The concept of a collaboration between Bret Easton Ellis and Ryan Murphy was always an intriguing one. Based on Ellis' 2022 autofictional novel, the story centres on Bret, an aspiring author in Los Angeles in the 1980s. While his friends focus on finishing school, Bret is concerned with dark matters such as a serial killer called The Trawler. Ellis's original novel throws Bret's reliability into question, and Murphy manages to do the same. The Shards manages to pull off a difficult balancing act, capturing Ellis's detached blank fiction while embracing the visual excess that defines Murphy's work.