{"id":622196,"date":"2026-08-05T17:51:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T17:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/622196\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T17:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T17:51:16","slug":"the-shards-review-ryan-murphy-adaptation-for-fx-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/622196\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Shards’ Review: Ryan Murphy Adaptation for FX Doesn’t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn some ways, an adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis<\/a> novel \u201cThe Shards<\/a>\u201d has had some of the heavy lifting done for it. Ellis\u2019 cooly detached prose style embodies the shameless materialism of its Reagan era setting with an obsessive catalog of proper nouns: what kind of cars its characters drive; the brand of clothes they wear; the songs they listen to on repeat; the specific routes they take through the wealthy precincts of Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch details act as ready-made stage directions for the FX series of the same name, co-created by Ellis and prolific producer Ryan Murphy<\/a>. The first two episodes of \u201cThe Shards\u201d closely track the opening chapters of the source material. This literal approach works to conjure the atmosphere of the book, a kind of autofiction that blends Ellis\u2019 actual experience attending prep school while writing his breakout debut \u201cLess Than Zero\u201d with an increasingly lurid plot about a serial killer stalking his classmates. Ultravox\u2019s \u201cVienna\u201d and countless other contemporary hits conjure the time; shots of Mulholland Drive and a recreation of the Sherman Oaks Galleria in its heyday evoke the place. A foundation is laid for the reality of our unreliable narrator, played here by Igby Rigney, before it starts to fracture into the series\u2019 titular pieces.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then \u201cThe Shards\u201d starts making big, bold choices to stake its claim on the story. And that\u2019s when things start to go off the rails.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt least \u201cThe Shards\u201d gets one crucial, and quite difficult, thing right: Rigney is terrific as the young Ellis, making the part\u2019s many contradictions and internal struggles perfectly legible to the outside observer. Bret is, as one character observes, \u201caloof,\u201d a combination of writerly remove and his closeted homosexuality. Yet Rigney excels at playing both sides of Bret\u2019s double life: not just the illicit hookups with school stoner Matt (Owen Painter) squeezed between dates with his rich, beautiful and popular girlfriend Debbie (Hayes Warner), but the sophistication he so avidly cultivates that can\u2019t fully cover up the na\u00efvet\u00e9 of youth. Bret does drugs like a pro and lives on his own while his parents swan off to Europe. He still can\u2019t hide \u2014\u00a0or rather, Rigney shows \u2014\u00a0his discomfort and confusion when thrust into nuanced, grown-up situations, like the way Debbie\u2019s father Terry (Wes Bentley) looks him up and down while promising to read over his screenplay. Terry, a Hollywood power player, tells Bret that every story is about loss, be it love, life or innocence. There\u2019s no confusion over which kind of loss most interests \u201cThe Shards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe arrival of the killer known as the Trawler, who mutilates his victim\u2019s corpses into morbid tableaux using animal parts, corresponds with the wool falling from Bret\u2019s eyes. (The feeling of being constantly surveilled by some unknown entity is also that of a young gay man who\u2019s terrified of being found out.) \u201cI\u2019ve crossed over into this other world of death and adults,\u201d says Rigney\u2019s voiceover, much of it lifted wholesale from Ellis\u2019 prose. \u201cOne day, I\u2019m gonna feel like a kid for the last time.\u201d Rigney is so strong that his performance helps justify the otherwise odd choice to make him the narrator, who\u2019s meant to be older and refracting the series\u2019 events through decades\u2019 worth of hindsight. A well-known, middle-aged actor might make more thematic sense \u2014\u00a0or even Ellis himself, who first originated what would become \u201cThe Shards\u201d on his podcast.<\/p>\n

\n\tSadly, Rigney\u2019s talent also has the unfortunate side effect of highlighting how much the other two load-bearing roles in \u201cThe Shards\u201d are lacking in execution. The first is model and actor Kaia Gerber as Bret\u2019s best friend Susan Reynolds, the goody two-shoes class president and straight-A student to Debbie\u2019s unrepentant wild child. Yet Gerber, who\u2019s shown a skill for deadpan comedy in other acting parts like \u201cBottoms,\u201d comes off as exactly what she is: a Glamazon in her mid-twenties who shows absolutely none of a sheltered high schooler\u2019s inner conflict when weighing whether to flirt with her own dark side. The casting is so misguided, and in line with Murphy\u2019s proclivity for flashy celebrities, that it\u2019s hard to fault Gerber herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other critical flaw in \u201cThe Shards\u201d cast is the part of Susan\u2019s temptor: Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), a new student at the Buckley School (Ellis\u2019 actual alma mater) who instantly attracts Bret\u2019s coupled lust and suspicion. In fairness to Gere, an entertaining if small presence on Season 3 of \u201cEuphoria,\u201d Robert is a jumble of traits it\u2019s hard to package into one person. He\u2019s a potentially violent psychopath who gets in a car chase with Bret before rattling him with lewd descriptions of what he\u2019d like to do to Susan. He\u2019s also meant to be plausible as a lonely teen struggling with mental illness; that\u2019s how Susan reads his prior stint in an institution, leading her to ignore multiple warnings from both Bret and her insecure boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell). Bret naturally interprets this data point much less charitably.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is the challenge, of course, in translating \u201cThe Shards\u201d from Ellis\u2019 claustrophobic and paranoid point of view for the camera\u2019s all-seeing eye. (Often, Robert is supposed to come off multiple ways to multiple people in the very same scene.) But where it feels additive to see how Bret\u2019s friends react when he starts spouting conspiracy theories and indulging his obsession with the Trawler, Robert comes off more wooden than menacing, more handsome than seductive. He works better as an object of Bret\u2019s fantasies, or maybe delusions, on the page than as a flesh-and-blood human being.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith these handicaps in place, it\u2019s unlikely \u201cThe Shards\u201d would ever rise to the level of \u201cAmerican Psycho,\u201d an Ellis work whose film version starring Christian Bale helped cement the story even further into the zeitgeist. But how the full season unfolds virtually guarantees it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo pad out the plot, Murphy and his collaborators insert dated and stereotypical teen tropes: an episode set at a public access dance show, \u00e1 la \u201cHairspray\u201d (which took place 20 years earlier); an attempt to cultivate suspense around the race for homecoming queen. Each of these additions runs directly counter to the jaded sophisticates the protagonists of \u201cThe Shards\u201d are supposed to be, muddling the mood Ellis once curated so carefully.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat mood includes the sense of dread induced by the Trawler, another delicate balance \u201cThe Shards\u201d utterly botches. \u201cKids these days have it fucking easy,\u201d Bret scoffs. Gen Z may have smartphones, he explains, but \u201cwe had to deal with serial killers.\u201d Alongside the Night Stalker and Manson-esque cults, the Trawler is introduced as a kind of tone-setter, establishing grisly murders as a fact of life to be greeted with blas\u00e9, semi-comic indifference. But the masked figure becomes less effective the more active a role he plays in the proceedings. \u201cThe Shards\u201d is simply unable to cultivate and sustain the needed ambiguity about whether Robert could really be the Trawler or how much Bret is imagining things. Showing the Trawler at work through the eyes of Rhonda (played by internet provocateur Ivy Wolk), a kidnapped classmate of Bret\u2019s and a new addition to the show, dispels much of the mystery and menace. Intended reversals around red herrings and likely suspects instead land with a thud.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of this off-kilter feeling stems from the terribly misguided decision to trade Ellis\u2019 macabre crescendo for a planned multi-season run. This expansion is why \u201cThe Shards\u201d amps up supporting characters like Debbie\u2019s miserable mother Liz (a be-banged Evan Rachel Wood), who gets a ludicrous arc straight out of \u201cBoogie Nights\u201d that feels wildly out of place. And it\u2019s why the show transforms at the last minute into a whodunit that turns the Trawler from an ethereal boogeyman into a Scooby-Doo villain waiting to be unmasked. Ironically, the more the Trawler comes into focus, the less interested I became in his identity. \u201cThe Shards\u201d is a feeling, and the Murphy version can\u2019t capture it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first two episodes of \u201cThe Shards\u201d will premiere on FX and Hulu on Aug. 5 at 9pm ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Wednesdays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In some ways, an adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel \u201cThe Shards\u201d has had some of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[90305,18,117,19,17,4950,186267,128],"class_list":["post-622196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bret-easton-ellis","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ryan-murphy","tag-the-shards","tag-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}