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American Horror Story S02E04: "I Am Anne Frank (Part 1)"

At this point, should we ever really be shocked by anything that American Horror Story chooses to show us? Obviously going over the top has been part of this show's DNA since its very conception, but what truly sets the series apart from the horror films to which it constantly pays tribute is its willingness to dabble in truly tasteless, tactless, and straight-up weird creative decisions. Season 1 featured a pig-headed slasher, a gimp-suited ghost rapist, the fatal hit-and-run of a girl with Down Syndrome who was wearing a "pretty girl" mask, and a scene where Connie Britton casually consumed a raw brain of indeterminate origin. Yet for me its most outrageous element was the inclusion of the Black Dahlia—and not that fact that it made America's most famous murder victim a character, but that it had the audacity to suggest her murder was related to the fictional Murder House in which the main characters resided. I mean, do what you will with fictional characters, but it's a whole other thing when you muddy the waters of an actual case. This is not a complaint, mind you; I admire audacity in most forms. It's just that American Horror Story clearly knows that there are diminishing returns when it comes to gore, rape, and jump scares, so to keep us on our toes it tramples freely into seemingly sacred territories. For example, ANNE FRANK. Yes, THAT Anne Frank.

This week's episode, "I Am Anne Frank (Part 1)," echoed Season 1's inclusion of an actual murder victim, but upped the ante big time. Seriously: ANNE FRANK. According to AHS:A, the world's most famous Holocaust victim was possibly not only alive and well in 1964, she was also possibly getting herself thrown into Briarcliff Asylum so that she could possibly point a finger at Dr. Arden whom she possibly met at AUSCHWITZ. Yes, that's in all-caps because AMERICAN HORROR STORY U CRAZY MURDERBABY.

This episode began shortly after Sister Jude's drunken, alien-encountering meltdown during last week's "Nor'easter." Roused from her presumably very elegant beauty sleep by the night watchman, she was told there'd been a self-committed patient of undetermined European descent. Guess who it was?

LOLA! No, just kidding, it was just a character played by the same actress, I know how acting works don't worry. But yeah, anyway, Franka Potente! She is great. I am going to go watch Run Lola Run RIGHT NOW BRB.

In other news, Shelley's ordeals continued. Now she was all broken out and her stumps looked sweaty. On the plus side, Dr. Arden hinted that whatever he was injecting into her temple might make her immortal? It's unclear to what extent that statement was a metaphor, but either way I took that as being a silver lining to an otherwise annoying situation.

Speaking of annoyed, Kit came into the bakery in order to bum out Grace. Apparently Dr. Arden had been a busy bee lately and had tortured HIM too.

But instead of injecting reverse-acutane invincibility serum into Kit's skull, Dr. Arden was poking around in his nether regions looking for that one robot bug. Typical late nite activities. After Kit explained all this to Grace, she did that thing where you tell a friend your problems and they try to one-up you with problems of their own? In this case she tried to cheer Kit up by talking about the time an axe murderer killed her family.

There was a scary moment during her flashback where she hid from the axe murderer in a closet only to find a pile of mom!

So yeah, that was not a good night for her. Hopefully Kit would now appreciate his situation better.

Here is a character who now totally confuses me:

I guess I had assumed that Dr. Thredson was skeptical of the practice of locking up gay people, but in retrospect he was only skeptical of shocking their brains. Fair enough. But also last week it was clear that he believed Bloody Face was on the loose still, yet this week he decided that Kit was still locked up for a good reason? Anyway, here he was offering to help Lana get out of the asylum, but in order to do so she had to undergo actual anti-gay therapy. Or something. At first I thought this was a wink-wink situation, but then it wasn't? Was this a good guy or a bad guy now? I'm confused! (As always.)

Later on in the common room, the mysterious European brunette was writing in a makeshift diary (which caused Lana to swoop in and be a hater about it) when she suddenly went ape-poopoo at the sight of Dr. Arden.

The orderlies dragged her away, and that's when she dropped the bombshell: SHE WAS ANNE FRANK! And she remembered Dr. Arden from Auschwitz because she was Anne Frank and she'd personally been in Auschwitz! Anne Frank!

Or claiming to be Anne Frank, anyway. But I chose to immediately believe her, and I wasn't alone. Even Sister Jude seemed eager to believe Anne Frank, especially after some particularly plausible flashbacks were shown:

[NOTE TO CASTING DIRECTOR: A+++]

As Anne Frank told Sister Jude, Dr. Arden operated by a different name back then, but he'd randomly select girls (or better yet, twins!) for "treatment" but they'd always return broken and abused.

At first Sister Jude halfheartedly disputed Anne Frank's story, but like I said, the combination of Anne Frank's detailed account plus Sister Jude's passionate hatred for Dr. Arden made the whole story much more convincing.

The tattoo helped also.

Anyway:

See what I'm saying? So now Dr. Thredson believed Kit wasn't an insane killer, he was merely a murderer who had gotten fed up with all the racial injustice in America. I didn't get it either. So many leaps of logic and weird reasoning.

I gotta say, hadn't Dr. Thredson witnessed enough questionable things at this asylum to safely doubt Kit's guilt? I don't know. I officially hate him now. Is he Bloody Face? I hope so.

The conversation really rattled Kit, and it was clear he'd suddenly come to suspect his own sanity. Fortunately he was able to let off steam by pounding some dough.

Whoops! Briarcliff's hottest couple were caught in the act!

You know you're in trouble when a NUN THAT IS POSSESSED BY A DEMON gets to pick out the cane for your caning. In this case Sister Eunice surprised no one by picking out the cane wrapped in BARBED WIRE. Because that is the type of cane that nuns like to keep on hand. Nun fact.

Sister Jude was not happy about their bakery fornication and she expressed her disapproval with the best line of the episode/season/world: "Are you purposely trying to make a murderbaby?" Haha TOLD. But I will admit my stomach turned a bit when she proposed that both of them be surgically sterilized. Yikes! That didn't seem fair. But anyway, before the presumably unpleasant caning got under way, Sister Jude was summoned to Dr. Arden's office where two detectives were grilling him about the hooker he'd roughed up.

This was great because I liked the notion that a lady of the night went to the police and they took her seriously, but also I liked how much Sister Jude enjoyed seeing Dr. Arden get SO busted. It particularly raised her eyebrow when the detectives reported that the hooker had found BDSM pornography AND Nazi memorabilia on Dr. Arden's dresser. I didn't recall seeing Nazi stuff during that episode, but then again my brain was once eaten by Connie Britton. But yeah, suddenly Anne Frank's story was MUCH more plausible to Sister Jude.

It seemed like the whole middle part of this episode was just backstory and montages and whatnot. So here we got Lana fantasizing about her life after the asylum, bragging about all the wonderful inmates she lived with (including a man just jerking off a ton) and all the ordeals she put up with in order to get the scoops. By this reasoning she realized she should just agree with whatever Dr. Thredson wanted to do to her in order to be released.

The scene that followed was the most outrageous combination of campiness AND heartbreaking realism this show has featured yet. Campiness because LOL OBVS, but also this gayness-aversion therapy seemed like a very real thing that used to be forced on people. I am so grateful to be living in 2012 and sitting in such a position of privilege that I can just look at scene like this and laugh, you know?

So yeah, after pumping Lana with a puke-inducing serum while making her look at pictures of sexy ladies, Dr. Thredson followed that up by bringing in a naked dude and forcing Lana to jill-off while fondling the dude's bathing suit area.

What a scene! So weird and unpleasant and sad and hilarious! Also #butts

Elsewhere, Sister Jude approached the rarely seen monsignor and attempted to tell him that she had reason to believe Dr. Arden was a former WAR CRIMINAL.

Unfortunately, her story was not helped by the admission that her #1 source was a woman claiming to be Anne Frank, nor the fact that Sister Jude had gotten wasted in front of everyone recently. But most of all her story was not helped by the fact that the monsignor was clearly a SHADY VILLAIN. He proved as much after drunk-shaming Sister Jude right out of the room, then picking up the phone to tell Dr. Arden that everyone's onto him and he should be more careful or whatever. I knew it, you handsome devil but mostly devil!

Sister Jude sought advice from her mother superior, and the mother superior was pretty rad! She too expressed frustration with the church's patriarchy and generally gave Sister Jude the kind of pep talk that might send her down a path of becoming more of a heroine? Fingers-crossed!

Another thing that demon Sister Eunice did to cause trouble for everyone was she showed Kit Grace's official records, and they offered quite a different take on her alleged crimes. Then when Kit confronted her with this new info she immediately 'fessed up.

Yeah, it was pretty much what we all suspected: Grace definitely killed her family with an axe.

I mean, this was obvious to me mostly because they couldn't ALL be wrongly accused right? But aside from being a major boner-killer for Kit, this revelation also seemed to push him over the edge into believing that maybe he too was guilty of what he'd been accused of. Then, in a truly great scene, he sobbed and pled with Sister Jude that maybe he'd been mistaken.

But the thing was—and maybe I'm reading too much into it—it seemed as though Sister Jude was already at a place where she'd come to doubt a lot of things going on around the asylum, and perhaps his earnest plea for answers convinced her more than ever that he probably wasn't guilty? How juicy & conflicting!

I'm definitely hoping that Sister Jude somehow becomes the heroine of this story and perhaps her conversion has already begun. Either way, she still seemed downright empathetic to Kit's pleas and it was nice seeing this fleeting moment of humanity between them.

What a lot of people may not know about Anne Frank is that she can and will pickpocket the gun directly out of a detective's holster if she needs to!

So after getting manhandled and thrown into Dr. Arden's lab for a bit of monsignor-directed "cleanup", Anne Frank did what so many of us had been fantasizing about ever since reading her diary: She pulled out a gun and shot a Nazi!

Interestingly enough, Dr. Arden never admitted to being who she claimed he was ("I'm from Scottsdale!"), so this episode still wanted us to question whether Anne Frank really was Anne Frank or not, but still: I loved this part.

But uh-oh, watch out Anne Frank!

OMG Shelley you look terrible girl! Honestly, we've all been here though, right? All rolling around hissing on the floor in our unmentionables with our stumps flyin'. I'm this way before I get my coffee in the morning!! Arrrghh! Love coffee. No just kidding. Shelley's a mutant now. I'm just going to go out on a limb (or stump) and say that Dr. Arden is not the best doctor. I just don't think he's doing very good work. Whoever will be writing up his annual job evaluation should definitely include mutant Shelley under "Needs Improvement."

You know what, this episode was fun but not excellent. The main reason was it was a "Part 1" so it was a lot of setup and character work—which is great when you're marathoning it, but felt very unsatisfying on its own. So, yeah. It was fine.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK ANNE FRANK!!

QUESTIONS:

... Dr. Thredson kind of sucks right?

... Is Sister Jude headed for redemption?

... Is Grace less cute now that we know she's a maniac?

... WHERE IS PEPPER??

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In each of its three seasons, the U.S. version of Shameless has drawn a line in the plot where it transitions quickly from TV's most wildly inappropriate comedy to an award-worthy drama. The humor is always there, but the harsh realism of the Gallaghers' poverty eventually raises the dramatic stakes much higher we're used to from such an overall funny show. With last Sunday's episode, "Cascading Failures," Shameless took its most confident step toward full-on drama by diving head first into the Gallagher family's deepest, darkest places.

Shameless has always dropped references to screwed-up events that took place before we joined the family in Season 1. Often these were played for humor—Frank's fond memories of a particular drug binge or a reunion with Monica that produced another child. But Fiona's memories were of the dark times when she had to fend for herself and her siblings in the absence of a parent, sometimes while being pulled in and out of government care. Now that we've seen how truly ill-equipped for real life the Gallagher clan can be at their current ages, it's almost impossible to believe they were ever able to survive on their own.

Slowly but surely, the wandering plot of Shameless's third season has been building toward playing its disastrous wild card: a return to life in the system for the Gallagher children. In Season 1, their poverty was not insurmountable. The streetwise Gallaghers had perfected a few scams to pay the bills and, more importantly, avoid the government's wrath. Character-driven plotlines have made a weekly kitty fund crisis unnecessary since then, but the threat of financial ruin has been ever-present for the Gallaghers as a result of Frank's continued welfare fraud. 

Season 2 pushed hardship a little further as Frank's destructive nature all but bankrupted his family. But we also witnessed a fate far worse than financial ruin as Frank's corruption of his wife (again) pushed his family toward emotional ruin as well. In Season 3, we've been treated to the rejection of Frank by each of his children in the name of self-preservation, with Debbie in particular sealing the deal on his ouster from the house. Pushed against the wall, Frank did what we assumed was the unthinkable, and called in his own flesh and blood to Child Services.

After an episode that scattered the kids across Chicago, showcasing their individual talents for survival in the process, the payoff was a gut punch courtesy of Emmy Rossum's wide eyes. The look on Fiona's face as she listened to Frank's anonymous call to was, for me, the show's most powerful moment to date. It greatly opens up the possibilities for the second half of Season 3, with Fiona again fighting to save the family while facing Frank, the government, and a suddenly on-the-fence-about-everything Jimmy as hurdles (and plenty of new ones to come).

If you told me this was Shameless's final season, I'd be 100 percent on-board with this arc as the final test for the Gallaghers. But now that the show has upped the ante, how can it possibly top itself in Season 4 (and likely future seasons thereafter)?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What do you think is in store for the rest of Season 3? Are you all-in on Shameless's yearly dramatic turn?

STRAY THOUGHTS – A similar tonal shift would be completely jarring if applied to any other comedy today (with the exception of Louie). Parks and Recreation can move nimbly between comedy and sweetness itself, but while Pawnee can be a messed-up place at times, Leslie Knope's ability to keep the city on track is considerably less fraught with actual danger than Fiona's upcoming battles.

– All this goes to show, of course, that Shameless has been badly mis-categorized comedy during award season, as Emmy Rossum and crew can certainly go punch-for-punch with the best dramatic performances on TV.

– After carrying much of the dramatic weight in Season 2, Lip's been largely carefree this season. Between laser-wielding-battlebot competitions and his mission to expose a teacher who served time for molesting a student, he's had some odd impulses. But clearly we'll see some real Mandy drama ahead. Any bets on how it plays out?

– Kev and Veronica have been particularly great this season as their struggle to create a family was very much the storyline we've been waiting for. Across the street, Jody and Sheila have been more of a miss for me as they navigate caring for Karen's baby and balancing their individual sexual needs.

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The New Normal S01E01 & S01E02: "Pilot" & "Sofa's Choice"

Credit where credit's due: Perhaps no current TV producer has found so much mainstream success by pursuing offbeat or fringe-appeal subject matter as Ryan Murphy. Starting with his perhaps too-clever-for-The WB teen show Popular and continuing with the disturbing psychosexual dramedy Nip/Tuck, the horror melodrama American Horror Story, and the primetime musical (!) after-school special Glee, few can argue that Murphy makes safe creative decisions. Regardless of how you feel about those shows (or, more pressingly, whether those shows actually remain good beyond their first seasons), Murphy deserves our respect for bringing something new to the table with each new project. That trend continues with The New Normal, his single-camera sitcom created with Ali Adler for NBC's rebooted comedy lineup. On paper, a show about two gay men who hire a surrogate to carry their baby simply could not have been greenlit on a major network before 2012 and probably by no producer with less clout than Murphy. But while The New Normal is certainly a watershed moment in television history, it also bears some unmistakable—and unfortunate—Murphy trademarks. Namely, it not only sings to the choir, it frequently makes us cringe.

At one point in the pilot, our heroine surrogate Goldie asks the two fathers-to-be Bryan and David (the fantastic Andrew Rannells and Justin Bartha) if they'd like to be present when she gets inseminated. Bryan responds matter-of-factly that no, he'd rather not, since to him women's genitalia looks like "tarantula faces." Taken out of context, that's an awful-yet-hilarious thing to say to a woman, but in the context of The New Normal, we're supposed to like Bryan, not write him off as a woman-fearing cliché of a gay man. This, after at least three jokes in which Bryan objectifies an infant as simply an accessory and openly wishes for a child that is "blonde, skinny, and doesn't cry." Again, perfectly funny jokes for an unlikable buffoon in a Christopher Guest film, but this show asks us to be on Bryan's side, and more importantly, to sympathize with the plight of childless gay couples. It's an uncomfortable fit, particularly for a gay viewer like me who desires nothing more than for gay people to be featured in lead roles where their gayness is not (1) their defining personality trait, or (2) a tired cliché. So yeah, I'm in the choir, Ryan Murphy, but these portrayals of gay men are making me consider resigning.

After premiering the pilot online and then running it after The Voice on Monday, last night NBC debuted The New Normal's second episode, "Sofa's Choice," in the show's official timeslot of Tuesday at 9:30pm, billing it as the series' official premiere. We at TV.com love to talk about the differences between first and second episodes, since second episodes usually feature the new, permanent sets the show will be filming on, as well as a more locked-down cast and sensibility. In many ways, the second episode is the real indicator of a show's quality or longevity, so I'm pleased to say the second episode of The New Normal showed a marked improvement. Most of the things that bugged me in the pilot were improved upon in the second episode: Both Bryan and David got fleshed out; Goldie made more sense as a character; Goldie's wise-beyond-her-years daughter was made more weird-beyond-her years (via her truly funny obsession with Grey Gardens); and even Bryan sort of toned down his jokes that might make us doubt his ability to be a good father. It was a start.

Unfortunately, even with those improvements, some serious red flags remain. In particular Ellen Barkin's increasingly tiresome Nana character, who in the pilot could have gone either way, but is now officially one of TV's worst new characters. It's not even that she's a poor man's rip-off of Arrested Development's Lucille Bluth (down to the stolen joke about gay people doing her hair), it's that her hateful one-liners are so unfunny and uninspired, it makes Goldie less likable just for even putting up with her. (Seriously, lots of people have cut ties with family members for less hateful behavior.) I understand that Nana's a villain, but I guess it just rings false that she'd put her hate so front-and-center in every conversation she has. Women like this should be fakey, scheming, and manipulative—not loud, racist blowhards. If Nana isn't toned down soon, this show could become unwatchable quickly. Same goes for NeNe Leakes' Rocky character, who initially served as a charming counterpoint to Bryan's finicky ways, but in the second episode couldn't articulate a punchline to save her life. At one point Nana barged in on Rocky while she was on the toilet (this show does love its potty humor) and questioned whether the bathroom shouldn't be whites-only. Or something? I didn't even get it! What California resident in 2012 openly makes pre-segregation insults? And rather than fly into the righteous rage we as viewers thirsted for, Rocky just sort of muttered something and the scene was over. Ugh. Pointless.

Don't get me wrong, The New Normal has all the ingredients for a classic comedy series: An insanely talented cast, rewardingly clever dialogue, attempts at emotional depth, and especially a bravery in how it addresses certain political topics at a time when public opinion about them is still being formed. This could very well prove to be a television show—like All in the Family before it—that television historians will look back on as era-defining. That is, if it doesn't implode from lack of ideas. I'm not sure if the gestation and birth of a single baby is enough to hinge many seasons of a show on, and it's worrisome that BOTH of the first two episodes dealt with whether Goldie was even pregnant. (Spoiler: She is.) But as long as the characters continue to evolve into believable people (witty, intelligent, hilarious believable people), The New Normal's prospects look pretty good. I may currently be eying the exit, but for now, I suppose, my robes stay on.

What did YOU think of The New Normal's first two episodes?

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