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This review contains spoilers for The Shards episodes 1 and 2
“This story is fictional. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”
We see that fine print a lot, but it’s front and center as we dive into FX’s The Shards, and for good reason: this is a Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis joint.
Murphy, who has been criticized in the past for sensationalizing real-life tragedies and taking creative liberties with the stories of those involved in them, has certainly found a lot of success despite those accusations. American Crime Story, Netflix’s Monster anthology series, and the recent Love Story have already attracted a staggering amount of eyeballs and ire, but this new project is trying something even more risky by bringing on controversial American Psycho author Ellis as a co-creator. Indeed, it’s based on his 2023 horror novel of the same name, which describes the events of his senior year of high school in 1981. Except it doesn’t, because Ellis decided to embrace autofiction and go meta with this one, making up a creepy story set in his own past.
It was a largely positive move. Readers found Ellis’ return to the slick, satirically narcissistic themes of his debut novel Less Than Zero hypnotic and enthralling, and Murphy must have enjoyed it as well. At least, it excited him enough to turn the admittedly overwrought tale into a TV show, which, yes, also follows “Bret Easton Ellis” (Igby Rigney, Midnight Mass) living a privileged life among privileged friends dabbling in sex and drugs as they slowly figure out who they’re becoming. Naturally (for both Murphy and Ellis), events take a grisly turn when a mysterious new student called Robert Mallory (Homer Gere) arrives just as a serial killer called The Trawler happens to start terrorizing the city.
Richard Gere’s son Homer is not the only nepo baby in The Shards. Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford, plays Bret’s just-out-of-reach childhood best friend Susan Reynolds, while Evan Rachel Wood pops up as the messy mother of his horny, coke-sniffing girlfriend, Debbie Schaffer (pop singer Hayes Warner). The good news is that some of the more questionable casting choices fit the vibe of the piece, where money and connections are flowing freely. Bret’s extremely dominant and occasionally irritating narration often jabs at both yet stretches a lazy arm around them in between 80s pop needle drops, pulling them (and us) closer in these first two episodes, where we get to know our beautiful characters’ foibles and traumas, mainly through his eyes.
The eyes with which we personally see Ellis’ sprawling, autofictionized past are in for a treat, it turns out. 1981 Los Angeles has been meticulously reimagined through some truly impressive and eye-popping production design. The sets, costumes, makeup, and props are exquisite, and directors Murphy and Michael Uppendahl (Marvel’s Legion) pleasingly linger on the details. Every room we slide into feels surprisingly unique and flawless, even as the sickness of all The Shards’ insidious excess and horrifying violence builds in our stomachs, roiling like a silt of acidic sludge under the most beautiful scenes imaginable.
There’s a touch of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet here, a touch of The Bling Ring, a touch of The Great Gatsby. And a touch of everything Murphy and Ellis clearly love to dramatize about the darkness within, power dynamics, rewritten pasts, and sexual identities. “You always embellish everything,” Susan says, mocking Bret’s suspicions about new boy Robert, who is acting seriously sus from the get-go. “I’m a writer; it’s my job,” Bret fires back. Nothing about The Shards is subtle.
The performances aren’t subtle either, save for Rigney (who looks so much like a young Topher Grace it’s unsettling). He gives everything to his version of an on-edge Bret as he avoids coming to terms with being gay in a society that just won’t accept that lifestyle yet, effortlessly adopting some of the author’s real mannerisms and still making the role his own.
We watch Bret try to impress his perfectly coiffed girlfriend’s married, predatory father (a delicious Wes Bentley having the time of his life) as he clings to hopes of becoming an important writer. We watch his pained expression as he has sex with said girlfriend while “inspired” by the jacked body of his male friend, seen dancing in slow motion as pool water and sweat drip down his abs in the balmy LA night. We watch him struggle to be blasé as he tries to force down his feelings. We watch him follow the squirrely Robert around as he yearns to uncover both him and his secrets.
Robert taunts him, intrigues him, frightens him. When he gets his claws into Bret’s stoner fuck buddy, Matt, we know Bret’s investigative mind will stop at nothing to figure out what really happened. But is Bret becoming obsessed with a serial killer, or is Robert just another handsome Tinsletown distraction? It’s a fun premise that would be even more fun if The Shards didn’t keep getting bogged down in telling, not showing. “I drove home carefully because I kept crying so hard,” Bret’s narration tells us over a shot of Bret driving home carefully because he keeps crying so hard. Like a lot of the excess in Bret’s circle, it feels unnecessary and infuriating; the unfortunate narrative impact of consuming TV and movies while doomscrolling.
Though we might feel reasonably unsure at times with some of the other stuff this show seems determined to explore—after all, Murphy and Ellis are lifting bodies, living and dead, of “fictional” teenagers from the pages of Ellis’ novel—the genre, characters and story are there to acknowledge this for us. For all its issues, The Shards is glorious and compellingly trashy. You probably won’t be telling your cooler, more discerning, prestige TV-loving friends about how good it is (they’d probably call it “The Sharts” and laugh, which you’d have to admit was a pretty good joke), but you’ll keep watching it because there’s a part of you that simply can’t look away.
Murphy has, for better or worse, done it again.
New episodes of The Shards premiere Wednesdays on FX.
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