. All that winning, constantly, without fail, forever, is exhausting. Staring directly into the camera, she all but begs Steven to design her a deliberately ugly and amateurish float instead, “something purposefully terrible,” just so she’ll know how it feels to have done something bad for once in her life.
But Debbie’s got a better idea. If Susan really wants to take an L for the first time, she can do so in a way that helps Deb—I’m sorry, I mean Really Rhonda. She can tell all her supporters to vote for the heroic survivor instead! If, in the process, Debbie happens to get very involved in both the organizing committee and the quasi-charitable effort to get the unconventional girl that homecoming tiara, well, hey, everybody wins! Except Susan, who loses, which in this case is a win, too.
The one person out on this plan is Thom, and boy is he out. Like, of his mind. He’s fully in thrall to Bruce, the leader of the Riders of the Afterlife cult, who indoctrinates him in the incongruous setting of the high school football stands. “Let me die,” he makes the increasingly distressed Thom repeat, after spelling out the way cults take advantage of people who feel lost in hilariously literal fashion. “Sacrifices must be made.”
But for now, Thom still has one foot in the high school world, and he’s upset that his girlfriend is attempting to throw the homecoming queen vote, leaving Thom to potentially become King to Really Rhonda’s Queen. Not so fast, though, says Robert: He’s gunning for the throne. And when Bret is left alone with him to confront him about his alleged crimes, he quotes Chinatown at the private-school detective, the bit about nosy people losing their noses. Robert really liked Jack Nicholson’s performance in that one, you see — “even more than in The Shining,” he whispers, confirming once and for all that the original lie was, in fact, a lie.
But can you then leap to the conclusion that this kid is a murderer? Bret really does seem broken up about the missing and murdered kids, particularly Matt. But he’s also just plain anti-Robert, who has screwed up the dynamics of his friend group — and, yes, lied about seeing a horror movie. Does Bret’s dislike of this kid, which seems to hinge on the mere fact of his mental health issues as much as anything else, have him chasing shadows?
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.