AHS rips its own plotlines off for this new episode (guest starring Wes Bentley)How do you make an episode in which almost nothing happens almost half-again as long as episodes where lots of things happen? I know not but Hollywood is getting very good at it lately what with all their supersized TV episodes and two part movie finales for quadrilogies where a trilogy (or less) would do.
In "honor" of the bloating, we're going svelte with a briefer rundown .
Plot: A con artist and his protege arrive at the freakshow with nefarious plans. Bette and Dot still hate each other. Bearded Lady gets bad news. And, finally, ripping itself off completely Freakshow reboots Coven's Danny Huston plotline about a ghostly mass murderer from the past being unintentionally summoned to visit our makeshift family of weirdos.
Episode MVP: Kathy Bates. Ethel visits a doctor and learns she only has a year to live. Immediately gets hammered and then recalls her tragic story of exploitation. Special shout out to Kathy Dietch, the actress playing Ethel's younger self in flashbacks who's done a great if thankless job this season.
Musical Break: Jessica Lange sings after being conned by the newly arrived "spiritualist" Esmeralda (Emma Roberts) into believing there's still a chance for stardom. Lange has now sung twice in a season in which they've hired Patti Labelle and given her zip to do. Now, that's freaky.
Body Count: Unknown. Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley), a man with two faces, massacres an entire circus freakshow in old timey flashback before hanging himself. And a group of birds are decapitated to piss me off on my couch. Enough with the decapitated birds Miss Julie Ryan Murphy!
Movie Reference: A visual homage to a classic moment from John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) via Twisty the Clown.
Episode Grade: D+
That's it for this week but for a NSFW bit after the jump...
Best Entrance: We're introduced to six new characters: the important ones (i.e. credited famous actors) are con artist Stanley (Denis O'Hare) his protege Maggie Esmeralda (Emma Roberts), and a museum curator (Celia Weston - yay!). We also meet three characters who may or may not show up again in future episodes but are not credited on IMDb for the episode: a little girl who is scared of clowns, her brother whom Twisty abducts to add to his collection of imprisoned tortured children, and a man whore that Stanley has hired to play Viking dress up.
We'll give him Best Entrance because he looks good doing that ... and because he gets a really weird exchange with Stanley from a strange comment about a sword (Um, Thor uses a hammer not a sword) to the strangely drawn out moment when he's asked to remove Stanley's pants.
Viking Whore doesn't look pleased or scared exactly but also pauses/struggles to not register anything when he isn't quite prepared for what he sees. In Stanley's reaction shot, Denis O'Hare starts with a smug smile which quickly fades into some sort of resignation. Self-loathing? Annoyance? Indifference? It's a really weird scene if this is meant as some sort of inconsequential sex joke. Hey, it might be -- you never know in an episode with this much needless padding!
On the other hand the scene is odd and deliberate enough that at first i thought the hooker's murder was imminent. Perhaps Stanley is also a freak but if so what exactly is going on underneath his clothes? You never know in a show where characters brag about having three titties and a ding-a-ling, you know?