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American Horror Story S02E06: "The Origins of Monstrosity"

To those of you who celebrated America's most delicious holiday this week: Did you watch American Horror Story: Asylum with your family? How'd THAT go? Haha FX, you crazy for airing a new episode this week.

Anyway, whoa. "The Origins of Monstrosity" was definitely a downshift in intensity, right? It wasn't terrible; it was more like, after five episodes of extremely dense storytelling, we got a breather episode in which the writers decided to fill in certain backstories to prepare us for a turbo-charged endgame. (Hopefully?) While that makes sense from a season-outline standpoint (there needs to be a quiet before before the storm), nothing kills horror for me like over-explanation. One of my biggest horror pet peeves (aside from cat scares or dream sequences) is when we learn TOO MUCH about the killer's backstory or motives, particularly when those explanations are not very original or compelling. So, I'm just going to say it right now: Bloody Face's psychology kind of sucks? It doesn't matter that we now know his identity, I just wish that we didn't get the dumb "I miss my mother" explanation for what he does, you know? He'd be much scarier as an un-knowable, irrational enigma a la Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Instead they went the Ed Gein/Norman Bates route and I'm already kinda bored! Oh well. But while I found that particular backstory to be a bit of a letdown, I did enjoy delving into the pasts of Sister Eunice and also the Monsignor. Those backstories actually shed light on the characters in a way that didn't kill my interest in them. So while I had major problems with certain flashbacks, the episode still had a lot going for it.

May as well talk about it! Grab a leftover drumstick and pull up a chair!

Unlike the past few episodes, this one brought back the flash-forward cold open, this time with a voiceover (by Zachary Quinto! EDIT: People are saying it's NOT him. Oops!) of the real Bloody Face calling in the murders at the abandoned asylum. So now we knew that somehow Dr. Thredson was still alive 38 years after the events of the main storyline and he was NOT happy about the copycats. Also, he was apparently very strong and limber enough to hang THREE corpses from the ceiling all dramatic-like:

So yeah, that was an interesting turn of events! No cult of Bloody Face, just an angry, elderly slasher.

Meanwhile we met a new psycho-of-the-week, sort of a Bad Seed, Wednesday Addams type:

I appreciated the scene in which the psycho girl's mother tried to have her locked up, but Sister Jude hemmed and hawed about Briarcliff not being a very good place for children. But it was pretty obvious Sister Jude was really just totally over the entire institution.

Sister Jude really fascinates me. We know she has a capacity for empathy and also the ability to discern right from wrong, so there's this huge temptation to root for her to become a heroine of some kind. But then remember that time she forced Lana to have electroshock therapy just out of bitchiness? Or the time she whipped Kit with a barbed cane? Sister Jude is basically a monster! I just never know how I'm supposed to feel about her, and I mean that as a compliment to the writers.

Meanwhile in Dr. Thredson's subterranean murder lair, Lana woke up and discovered that he'd moved an entire bedroom's worth of furniture down there for her benefit. Also he was frying up some croque madame using, like, a hot plate or whatever. So there she was in a serial killer's basement and she was already living a better life than me.

Anyway, while Lana tearfully ate her breakfast (eat-crying is the best!) Dr. Thredson helpfully explained what had caused him to become a repulsive monster... Aaaand it wasn't that interesting! Basically he was an orphan who missed his mother and skinning women alive was his way of feeling closer to them.

Plus, it came with some super creepy flashbacks. Like the first time he shirtless hugged a cadaver:

Unfortunately that dead lady was TOO dead, so he then resorted to kidnapping women, skinning them alive, then turning their faces inside out and wearing them over his own. Not a great hobby, in my opinion. But the twist of this sequence was that apparently Dr. Thredson viewed Lana as a mother surrogate whom he may actually keep alive. Lana was just chill like that apparently.

So even though Sister Jude decided that Anne Frank had been crazy, the Nazi hunter (who, it should be pointed out, was named SAUL GOODMAN and was played by an actor from Breaking Bad) called and told her that Dr. Arden was definitely once known as an S.S. officer named Hans Grueber. ( Ryan Murphy <3s Die Hard almost as much as Breaking Bad!)

Meanwhile across town, the little-seen Monsignor was called to a hospital to deliver last rites for some legless creature that had been discovered on a playground.

Even though he seemed to be a latchkey asylum director at best, he still immediately recognized the patient: It was Shelley!

So then we got a flashback to how exactly the Monsignor came to know Dr. Arden:

(Not trying to start any rumors did the Monsignor set off anybody else's gaydar in this flashback?) But yeah, upon converting the former tuberculosis ward into an asylum, the future monsignor learned that Dr. Arden had been undertaking experiments on human immune systems, and the monsignor insisted he continue developing his mad science in exchange for giving him tons of credit and helping him to become pope. Or whatever! Ugh, ambitious priests are the worst.

Then Shelley died (POOR SHELLEY!! Heaven just got a little sexier.) and it seemed like the Monsignor had had a HUGE change of heart about the ethics of Dr. Arden's science.

He was so mad he pulled the most badass priest move possible:

He rosary-whipped Dr. Arden's record player!! Oh my gosh, drama.

Unfortunately, his righteous anger didn't last long:

And boom! The b-mail card. Dr. Arden sure knows how to play hardball. It was hinted that the Monsignor had secrets (which MAYBE had to do with that second priest he was chillin' with in the flashbacks?) but it is probably just as simple as "I've been doing bad stuff on your watch and you'll be in troubz."

Okay, I loved this scene: After the psycho girl's mother abandoned her there (fair enough), the girl spent some quality time with Sister Eunice.

And they really got along! They just got each other, you know? I loved when Sister Eunice casually mentioned "I'm the devil" and the little girl wasn't even fazed. It was almost touching! Anyway, the interesting part of this scene was that although Sister Eunice was definitely possessed by a demon, it wasn't like the demon took over, it was more like the demon joined up with with Sister Eunice's personality and she still considered herself to be the original Sister Eunice, just with more bad girl 'tude.

In an explanatory flashback to explain how frightened and squeamish Sister Eunice used to be about sex, we got one of those in-movies-only horrifying prank situations where a group of friends brutally terrorize another person all in the name of being funny (but it's not funny at all and is actually just plain assault). So in this case they told Sister Eunice they'd all go skinny dipping but when it came time to drop their robes, they all had bathing suits on and she was just as naked as a jaybird. (What is a jaybird?) So that's why she became a nun! Cool story, sis.

Part of Dr. Arden's blackmail involved forcing the Monsignor to fire Sister Jude.

She did not take it well, but deep down I bet she was STOKED. Just my theory though.

Kit used his one phone call to call Dr. Thredson at home and tell him that he'd been sent to REAL prison under mysterious circumstances.

Haha oh, Kit, you lovable idiot. Dr. Thredson definitely used tricky language to deny that he'd done anything wrong, but Kit didn't buy it. Uh-oh, I bet Kit is just one alien-assisted prison break away from getting revenge on this dude. Except Dr. Thredson is apparently still alive in 2012 so who knows?

Anyway, while he was on the phone, Lana was furiously trying to saw through her chains and she almost did! But when Dr. Thredson came back in the room she was all sweaty and jittery from the effort and he immediately found her out:

Nice try, girl!

So then Sister Jude was packing up and left the room for a bit, and Sister Eunice started trying on her underwear and thrusting her pelvis at a crucifix. Typical demon stuff.

That's when the phone rang and it was the Nazi hunter, so Sister Eunice impersonated Sister Jude (!) and then decided to take care of business (business = murdering elderly Nazi hunters):

While that was going on, Sister Jude was offering a drink to her worst enemy:

As it turned out, she was really just trying to get his fingerprint so that the Nazi hunter could 100% confirm that Dr. Arden was once called Hans Grueber. Alas, it was too late:

Better call Saul... an ambulance! Before he died he gurgled something about how a nun had killed him, but it wasn't clear if Sister Jude understood him. Too much gurgling, probably.

Meanwhile both Sister Eunice and Dr. Arden opened up to each other:

He finally admitted that he had indeed been a Nazi and then he started whining that he had been denied recognition for all of his awful experiments, etc. And also Sister Eunice kissed him and it got even more awkward. Which, considering it was a scene where an old man whined about Nazi hunters just being a bunch of haters, is saying something.

Meanwhile, in a cute turn of events, the psycho girl murdered her entire family.

And in Dr. Thredson's basement, he decided that Lana needed to die for trying to escape, so he put on his mask and started sobbing and it was all a lot to handle

But using some quick thinking, Lana realized all she had to do was start calling him "baby" and act all maternal and whatnot. And it worked!

But whoops, that's when he started breast feeding:

YIIIIIKES!

The episode ended with the investigators nosing around the modern day crime scene and realizing that dead Adam Levine probably had had a ladyfriend in there somewhere. But she hadn't been found yet!

And that was because...

She was alive and in Dr. Thredson's old basement! And Bloody Face needed a new pashmina! Or something, who knows? Either way, I'm guessing at this point she probably just wished they'd gone to Maui.

So yeah, this episode was more like homework than a party. Still well-written and enjoyable, but it would've been more fun if we'd all been marathoning the entire season in one sitting and could immediately start watching the next episode. But as a standalone, it was kind of grim and academic. Also I wish Bloody Face had a more interesting explanation (or better yet, NONE). But I am not trying to tell American Horror Story what to do. Let your freak flag fly, show! I trust you.

QUESTIONS:

... Will you miss Shelley?

... What is the Monsignor's secret?

... Does it ruin the suspense to know that Dr. Thredson will survive at least another 38 years?

... Should Sister Eunice start a mentoring program for evil children?

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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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