Sally wraps up someone in her mattress (I think it was
the guy who was brutally raped last episode) she’s tearful and talks about him
trying tio “cheat death”, probably another unsubtle reference to drug use.
Our remaining tourist is still imprisoned – screaming for
help while the three vampy kids feed on her and kill her – her body now becomes
Liz, Iris and the creepy Maid’s (who remains kind of creepily awesome) job to
clean up. Thety have a fair collection of rotting bodies in the basement.
The 4 creepy kiddies then donate blood which is decanted
and served to the countess by iris who is still desperate to see her son,
Donovan – he’s avoiding her because he finds her pretty smothering. He’s also
not in the mood to go out for hunting and art either, preferring a Netflix
binge (I have days like that, you just want to spend some quality time with
your sofa and TV and not even the promise of random mass murder can stir you).
He also makes a side remark about lack of money so it looks like the Countess
isn’t that flush
The countess isn’t a home body and goes out alone
Dr. Alex Lowe continues to be my hero, calling out and
slapping down anti-vax parents putting kids’ lives at risk for no good reason.
Someone get this lady a cheerleading squad.
Her husband, Detective John, is staying at the murder
hotel for reasons that escape anyone with two brain cells to rub together (it
must be awfully cheap) and even stays when he hallucinates/dreams the drill
rapist in the ceiling and two zombies having sex in his bathroom
Then he gets the creepy kids playing in the halls and
vanishing again. Ok, drill-penises on the ceiling, maybe, zombie fucking in the
bathroom – well it may be a cheap hotel. But creepy blond kids? Why would you
not check out right then and there?!
Sally and Liz offer him a drink while Sally tells him,
surprisingly, that the hotel is a very very scary place. They talk and they talk about John being ex-alcoholic
(and the last time he had a drink when a tragic police case drove him to a binge
and how he connects that to losing his son) and she talk about how she became
and addict in quite poignant terms.
Off to work the next day with more hints about the serial
killer John is chasing and a scary package –not a bomb as first suspected but
what looks like an award statue with blood. Extra creepy.
He then goes home to find Will Drake, the new owner of
the building holding a fashion show (along with a lady called Claudia from
Vogue magazine) and invites John and Scarlet to the party (with his son
Lachlan). He hasn’t invited Sally, much to her outrage since she lives there.
Countess and Donovan also join the party – and the Countess quickly notices John
One of the models is a guy called Tristan who snorts some
drugs before going out. He decides to play with the crowd, kissing one woman
and starting a fight with a man when he tries to kiss him. He is briefly transfixed
by the Countess and she is quite taken with him, saying he’s “full of rage”.
Tristan’s boss is also not amused – less so when he deliberately cuts his face,
saying he’s “done with modelling”
I’m watching all this and all I can think is “who is
going to clean up all them damn feathers?!” You’re going to be finding the damn
things scattered around for days! It’ll be worse than a shedding Christmas tree.
Tristan goes from cutting his face to breaking into
Donovan’s room searching for more drugs and Donovan decides to eat him (showing
incredibly hypocritical disdain for “junkies”) – the Countess stops him and
Tristan flees to the lift – oh the lift, never ever take a lift when in a
creepy creepy place
It dumps him in the creepy halls with food that turns
magically rotten, doors opening and closing and strange noises and other staples
of creepiness. He ends up in the room of a Mr. James March who decides to tell
this random guy in his suite that he has something far better than cocaine.
That would be murdering a kidnapped prostitute – Tristan refuses so James kills
her himself and calmly has the maid clean the linens. He also pulls off his
cravat revealing a rather nasty neck wound.
Tristan goes running again and ends up in the hands of
the Countess and becomes a new pretty vampire and she runs through some details
of what vampires (a virus, she refers to it) are before they have sex. And they
don’t bite – they cut (no fangs for these vampires). Silver and stakes are bad,
they can’t drink from the dead and not the “diseased, feeble or polluted”,
sunlight isn’t lethal but weakens them.
More history – she was born in 1904 and she talks and flashbacks to her preferred eras. Apparently including the 1970s (aie, a century of history and you chose the 70s?! Vampires are evil or really do feel the need to angstily punish themselves). Donovan shows up and is, of course, super jealous. Donovan tries to degrade Tristan but the Countess points out his origins were less than salubrious – and that their relationship is pretty much ending. She has a morbid little speech about heartbreak to go with kicking him out. He makes one last please but she’s fully replaced him.
While they’re partying Lachlan leads Scarlet away from
the show to where the 4 vampire kids are kept in the basement in glass coffins.
Yeah don’t disturb sleeping vampires, especially creepy kiddy ones. Just burn
them. Honestly far more of these shows would be much more sensible if they
would just kill things with fire when I say. But, of course, Scarlett
recognises one of the boys as Holden, her brother
She comes back another day to find the coffins empty, she
finds the hidden play room and sees her brother who recognises her – but hasn’t
aged since the day he disappeared. He also doesn’t want to go home. She takes a
picture and he tries to bite her – she runs and is grabbed by Sally who decides
to spew broken teeth all over. For… reasons?
Scarlett runs home to where her parents are losing their
ever loving mind over her being missing (since they already lost one child).
She tries to convince them that Holden is still alive and that just calls lots
of rage and guilt. The picture on her phone just shows a blur.
John goes to the hotel and arrests Iris who responds with
innuendo before getting down to business pointing out how ridiculous it is to
arrest her and agree to tell him everything. For a drink anyway. Much more
civilised – though he refuses the drink. He asks about the hotel and she gives
him the full history of the hotel – from it being built by James March, our
evil sex-worker killer.
This comes with a flashback as well, to 1925 and his
pretty bizarre plans and murdering people for funsies – which is what the whole
hotel was designed for, easy ways to trap, hunt, kill people and dispose of the
bodies. His wife helped him with the killing and equally enjoyed it. It looks
like his wife was the Countess. The maid, Miss Evers, was also around back
then, joyfully cleaning up the stains for him.
Despite the clean up he also had some brutal public
murders along with his hatred of religion which got him exposed and caught
(possibly betrayed by his wife). Which led to him and Miss Evers having a
murder suicide. They’re very civilised about it (this may be the best scene of
the entire show).
Room 64 was James’s office but of course John doesn’t
believe any of it.
He does take the research back to his work on the serial
killer – he thinks they have a serial killer possibly imitating his
10-commandment-based serial killing.
Back to Tristan browsing through Grindr and inviting a
guy round for sex only springing The Countess on him before they can get down
to anything and they murder and eat him. Tristan decides to take the time
mid-murder to assure the Countess he isn’t gay
Yes, mid-brutal murder we had to have a “No Homo” moment.
Really?
I say again that American
Horror Story is excellent with its stunning visuals, beautiful scenes (and
people) and even pairing the music really well with them. No-one can ever deny
that it is a beautiful show and beautiful to watch and truly excellent at
atmosphere… but sometimes I feel it spends so much time on that that it doesn’t
really know what else to do. Like they have this wonderful picture in their
head – and it is a great picture – but they then flail to put a story around
that picture. And I sometimes wonder if it’s actually possible for these camera
men to point a camera at a running person without moving it around like they’re
on a small boat in a hurricane.
Other than the addiction theme, there just doesn’t seem
to be a coherent focus. We have vampires and lots of people addicted to
everything and a fashion show and random ant-vax rants and a serial killer who
plays with mobile phones and now a guy randomly killing prostitutes (and can we
get past sex-workers being used as disposable, nameless cannon fodder? You
could have replaced that victim with anyone and had the same message of James’s
depravity. Equally with the gratuitous rape in the flashback – he is murdering
everyone left right and centre, there’s absolutely no need to throw in rape as
well). And the guy is immortal or a ghost or reborn along with the happy sheet
washer?
They’re definitely hitting the addiction theme hard this
season – and not even slightly subtly. Donovan using addiction to escape his
mother, Sally who seems almost entirely to be defined by being an addict. John is
an ex-alcoholic, Tristan addicted to meth. While there are definitely
storylines to explore here it does seem rather laid on thick. Everyone is
addicted and addiction pretty much defines nearly everything about them. Also
we have vampires – now
it hasn’t gone there yet but vampirism has been used before as a clumsy
comparator to addiction and I’m not a fan of the trope. It’s also not that
nuanced or deep a depiction – the addicts are pretty much consumed to their
addiction to a level where they’re not even people any more and often used for
shock value – from Tristan’s random acting out to Sally alternating between
random madlibs and tearful tragedy. It is the second episode only so we can
certainly go a lot further with them (and we have suggestions already – John and
horror driving him to drink, Sally and her own spiral, Tristan’s rage) so I
haven’t abandoned hope it could be more – but American Horror Story rarely is more – just the shock value for
funsies.
