My Day: Amy Adams and “Sharp Edges”

I just finished watching the 8th and last episode on HBO of “Sharp Edges”, a series based on a book by Gillian Flynn, produced by and starring Amy Adams.  I used it as my most recent treadmill watching.  I guess it was good enough for that……but not for much else.

Not that Amy Adams did not do a good job, nor that the rest of the cast was not up to par.  The story line was just dumb (IMO) and there were some other problems as well.

My first problems were parochial.  The primary setting is the imaginary town of Wind Gap, Missouri, in the southeastern boot heel of the state.  The secondary setting is St. Louis, where Adams (her role is that of Camille) works as a cub reporter on the St. Louis Chronicle.  Obviously, there is no St. Louis Chronicle, which is problem number 1.  Secondly, most of the sights in St. Louis didn’t look like St. Louis.  That is problem 2.

But the bigger problem was Wind Gap.  Problem 3 is that it is hard to imagine a town in Missouri called Wind Gap; it is just not a Missouri type of name.  Secondly, looking at the town (relatively spiffy looking in large part), you know you are not in the boot heel of Missouri.  In fact, the series was filmed in a town in Georgia, and it looks much more like Georgia.  To deepen the problem of the looks of the town, there are a few sites outside of town where you see pleasant rolling hills.  If you know of any pleasant rolling hills in the boot heel of Missouri, please let me know where they are.  (This reminds me of the  other Missouri-set show of recent years – Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri – which was filmed in the mountains of western North Carolina.)  Further, the big house in Wind Gap where Camille grew up doesn’t look at all like Missouri.  A large, Victorian house, these scenes were filmed in northern California. As a St. Louis native, all these things bothered me.

Then there’s the plot. Camille is the daughter of the richest family in town. Her one sister died some years back, another one (actually a half sister) was an 8th grader in Wind Gap.  Camille had left and moved to St. Louis and become a journalist.  In addition, two other young girls were killed in Wind Gap and Camille is assigned to cover the story.  She moves back with her mother, stepfather, and young half sister while she is in town.  She and her mother have never gotten along and, perhaps as a result, Camille has been a very troubled person, unable to form any real relationships.

So, it’s the story of the small town and you meet a lot of people.  Her family, and their black maid (one of the few blacks in town, or so it seems, not the case in the boot heel).  The local sheriff.  The young, attractive law man from Kansas City brought to Wind Gap to help the sheriff (of course, over the sheriff’s objection). The families of the dead girls, and their friends.  And assorted (and sordid) others.

Who killed the girls?  Well, you know (without having been told) almost as soon as the series starts, but you aren’t really told until the end of the last episode.  Because most of the characters are in paid, or causing others pain, throughout the series, and because you know who did it and know nothing good will come out of the story line, you are anxious for the whole thing to end.  Say, in about episode 3.

There is little violence, some but not too much sex, but…….there just is a lot that is disgusting.  And this does not make this an attractive series to watch.