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When Bret pushes past his own objections to attend the titular festivities in “Robert’s Party,” his voiceover once again provides a defense. “I knew the party was vulgar,” he tells us. “And yet I also knew, even then, what a powerful anesthetic vulgarity could be.” This is how I’m trying to approach The Shards. Yes, it’s trash, but maybe it’s trash that can distract me from 2026’s endless parade of horrors. The challenge here is that I’m coming to this show as a superfan of the novel, which guided the first two episodes closely and then got tossed out the window. To be clear, the success of a good adaptation isn’t necessarily its faithfulness to the source material, but major deviations from the book are far from the only problems here. We’re only on episode four, and Ryan Murphy has already unleashed the “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” approach to storytelling that has felled so many of his shows.
Take the cold open. I’ve been saying since the series premiere that Ryan Vaughn on the show doesn’t really resemble Ryan Vaughn in the book — perhaps that’s because he’s not Ryan Vaughn at all! We suddenly get a voiceover from Ryan Gifford, who monologues about his morning routine like a proto-Patrick Bateman. Setting aside how he likes to soap himself up in the shower (and the accompanying ass shot), there are two key pieces of information revealed here: Ryan has 91 days left to live, and he’s been shooting porn under the name Troy Wad to help pay for Yale. This entire sequence feels straight out of some other Murphy series, as Erotica Pictures president Jan “Butch” Banxxx (Glee’s Dot-Marie Jones) explains that Ryan’s porn movies are transitioning from overseas-only releases to the new technology of VHS. The exposure obviously scares him, but not enough to stop him from filming his next scene, where he’s been tasked with breaking in newcomer Cami Soul. In a completely absurd twist, she’s revealed to be Liz Schaffer, who asks after Ryan’s mom before they get down to business. This is the laziest kind of provocation, and The Shards can’t even manage to really go there. Multiple times per episode, these Buckley seniors remind us that they’re 18 (a change from the novel), just in case we were worried something illegal was going on outside of all the drug abuse.
I find this especially irritating because the show is so insistent on its coming-of-age themes, constantly presenting its characters as on the precipice of adulthood. No, I don’t think 18-year-olds are particularly grown up, but they are legally adults, and that does make a difference when they’re endlessly reflecting on not being kids anymore. When we catch up with Bret, Debbie, Susan, and Thom at Hamburger Hamlet — which has, inexplicably, become this show’s Peach Pit — Bret is still talking about the serial killer and missing students no one else seems to care about. “I think the Trawler, or the threat of the Trawler, has divided my life into a before and an after, and now that he’s here, I’ve crossed into this other world of death and adults,” he tells them, clunkily. Igby Rigney’s performance continues to work for me, and I give him credit for his ability to make these lines sound semi-natural. When he explains the Japanese concept of “mono no aware” (“a sadness that everything ends”), he sounds like a pretentious, navel-gazing young writer, which is at least consistent characterization. Bret is surprised that Robert’s party hasn’t been canceled, what with Really Rhonda and Matt still M.I.A., and even though I know they’re currently being tortured by a serial killer — a reveal we get at the end of the episode — I’m also tired of hearing him bring them up. “I just think that Robert’s party is in really bad taste,” he reiterates. Susan deliberately misunderstands, replying, “It’ll be a very tasteful party, Bret.” Regardless, they take a blind vote on napkins, and when “don’t cancel” wins, Bret lets it go.
Bad timing notwithstanding, Robert’s party at Susan’s house is pretty tasteful. “Senior year was when we started throwing parties like rich adults,” Bret says via voiceover, which means top-shelf liquor, fancy champagne, pure coke, and Lalique bowls filled with cigarettes. “These were the gilded weapons we used to fend off the stifling world of childhood.” (Do not take a shot every time he says something like this; you will not survive.) The episode picks up when Bret and Robert have their first tense interaction — their vaguely hostile and lightly homoerotic back-and-forth continues to be the highlight of the show for me. Bret is annoyed when Robert directs him to the drinks. “I’ve been coming here since I was 12,” he snaps. Robert gets in close to whisper, “I’ve been coming to Farrah Fawcett since I was 12.” Okay then!
And that’s not the only simmering conflict at the party. Thom is, indeed, picking up on the flirty vibes between Susan and Robert, accusing her of being all over him. (He’s not wrong.) Debbie intervenes to defuse the tension, then gets distracted by the presence of her nemesis, Cha Cha. When Susan refuses to evict her — a new source of discord between Susan and Debbie — Debbie takes matters into her own hands, spouting some very ‘80s racism and slut-shaming to banish Cha Cha from the dance floor. She then attempts to cozy up to her boyfriend for some comfort, but that’s not exactly in Bret’s skill set. When she excitedly gives him a present, a “first edition” of Stephen King’s Cujo, he can’t hide his apathy. “It just came out last month,” he tells her. “They’re all first editions.” Debbie turns away crying, and while Bret makes a half-assed attempt at comforting her, he quickly leaves to let her stew in her sadness.
Debbie decides not to sit around wallowing, instead relocating to Susan’s bedroom so she can numb her feelings with more coke. She’s not alone for long, and once Ryan shows up, she has an audience to vent her frustrations with Bret. “I’m 18, and I’m an L.A. 10,” Debbie complains. “I shouldn’t have to beg my boyfriend to touch me.” Ryan suavely responds, “If you were my girlfriend, you wouldn’t have to beg me for anything.” Naturally, the two start hooking up, and I’m not sure what to do with this development. Bret’s clandestine past relationship with Ryan has been relegated to background noise on the show, and now we’ve somehow moved on to Ryan sleeping with both Schaffer women. When Debbie sees a photo of her and Bret together, however, she realizes she can’t go through with it, lying to Ryan that he’s too big for her. “It’s not always this big,” he swears. “It’s just when I’m hard.” (Okay, that’s a funny enough line, but Ryan is aiming for Yale, so I’m not sure he needs to be Brittany on Glee-level stupid.) Debbie can write this whole thing off as a brief coke-fueled indiscretion, but there’s a bigger problem at hand. Suddenly, she and Ryan watch in horror as a long-haired man steps out from the closet where he’s been hiding, crying and wielding a giant knife. A panicked Debbie tries bargaining (“my dad is a producer, he will put you in one of his movies”), but the intruder isn’t budging.
Elsewhere at Susan’s, Bret has a disturbing encounter of his own when he bumps into Rohmer and Balthazar, two incredibly named Brentwood students who knew the party’s honoree back in middle school. They casually reveal that Robert was accused of killing his mother after she died from a fall down the stairs, and though they’re quick to note that he was cleared of any wrongdoing, this isn’t information Bret is going to take in stride. He immediately finds the man of the hour outside and whispers his new intel into his ear. Robert — who Susan noted earlier isn’t supposed to be drinking on his medication — storms off to the bar and grabs a handle of vodka that he starts chugging. At first, Robert’s drunken moves on the dance floor are charming, even if Thom is less than impressed by the spectacle. (Perhaps he’s never paid a visit to Funkytown.) Then the dancing turns more chaotic and overtly sexual, and Susan starts to worry. She asks Bret if Robert seems okay to him. “He’s a pathological liar who spent time in a mental institution,” he replies. “Robert does not seem okay.” In this moment, it’s hard to argue with Bret — Robert’s behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. Susan demands to know what Bret said to set him off, and instead of telling her, he uses this opportunity to plead his case again. The fact that he thinks Susan might be receptive exposes a new level of desperation. Robert is a psycho, Bret boldly insists, and he kidnapped Matt and Rhonda. “Oh my God, Bret, listen to yourself,” Susan snaps. “You’re the psycho.”
True or not, there’s the more urgent problem of Robert’s dance floor meltdown to contend with. As “Funkytown” transitions to “We Got the Beat,” Robert starts smashing bottles. Bret gets the funniest line of the episode here when Susan asks him to do something to help. “I am doing something,” he says. “Bearing witness is doing something.” (This is both hilarious and the perfect encapsulation of a self-important writer.) Thom tries to get Robert to calm down, and the two start fighting. That turns into wrestling, which turns into — a surprise to all involved — Robert kissing Thom on the lips. Soon, Robert is disrobing and walking on broken glass to the pool, where he dives to the bottom and doesn’t surface. Susan strips down to her underwear and jumps in after him, with Thom following closely behind. Together, the two pull an unconscious Robert out of the water. Susan does CPR, and though there’s nothing sexual about this kind of mouth-to-mouth, Bret watches her through gritted teeth. When Robert finally comes to, Susan asks if he’s okay. “Only when you’re around,” he answers, which is a decent line, if not an ideal thing to say when her boyfriend is also standing over him. Thom begins kicking Robert, but before that fight can escalate, there’s a scream from inside the house.
Bret and Thom run to Susan’s bedroom door, which opens to reveal Debbie and Ryan cowering shirtless before the long-haired intruder. None of them seem to recognize this man, though we can safely assume he’s a member of the Riders of the Afterlife cult, since they’re partial to long hair, big knives, and weeping. Thom bravely stands up to the stranger, even with a blade in his face, and getting the man to exit turns out to be as simple as firmly saying, “I think it’s time you leave.” Curiously, the man says goodbye to Thom by name — but when Bret calls this out the next morning, Thom denies it.
No one is being particularly honest in the harsh light of day. When Bret asks Debbie why she and Ryan had their shirts off, she claims the intruder made them do it. Susan then lies to Bret about what Robert said after she gave him CPR, and Bret lies to Susan about the role he played in Robert’s vodka binge. They both know the other is lying, which is enough to inspire another repetitive voiceover: “I had entered the world of adults and death and the door had closed behind me,” he reflects. “I would never feel like a kid again. I had never felt more grown-up, and I had never felt more alone.” “Icehouse” by the same-named band starts to play. It’s one of the anthemic tracks that pops up throughout the novel The Shards, and its inclusion here is bittersweet. The show knows all the right songs, but it keeps hitting the wrong notes.
• So, what’s the deal with Ryan Gifford? Knowing that Bret Easton Ellis signed off on the first two episodes, where the character certainly seemed to be Ryan Vaughn, I can’t help but feel like Ryan Murphy pulled a fast one here. I hope we get to see more of this Ryan’s relationship with Bret, because right now, I’m having a hard time imagining anything going on between the two of them.
• Also, while I have no problem with making Ryan bi, I’m a little put off by the fact that we’re exclusively watching him hook up with women. Excuse me for assuming an adaptation of a very gay book by a very gay showrunner would be gayer than this!
• Having Thom be suspicious of Susan and Robert so early on is an interesting change from the novel, though the show still wants him to just be a dope sometimes. More importantly, part of what propels the narrative in the book is Bret being the only one of his friends to see a dark side to Robert. What happens if Bret has an ally?
• Robert’s freakout at Susan’s house plays out very closely to how it does in the book, though there it’s not prompted by anything Bret does. (He doesn’t learn about Robert’s mom until much later.) To me, the most notable change — outside of Robert not getting fully naked, you cowards — is that the meltdown is witnessed by much more of the senior class. As with Thom turning on him, I feel like this many Buckley students seeing Robert go nuts would make him instantly less popular.
