Last week we had Liz and Iris, being the only characters
on this show I gave half a damn about, deciding to murder the Countess.
But Donovan gets in the way, which is kind of what he
always does, and the Countess is merely badly wounded. Liz is all for hunting
her down but Iris is more focused on her dying son whose dying wish is not to
die in the hotel and become one of its many over dramatic dysfunctional ghosts.
They grant that wish and drag him out to die on the pavement before burning his
body so Iris can roll around in the ash
Though that is every bit as disgusting as it sounds, Iris
does an excellent job of selling it as tragic.
The Countess was saved by Sally who feeds her her own
little vampire kids. I guess this is sad but compared to Iris’s tragedy it
doesn’t even touch the sides. Especially since her sadness is interspaced with
Sally’s awful backstory of heroin, threesomes and human centipedes because we
really needed that.
Anyway, Sally has saved the countess because she wants
her to go out, find John and bring him back so he can be murdered and become
her eternal ghostly companion. As ever, this show doesn’t even try to be subtle
and is sure to really beat us over the head repeatedly with the fact Sally has
abandonment issues
Really? You think?
Iris and Liz have to turn to Plan B which means releasing
neglected plot point Ramona and throwing her at the Countess. Neglected Plot
Point Ramona is willing to get over the issues she has with Iris and Liz and
decides that she’ll get on board with the whole Countess killing plot. But first
she needs some blood to recharge
Enter enraging cameo from Queenie. Yes,
that Queenie. Because the terrible storylines of Coven wasn’t problematic enough, clearly it’s necessary to bring
her back, have her appear for 5 minutes before being brutally murdered (because
her human-voodoo power doesn’t work on ghosts and James March intervenes). Seriously
I thought Ramona was underused, but this is ridiculous. To bring her back to
murder her so quickly! It’s an appalling abuse of an already much abused
character.
It’s almost impressive that they managed to make this
terrible portrayal even worse.
James is helping them bring down the Countess because he
is also obsessing over her. Which is kind of the obsessive point of this entire
series which has been driven home without even a hint of subtlety – obsession.
Sally for John. The Countess for her vampire actor. Donovan and Ramona for the
Countess. Iris for Donovan. Liz for Finn. This is the whole heavy handed point
of the show.
That obsession also means that Ramona can’t actually kill
the Countess she’s still obsessed. The countess bargains, offers the hotel and finally
seduces Ramona into sparing her. Note the fade to black when we manged explicit
threesomes with overdoses and sewing before, I am sadly unsurprised.
Meanwhile John, trying to play vampire happy families, and
it all goes wrong because his family is captured and used as leverage for James
March to get his last murder to complete the 10 commandment murders. Now I, and
probably everyone else, thought that this would involve John killing himself
since the last piece is “Thou Shalt not Kill”, and Sally is desperate to have
John murdered and join her for ghostly eternity.
However, in a switch John, instead, kills the Countess –
thereby getting James his bride for all eternity. Even as a ghost she doesn’t
seem to like him very much – or at all, so I don’t see this working out
It does, however, break Hazel who finally rants about how
she gave him up to the police because she wanted to be with him forever. This
confession, unsurprisingly, doesn’t convinced him to declare his eternal love
for her and he banishes her. Hazel responds with surprising dignity and I’d
love to hope that James severely regrets this when he realises just how much he
relies on Hazel to clean all the things
