Friday, October 14, 2016

American Horror Story, Season 6, Episode 5, Chapter 5



Time to for some flashbacks – read by an actual historian to preserve this interesting documentary theme which I’m actually starting to like. It’s a nice twist and gives it all a realness feel that works quite well.

We’re going back to the building of the House buy the very rich Edward Mott (who, by the hinted exposition, is revealed to be Dandy Mott’s ancestor in one of those little connections that this show likes to do between the different seasons.) Rich, socially awkward and art obsessed he builds his house in the middle of nowhere so he can avoid all that pesky company (except for his servants)

Except for one – his lover Guinness. Yes we have a gay character (that’s two in as many episodes). Yes they’re going to die because he’s building a house on The Butcher’s Land and she will be around soon to massacre them all with her terrible accent. After going ballistic and torturing and locking up his servants in the root cellar after some of his precious art is destroyed – along with the ableist trope linking Edward and Dandy it’s clear this whole family is supposed to be dangerously insane.

The Butcher does her thing and Edward ends up dead, Guinness accused of his murder and the servants forgotten all about until they die in the cellar. Death death everywhere.

Of course being dead is not necessarily the end since, like season one, the dead hang around, terrified of the Butcher.

Back in the present, Shelby and Matt continue to be too stupid to live, are now surrounded by a mob of the Butcher’s determined to kill them all and torture them with terrible accents. They run through the house tormented by various ghosts including an uber creepy weird crawling one until ghostly Edward turns up to lead them out through his tunnels because he wants them to escape and leave him alone – not add to the passel of ghosts he has to put up with.

Of course escape isn’t easy and they and Flora end up in the woods by the same farm where we previously saw the horrifying kids suckling on a pig. The house is occupied by a family of cannibal redneck stereotypes who just need a few less teeth and more married cousins to complete the list. They’re eating and killing Elias who wasn’t too badly inconvenienced by the arrows – but was by the family eating him


The cannibals have a deal with the Butcher to provide sacrifices to the land every year if pickings are slim – and, as it did with the original colony, it ensures good growing for their crops. Though it’s now cannabis not food.

Naturally they take Matt, Shelby and Flora back to the Butcher per their deal – but on the way Matt’s attempted escape gets one of Cannibal lady’s son’s killed and she responds by cutting off Shelby’s leg. Or badly mauling it anyway. Nasty, very nasty – I still don’t like Shelby though

They do manage to escape eventually despite the Butcher planning to murder them all because the Butcher’s son is Done With Her Shit. I would say attack of conscience but I think it’s more how the Butcher is totally sympathetic to Mummy Cannibal for having lost a son. I think the man who was murdered by his mother is not happy with this sympathy. He drags the Butcher into the fire – giving Edward chance to free them just as Lee arrives (having been released by the cops) to get them all to safety

Yeah no way it’s over yet