Well, Susan Reynolds did say she wanted to know what it felt like to lose, right?

This episode of FX’s The Shards is practically bite-sized — under 25 minutes if you don’t count the credits — and as such it’s appropriate that Susan packs a lifetime of Ls into a single homecoming parade. Her float is fabulous, by the way. Steven was right, as usual. 

Predictably, Susan’s downfall comes at the hands of Robert Mallory. It’s he who provides her with a bottle of Giorgio, the new unisex fragrance from Armani. (You automatically sound like a commercial when you talk about it.) By this point, Really Rhonda has already recognized this as the “girly smell” of her kidnapper, when Liz Schaffer spray it around as her daughter Debbie and Susan give Rhonda her gorgeous homecoming makeover. 

But while Rhonda seems to have no reason to suspect Liz was the person who tormented her, something about Susan triggers her when she smells that girly smell. “Susan Reynolds kidnapped me,” she proclaims, denouncing her would-be savior as her tormenter even as Susan surrenders her Homecoming Queen tiara to the girl. That’s right, Susan still gets voted Queen, even though she was actively trying not to. Now her efforts to award the honor to Rhonda look like an attempt to cover her tracks. Susan is led away from the float in handcuffs, sobbing as she’s placed in the back of a cop car.

Afterwards, Bret and Robert have it out at their lockers. Robert says he was together with Susan when Rhonda and Matt were abducted, an alibi he told the cops about when they questioned him for six hours on Bret’s advice. He’s furious about this…but he’s also Robert, which means whispering confrontationally explicit sexual come-ons into Bret’s ear, a favored technique he uses on our boy detective. 

“You’re just a sick little rich kid who killed his own mommy,” Bret retorts. Unfazed, Robert points out that Bret’s own parents have been in Europe “for a suspiciously long time.” Should he call the cops about that?

“Don’t fuck with the King,” he says threateningly before departing. Bret is left behind, looking equal parts angry and aroused. 

Then the power goes out and he finds Matt Kellner’s severed head and hands in the school trophy case. Whoever’s doing this is only escalating.

Despite the episode’s cruelty — some of it comedic, like the sight of the homecoming queen in cuffs; some of it horrific, like Matt’s awful fate — there are some surprising displays of tenderness. Susan really seems to treasure the opportunity to turn the now drab and dour Rhonda into someone who commands attention once again. (“You’re gonna be able to have sex with anyone you want!” Debbie enthuses when she sees the results of the makeover. “Anyone in the band, at least!”)

Bret, meanwhile, rigs the election so that Debbie has a decent showing, knowing how much the appreciation of others means to her now that her reputation as “a frivolous and spiteful clown” has seemingly been cemented. He doesn’t fix it so she wins, just so she won’t be upset. It’s a decent thing to do, and it shows that despite all his delusions of grandeur, Bret’s heart is in the right place. I just hope his brain catches up.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.