★½ (1½ out of 4)
Everyone in the pool. That seems to be the carnal call to action from those 1980s trendsetters, producer Ryan Murphy and novelist Bret Easton Ellis. Is it enough to fill the call sheet of Murphy’s nine-episode FX on Hulu series of Ellis’s 2023 novel with a beauty crop of hot Hollywood flesh? Hardly, even in service of a Hulu show about posh high school seniors in L.A. in 1981 coping with sex, drugs and a serial killer who wants to sculpt their bloody carcasses into art.
The plot, spun out by both Ellis and Murphy, involves Bret, the authorial concept acted with strained mischief by Igby Rigney (love the name, not so much the character). Bret pretends he’s straight. But he’s clearly hot for the dreamy new boy in school, Robert. Homer Gere, Richard’s son, plays the role with the same hint of mirth and menace his father brought to his early role in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.” You believe he’s capable of anything. But murder? That’s reaching. To be fair to Gere, reaching is part of the nepo baby process that will eventually lift him or throw him to the wolves. It’s too soon to tell.
Anyway, Robert parlays Bret’s prurient interest into penetrating the prepster circle of cool kids. “Being a teenager in 1981,” says the older Bret commenting from the sidelines, “was perhaps the last moment of our youth.” Pithy, sure, but pathetically out of place.
Producer Ryan Murphy says he wanted his take on the 1980s sex in the Bret Easton Ellis novel to be tasteful and palatable. Well, I didn’t.
The in-crowd is ruled by Bret and his favored love object, the blond, bland Debbie (Hayes Warner). But the keys to this rigid kingdom are held by student body president Susan, played by Kaia Gerber, who looks and sounds so much like Cindy Crawford that you’d swear they’re related. They are. Former cover girl Cindy is Kaia’s mother from her marriage to Randy Gerber.
But let’s hold the bio backstory to focus on Susan and her boytoy, Thom (Graham Campbell), who Bret tolerates for what Ellis the wordsmith allows is his “intriguing blankness.” The blankness doesn’t stay intriguing for long. That’s when Ellis and Murphy throw in the psycho killer, aka the Trawler (shades of Ellis’s “American Psycho”.). Bret thinks the killer is Robert, to add a kinky touch to their fatal attraction. Don’t ask me who the killer is. For Season 1, we never know. I don’t know about the book. Somehow, I never read it.
Parents, being eternally dull in the Murphy-Ellis verse, rarely enter the picture. We do meet Debbie’s creepy father, Terry (Wes Bentley), a predatory producer with a thing for boy candy. Terry’s wife Liz is played by Evan Rachel Wood who deserves better than this self-medicating wreck who appalls her daughter. “You are me,” says mom, signaling a no-hope future with just a snap judgment. Only theater producer Jordan Roith scores any real laughs as Terry’s androgynous assistant.
Something is off here. Can you sense it? Murphy and Ellis have previously swum laps in the trashy pool of lurid. In a recent interview, Murphy said he wanted to show some decorum when approaching the high schoolers of “The Shards.” WTF! Said Murphy: “It’s an arena of first times: First kiss. First make-out. First sexual experience. First break up. I always thought it was a story of longing and romance more than sexuality. Also, I’m a parent. I have three young boys. I’ve done erotic shows; sexual shows. I wanted it to be tasteful and palatable.”
Well, I didn’t. Murphy has done some great television. I stand on the hill he climbed with “The People v. O.J.Simpson,” “The Normal Heart” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” But it’s the pull he exerted with “Glee” garnished with a side of “Feud,” “Nip/Tuck” and “American Horror Story” that made him the pied piper of gay insurrection.
No one has any fun in “The Shards.” Murphy isn’t even enjoying his default position of just hanging back and watching the young, rich and beautiful enjoy their privileges. “Tasteful” is the last thing I’m looking for in the coupling of Murphy and Ellis. Let me paraphrase a line from, of all things, Eugene O’Neil’s “The Iceman Cometh,” a barroom tragedy about alcohol losing its buzz. What have you done to the fun, Murphy? It’s got no kick in it.