While this episode has a lot of tension – I really think
this season of American Horror Story has done horror story tension and creepiness
way better than any previous – but it’s also going far too fast and suffering
from moving waaay too fast and us already know the ending with that whole “one
person will live.”
See, I only know three of these characters – so I already
know it’s going to be one of those three since there’s been no attempt to make
me care about the others or invest enough to think they’re going to live
(Shelby, btw, Shelby’s so going to survive). And I think the show has really
missed a huge opportunity in not having all these characters – the people and
the actors who played them – interact with each other. Lee trying to sponsor
the alcoholic Monet? Audrey and her happy married against Shelby’s wreck of a
love life? Kathy Bates chewing the scenary in the corner? That would have been
pretty good.
Instead everyone’s dying way too quick. At the very
beginning of this episode Sid, the cameraman and a random intern are all hacked
to bits by Agnes who is full on scenery chewing now, ranting and raving,
dropping into and out of her accent, alternating between Butcher rants and
grief and horror about what she did (especially poignant is her going from “my
land!” to “she was a mother! I robbed that child of a mother!”). But you spend
all that time setting up Sid’s reality TV nonsense and then kill him off
already? (I’m going to take the high road and not at all mention having
Cheyenne Jackson fully clothed for both the episodes he’s been around) Too
soon! Too Soon!
I do have to say Kathy Bates killed it though. Though, of
course, mental illness as a source of danger, the insane murderer, the violent
mentally ill person – that’s a horrendous trope. It’s overplayed and damaging,
the vast majority of mentally ill people are not dangerous yet a ridiculous
amount of portrayals of mental illness are violent and dangerous.
Kathy Bate’s incredible, frightening and pitiable
performance here doesn’t change how damaging it is – her excellence doesn’t
change the awfulness.
Agnes continues to rave her way around the scene –
attacking and badly injuring Shelby with a cleaver, before being slammed into a
mirror and later shot by Lee. She still keeps on coming back going more and
more off the deep end.
Because at least Lee has some level of sense and has
brought a gun. Not a lot of sense, she’s there after all.
Since Shelby is now bleeding messily everywhere, Dominic
and Matt are being manchildren (though Dominic has a method to this – he’s an
actor. He knows the rules of reality TV – we all watch the awful one. So he is
there to be as awful as possible and get all the screen time because that’s his
career. He’s not wrong. I wish he was but he isn’t. Let’s face this, if this
were Big Brother, he’d be the one we’d watch. Also Big Brother needs to
introduce a cleaver wielding Kathy Bates) so Lee, Monet and Audrey (who has convinced
herself that Rory has fakes his death to leave and go to a shoot in LA – along with
her terrible and powerful insecurity about being 15 years older than her
husband and the sexism of that- something which would be really fun to explore
if these characters lived long enough to explore anything) are the ones who set
off to get help
Remember they have no phones. Trying to leave via the
tunnel to avoid Agnes they find a bullet proof-hardly seen monster which means
they quickly choose another route. They find the trailer with Sid the awful –
which is full of bodies and Audrey promptly loses every bit of shit she ever
had while Lee, infinitely more sensible and collected, searches for a phone
among the bodies
To add to Audrey’s melt down, they find Rory’s body, in a
tree
Monet and Audrey begin to realise, as Lee angrily points
out, that they weren’t lying about the house.
One of those real things they find is the family of
redneck, pig loving hillbilly cannibals who reappear to kidnap all three of
them and begin torturing killing and feeding Lee to Audrey and Monet. Of course
they do. Even if these three aren’t dead they’re soon to be
Back at the house things are not getting better – Shelby seems
to be getting quite well despite the sucking chest wound. Well enough for
Dominic to lead her downstairs to the basement where Matt is having sex with
Forest Gaga. He also declares his eternal love for Forest Gaga, suggesting that
terrifying face he makes may actually be his O face.
Shelby reacts to this by brutally beating his head in.
And lo, Matt is dead because Shelby can’t take it that the man she cheated on
cheated on her. Dominic reacts by calmly telling her to turn herself in.
Hmmmm, I think he is surprisingly calm about this brutal
murder right in front of him
He’s a bit less blasé when Agnes shows up on the garden
to rant and rave and throw accents around
Until the Butcher arrives… Agnes is terrified, guilty,
worshipful… and dead. Very dead
See, that’s a lot dead or nearly dead characters in one
episode – too fast, American Horror Story,
far too fast
Though points for “if it’s not breaded and deep fried it’s
not edible” was a good line.
