Honestly, Sharp Objects is laying its Southern Gothic sensibilities on a bit thick. The sweaty interiors of humid Wind Gap, Missouri, are accented with dreamily whirring ceiling fans that throw haunted shadows on the walls. The curtains are pulled shut, either to keep out the sun or deflect the glances of nosy neighbors. Outside, the woods are buzzing with bugs and frogs, and the late summer evenings send piercing rays of golden light beaming onto the tiny, picturesque “downtown.” Matriarch and heiress Adora (Patricia Clarkson) pours on her performance with the viscous, sugary envelopment of syrup on waffles; she’s Miss Havisham transported to a Eugene O’Neill play, both pathetic and lethal.

But “Closer,” Sunday’s monumental episode, finds a way to justify the overwrought elements—to use them as an engine for the show’s biggest themes. Gillian Flynn’s story, show-runner Marti Noxon’s vision, and director Jean-Marc Vallée’s aesthetic engage with, and indulge in, the cloying myths of the feminine, subject matter typically relegated to less-respected genres like soap opera or chick lit—pushing back against the received wisdom that a story about feminine suffering has to be lurid, exploitative, or trashy. It’s a difficult line to walk, and the show isn’t always successful in its quest. But seeing that concept attempted and pulled off, even imperfectly, feels like a full-body baptism in ice-cold water.

That impact is especially felt in this episode, which pits Camille (Amy Adams) against Adora—her mother and the monster of her childhood, lurking upstairs in her haunted house.

We’ve seen Tony Soprano struggle with the toxicity of aggression, machismo, and power; we’ve seen Don Draper evolve through womanizing and alcoholism in roaring 60s New York. Both of those men also struggled with their hard, loveless mothers, but rarely got close enough to those characters to examine how the women got that way. Sharp Objects, however, doesn’t just uncover Adora’s grotesque perversion of the feminine mythos: it digs into the firmament of metaphor around her, searching for an explanation of how Adora came to exist, too. “Closer” is a heightened episode, but it’s an excellent encapsulation of how Noxon’s vindicated and vindicating women keep the tension in this murder mystery focused on personal stakes. This show is not simply a whodunit, but a visceral, haunting story about the trauma of inhabiting a female body.

Fittingly, then, this is a story told partly through the tools of the domestic—food, home, clothes, hair, sex. Adora’s mansion alone tells such a story, from the cracks in Camille’s ceiling to the immaculate ivory tile in her mother’s dressing room. The banisters fence in Camille’s doorway, so she has to either pass by the other doors or jump the railing to find sanctuary. Even the perfect miniature version of the house in the parlor, Amma’s (__Eliza Scanlen) parent-approved plaything, plays into the motif.

In “Closer,” the house is turned upside down for Calhoun Day, an annual celebration Adora marks by inviting the entire town to her estate. But there’s an inner sanctum that isn’t penetrated, even when the grounds are overrun—a kind of parallel for the grisly, erotic story of local Civil War-era hero Millie Calhoun. If Adora is the house—and she’s dressed to match it throughout the episode—her home itself is a manifestation of what she perceives to be her decorous role: available, but not too available; hallowed, but cracked. The only other interiors we see this episode are ridiculously dingy by comparison—a shoddy little barbershop; the boys’ trophy cabin in the woods; Richard’s (Chris Messina) dingy motel room.