At the very least, a season finale is supposed to resolve the main mystery.
Whatever the writers decide to do with the resolution — evolve it, set up a new one, or give up — matters less than whether viewers get one.
And for The Shards, the answer we’ve waited all along for is who is The Trawler.
Personally, I wasn’t invested in finding out because it doesn’t change the fact that this is a ridiculous story, but it needed to happen.
So this is not an overreaction when I ask what I just watched. No, daddy is not going to chill. What the hell was even that?
The Shards Season 1 Episode 9, “Stairway to Heaven,” is the worst season finale in recent memory.
In many ways it feels like an afterthought because number nine is an odd place to end a season, and it just doesn’t make sense.
The episode opens by trying to shift from a crime horror to a whodunit.
Terry Schaffer — who is despicable but no one cares about — is sacrificed in this attempt to evade expectations.
The writers force every character into the same room so we can keep guessing who pushed Terry, and the scene feels straight out of a soap opera.
The writers feed us everyone’s motivations for killing Terry, but they get more ridiculous as they are revealed.
We start with Bret, who could be justified — and “could” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here — in pushing Terry.
He offered himself to Terry for career progression, but that doesn’t matter because he felt abused. Bret is the only one with a remotely justifiable motive, but as we go down the line, it gets even more stupid.
Somehow we start with Bret wanting to kill Terry for sexually abusing him, to Robert doing it because Bret thinks Robert is evil incarnate.
I actually stopped after that to laugh.
This show has been hammering home that Robert Mallory is an awful person because Bret saw him once at a movie theatre, got a hard-on, and never got over it.
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Every time Bret tries to make Robert seem evil, I feel like slapping some sense into him.
All Robert does is look hot and rage-bait. Maybe I have fallen for his charm.
The motives for pushing Terry Schaffer (the show couldn’t even commit to killing him) are as stupid as they come, but they set up the season’s cliffhanger as the police round everyone up and deliver a bombshell.
They claim everything that’s happened so far was done by someone in the room.
No shit, Sherlock. That is literally the only logical conclusion, even if the situation has been deliberately made messy to confuse viewers and avoid solving the main mystery.
Even Ryan pops up once again because, for some reason, he must.
What was the point of The Shards Season 1 Episode 4, “Robert’s Party?” Why did it make it sound like Ryan was dying soon, with the ominous fucking Buc Wheats breakfast cereal count?
Nothing has to make sense when you have a cliffhanger. The problem is that no one — and I’m willing to bet on this — cares what happens next.
Between the opening and closing whodunit setup, a lot happens. We’re supposed to infer most of it.
Steven terrorizes the Schaffers to get a producer credit on some stupid movie written by a teenager; Debbie finds out her dad is rotten and switches up on him; Susan breaks up with Thom for good, and maybe one other thing that I don’t care to remember.
Ironically, these utterly forgettable moments are when the cast gets to shine even when it feels too late.
Steven and Terry’s symbiotic relationship would have been a great arc to explore through the season, but this show is pure wasted potential.
And with that, The Shards Season 1 comes to an end. It is confidently the worst show I have seen this year.
Every actor here deserves to be freed from their contract so that they can pursue better opportunities.
Autopsy
The Shards had all the ingredients for success. The time period, cast, and source material primed it for success.
But a few things went wrong, and it all starts with FX.
Every network has its own aesthetic to uphold, which means that not every show fits every network.
The Shards feels like an HBO show (it was supposed to be on HBO) because it is a tried-and-tested network.
If it were on HBO, it could have taken over Twitter at 10 pm after the latest crazy development.
Many scenes felt self-undercut because they never delivered on the tension.
The Shards needed to be sexier and more explicit, but FX makes sexy-adjacent shows. They are glossy and saturated, but that doesn’t add much when the story isn’t allowed to progress.
The casting is excellent. It might look like it’s made up of pretty people, but being pretty and talented are not mutually exclusive.
Igby Rigney sets the mood immediately in the pilot episode by developing his character’s look, and never once breaks it. I may not have been a fan of the voiceover, but he does some excellent work.
The problem is that the writing never gives the characters any momentum, and at some point Rigney’s empty, detached look for Bret stops feeling like a characterization choice and starts to feel gimmicky.
The Shards would have benefited from having a bigger writing team instead of recycling the same writers over and over.
Each writer has shortcomings, and when given the reins, they surface repeatedly.
A better decision would have been to have Ryan Murphy relinquish control because, at this point, we have seen everything he has to say.
His obsession with rich people and the depraved parts of humanity has hit a wall after exploring them in numerous FX shows.
The story deserved a complete overhaul, starting with a new name for the character. Naming the character after the show’s writer does not help suspend disbelief.
It also needed to be gayer, whether in exploring Bret’s internal struggle or depicting his sexuality.
This prudish adaptation with multiple queer men makes him seem straighter than Thom.
The tension between Bret and Robert should have developed into something more because the chemistry between Homer Gere and Rigney is wasted on a hot-and-cold cycle that never goes anywhere.
The Shards didn’t land well, and another season wouldn’t fix these problems. It would need a complete overhaul.
Intrusive Thoughts
- So Debbie saw her boyfriend getting screwed by her dad and instead of cutting and running, forced him to stay?
- That changing room would have been a great moment for an emotionally charged quickie.
- Why does Thom sound like he’s going to sing when upset? Did he go to the same school as the boys from The Summer I Turned Pretty?
It’s over; we’re free. What did you think of the series season finale? Did it hit all the right notes for you? Would you watch another season?
Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you like, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.
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