The penultimate episode of The Shards—let us pray that it really is the penultimate episode of the series, not just the season—actually contains a number of storytelling gimmicks that I enjoy. First up: a high school English class where the material and discourse directly pertains to whatever is happening with the characters. That trope can be corny, but also pretty fun when the parallels are real (but not too direct to the point of plagiarism). Most teenagers go to class, and most teenagers make everything about themselves, so it makes sense that discussing a classic novel might bring out personal struggles in their own lives.
In addition to all that, “Hamlet” is an episode broken into three sequential vignettes, each tackling a different ongoing storyline, a structure that often yields a refreshingly different-feeling episode. (The first one that comes to mind for me right now is “The Night Gallery” from season five of Riverdale, since that show had some tonal similarities to this one but occasionally accomplished what it was going for.) Sometimes just concentrating on one story at a time allows for more momentum to build, and more real progress.
So far so good, right? The problem, to put it succinctly, is that pretty much all of the vignettes in “Hamlet” suck. For one, the setup is strange to begin with. The episode begins by rushing through the aftermath of last week: Rhonda recanted what she said about Susan, then got sent to a loony bin in Tennessee. You’d think that her getting abducted and tortured by a serial killer then released would make her a compelling case and someone worth speaking to more, but she’s completely gone from the story now, I guess. You’d also think that Susan might actually enjoy the chance to let loose and be someone other than the perfect queen bee, like she keeps complaining about—but so much for that. Oh, and Debbie is almost entirely missing from this episode, which feels especially weird at this juncture. Again, this is the penultimate episode of the season, right?
At least Matt’s proven death has people talking more, and the police are more motivated to investigate the Trawler than they were before, especially among the student body at Buckley. On the other hand, a large portion of this episode either ignores that central conflict or fails to explore it in a meaningful way. Since the episode is structured in vignettes, it only makes sense to tackle them individually from here.
Romeo And Juliet
Here’s the thing: Susan and Thom will always be each other’s first love, but Susan has fully fallen out of love with Thom. No matter whether Robert was the cause or not, she got the ick for her boyfriend, and we can see it on her face throughout this segment, during every debate with Thom about the validity of Romeo and Juliet’s early-teens love.
The parallels here are, of course, incredibly on the nose to the point of tedium. When the argument relocates to Hamburger Hamlet, Susan claims that Romeo and Juliet were just a “Verona thing” and that both would move on from each other when they left Verona; she’s really saying that she and Thom are meant to move on from each other after high school, but you don’t need me to tell you that. The episode even adds a silly stylistic touch of both characters briefly wearing Elizabethan clothing and directly quoting the play in ways that barely apply to their own situation.
It’s good to see Susan unequivocally break up with Thom, but it has taken so long to get to this point. There was never all that much dramatic juice to this story when Susan barely dealt with any internal conflict about her wavering feelings, and when it seems so easy for her to cut things off now. Additionally, Thom’s sudden suicide pact idea comes out of nowhere, only set up by that one Bruce scene on the bleachers. There’s no real sense of suspense or emotional logic here besides the same old abandonment issues.
Macbeth
Truly, what the hell is this? The lesson is all about revenge and the cycle of violence, but the parallel story is just Steven blackmailing Liz, forcing her to participate in his planned film adaptation of Bret’s Less Than Zero in exchange for holding onto the negatives of her porno movie with Ryan. (Remember Ryan? Hope he enjoyed homecoming court last week.) The Romeo And Juliet parallel was surface-level but at least made some sense in a teen-logic sort of way. Here, there’s barely any connection.
Even setting that aside, who cares about any of this? Sure, Steven hits the nail on the head in realizing that Liz is still holding onto her acting dreams. But we already knew that. This idea of Terry, Liz, and Steven partnering up to make Bret’s movie hasn’t been set up adequately, and coming at this point in the season, it only feels like setup for a potential season two. Again, please let that not happen.
Hamlet
This one actually takes up the most time in the episode, not to mention earning the episode title itself. And thank god for that, because it’s by far the most relevant to, you know, the actual plot of the show. Bret actually is quite like the character of Hamlet in a lot of ways, especially the paranoia and indecision and encroaching madness. I like when both the show and book lean into his unreliable-narrator qualities.
But this vignette is only a marginal improvement on the last two. For one, there’s the scene of Terry sexually assaulting Bret, which gets described in graphic voiceover but feels more abstract than real. I appreciate Bret noting that he thought of this as his choice in the moment, but there’s otherwise no follow-up to this very real trauma, and it’s hard to even contextualize it given that we only see it when he finds the Trawler’s blackmail tape.
Who is the Trawler? Despite having read the book, I have no idea how the show will answer that question. Maybe it’s Robert, the main suspect; Bret’s meeting with Abigail seems to give both him and us plenty more reason to think he’s violent. Maybe it’s Steven, who points out this week that monsters became that way for a reason. Maybe it’s Thom, recently indoctrinated by a cult leader. Maybe it’s Bret himself, based on that creepy but confusing ending grin, along with all the mentions of hallucinations and alternative versions of the truth, along with the opening game where Bret wins the “who’s the Trawler?” vote. Him as a deranged killer with multiple personalities and selective memory would fit as well as any other possibility.
Regardless, I’m afraid to say that I’m not much invested in the answer, or even in Bret’s efforts to wriggle free from his stalker. Creative new structural conceits can be fun, but what I wanted most from this penultimate episode was some basic clarification of the stakes and why any of this should matter to me, and “Hamlet” had none of that. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I bite my thumb at thee, Ryan Murphy.
Stray observations
- • Yes, I know Murphy didn’t actually write this episode. That would be Lenore Zion, Charles Rogers, and Juli Weiner.
- • “There’s an open space in our divorced educators book club, if you’re in.”
- • “There’s only so many places in the world, if you think about it. Maybe 100. Like, sure, Toledo is a place, but you’re not gonna, like, go there, so for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist.”
- • That home invasion scene is actually very scary in the book, so it’s disappointing to see it in an abbreviated and far less suspenseful form here.
- • I also don’t have much of a reaction to Bret and Robert hooking up. As much as I appreciate the homoeroticism on the show, I don’t think I understand either person’s real motivations here, nor does Robert’s “to be or not to be” land with any meaning.
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