TV Recap: FX's "The Shards" Episode 1 — Meet the Kids of 1981 Los Angeles
Ryan Murphy’s The Shards follows a group of teenagers in 1981 being terrorized by a serial killer. The Pilot does a lot of heavy lifting, introducing the characters and their world. Meet Bret, Debbie, Susan, Thom, and Robert in this recap of the premiere.
Episode 1: “Pilot” - Written by Ryan Murphy & Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Ellis (Igby Rigney) vividly remembers the day he first saw Robert Mallory (Homer Gere). It was May 23rd, 1980, at a 10 am screening of The Shining in Westwood. Disenchanted by the novel’s adaptation, Bret found himself much more drawn to a tall, handsome boy. “This boy aroused something primal in me that I’d never felt before,” Bret recalls. “I needed to be his friend. I had to own him.” After the movie, Bret couldn’t find him. “What I didn’t know then was that I would actually meet this boy again. That his name was Robert Mallory, and that his arrival at my high school and into my life would coincide with a season of horror and murder that would destroy us all.”
Someone who didn’t catch Bret’s eye at the theater was Katherine Latchford (Molly Peyton), a redhead who was seemingly being stalked by a beige van. She returned home to find her dog, Shadow, missing, and her fish tank low on water and empty of fish. She was getting weird phone calls from a bad connection, someone breathing heavily on the other end and refusing to talk. When she went to put up fliers for her missing dog, she found bulletin boards full of missing pets. While out, a figure cloaked in black tackled her to the ground, knocking her unconscious and throwing her into the beige van.
Fast-forwarding to the end of summer 1981, Bret introduces us to his friend group. There’s his girlfriend, Debbie Schaffer (Hayes Warner), daughter of a successful Hollywood producer. She came on to Bret at a party where, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, she propositioned him. “I was at a point where I was still trying to be attracted to girls,” Bret’s voiceover explains. Debbie also has a horse named Spirit who is boarded at an expensive stable above Malibu.
While Bret’s narration makes it clear that he is gay, he refers to Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber) as “the most beautiful girl ever, and to this very day, the person I think I’ve loved the most in my entire life.” Susan is the school class president, a straight-A student, and also exorbitantly wealthy. She has been in a relationship with Thom Wright (Graham Campbell), the most popular guy in school, since Sophomore year. Bret, Debbie, Susan, and Tom spent all their free time together going to movies, record and book stores, and dining at Hamburger Hamlet.
Summer came to a close with an extravagant party at Debbie’s house. A boy named Ryan Vaughn (Daniel Dale) tells Bret in private that they need to cool things down and wants to be just friends. We see Bret looking sad amidst the party, with Susan asking him what he was talking to Ryan about. Debbie breaks the tension by wanting to talk about homecoming plans, which annoys Susan, who doesn’t want to be homecoming queen again. Debbie tries to excite her with her plans for senior year, including a private Grad Nite party in Disneyland’s Blue Bayou Restaurant. Susan asks Debbie to make sure she invites the new student to Disneyland. Bret thinks it’s weird that someone is transferring to their class at the start of senior year. Susan tells them what she knows: His name is Robert Mallory, and he lives with his aunt in Century City, which is a long commute. Debbie gets up, asking Bret to meet her in her bedroom in 10 minutes for sex.
Bret moves through the party, finding Debbie’s dad, Terry Schaffer (Wes Bentley), in a hot tub with two boys, who he dismisses. Thom had earlier complained about Terry, who he thinks is gay because he invited him to his private bedroom jacuzzi. Talking to Bret, Terry asks about his writing ambitions, the novel Bret’s working on, and the potential for a screen adaptation, suggesting they do lunch. “I’ve always had my eye on you, Bret,” Terry tells him. They’re distracted by Terry’s assistant, Steven Reinhardt (Jordan Roth), who snaps a Polaroid picture of them for Debbie’s scrapbook.
As Bret enters the house to head to Debbie’s room, he encounters her mom, Liz Schaffer (Evan Rachel Wood), drunk and angry as she looks for her husband, demanding that Bret tell her who he was with. Steven enters to find Liz ranting about her husband’s homosexuality, trying to calm her down with sleeping pills. Liz asks Bret if he’s staying for the movie. “I’ve already seen it,” he says as he proceeds to Debbie’s bedroom.
When Bret enters Debbie’s pink bedroom, she has just had a strange phone call: a static connection with someone breathing heavily on the other end. Bret tries to cheer Debbie up with a sexy striptease.
Later that night, Bret is in bed with a guy: Matt Kelner (Owen Painter). “My relationship with Debbie was my public persona, and my relationship with Matt Kelner was my secret, forbidden one,” his narration explains. Having slept over, in the morning, Bret thinks it’s strange that Matt’s fish tank is missing all of its fish, now low on water, wondering if Matt’s cat got them. “The cat’s missing too,” Matt says as he takes a hit of his bong. “I think we should stop this,” Bret says as he puts his pants on. He and Matt both seem sad about it, but neither will to say as much.
As Bret got ready for school, he overheard a news report about a teenage girl’s body found on a tennis court in Woodland Hills. Authorities believe the death may be related to Katherine Latchford’s murder, whose body was found a year ago in a dumpster, mangled with the remains of her pet dog. When Bret gets to school, police are there inspecting the griffin statue, which is covered in dead fish and blood.
“You must be Robert Mallory,” Susan said to the handsome new student as he approached their lunch table, with the principal having instructed him to find her. Bret instantly recognized him from the movie, and was shocked to find him again. Robert tells them that he used to live in Chicago, but has been living with his aunt for the past 10 months after getting kicked out of his previous school. His mom died, and his dad wanted to send Robert to military school, but his aunt saved him. Bret mentions that he’s seen Robert before, but Robert insists they’ve never met. Bret brings up the showing of The Shining. “Why would you remember me there?” Robert asks, saying he never saw that movie.
As Susan leads an assembly hall, Bret watches Robert talking to Ryan, making him smile and blush as he whispers in his ear. Robert glances back at Bret, blowing him an air kiss.
After school, Bret sees Robert in the parking lot with Matt. When Robert got in his car and drove away, Bret followed, and it turned into an aggressive car chase that led them both to the Galeria Mall. Bret saw Robert staring at fish tanks in a pet store window. Trying to shake it off, Bret went to browse at Tower Records, only to find Robert waiting for him at the exit, asking why he followed him. Bret brings up The Shining again, and Robert insists he hasn’t seen the film. Bret asks what he and Matt were talking about; Robert says Matt seems like a confused guy in need of a friend. Robert steers the conversation to Susan, whom he has a crush on, asking how long she and Thom have been together. Robert ends the conversation with an observation about Bret: “When you talk to me, you’re really talking to yourself.”
Bret goes home to an empty house. His parents, on the brink of divorce, are away on an extended vacation to try to save their marriage. On the news, he hears that the tennis court victim has been linked to a third victim, Margo Tyler, whose body was found behind a Tower Records. Investigators are now referring to this serial killer targeting young people as “The Trawler.” In all cases, the victim’s missing pets were used in a satanic way.
Bret turns off the news. His phone rings. He answers to hear a static connection and heavy breathing on the other end of the line. Then someone starts screaming, a boy’s voice. “Help me,” they plead.
To be continued in Episode 2, “Don’t You Want Me.”
Songs Featured in this Episode:
- “Moving in Stereo” by The Cars
- “Vienna” by Ultravox
- “Planet Earth” by Duran Duran
- “This Town” by The Go-Gos
- “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers
- “Crimson and Clover” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
- “Bad Boys Get Spanked” by Pretenders
- “L.A. Wants Me Dead” by Troye Sivan and Leland