What is hope?
Hope is tuning into Chapter 4 after no Evan Peters for the first three episodes. It’s having laughed in of shock and awe at Cuba Gooding Jr’s fogged up glasses as he banged Lady Gaga in the woods while Sarah Paulson screamed. Hope is balling your hands into fists and whispering to Leslie Jordan’s character: “Please don’t leave.”
I’m still here, Kathy Bates is still here, let’s do this!
Play-by-play:
- Picking up where we left off, Shelby turned Lee in to the police, Matt doesn’t remember his Devil tryst, and Uggs are still fashionable to yoga instructors.
- PIG MEN! Pig men everywhere!! Denis O’Hare doing magic!! Damn, I’m easy. Just like that, I’m back in! How can we lose, with Denis O’Hare joining Kathy Bates and Leslie Jordan to save us from the less appealing with a trifecta of fun?
- I mean, as an AHS viewer, there are always points after the first couple of episodes in each season (except S1 & S2) that I feel like going full-on Fantine and singing I Dreamed a Dream directly to the television, complete with tears, while being horrifyingly disappointed by the unfulfilled promises made in the first couple of episodes. I have only ever given up and left S4. I am so faithful and hopeful, it takes a lot to kill it. Still hanging on.
- More history lessons. Kathy Bates and her hatchet! Now we’ve got parameters for when she can kill. And the episode disclosing this information airs near the beginning of the kill-window on the calendar. Gotta appreciate the details.
- Now everyone is back in the woods. Nothing good has ever happened when they’ve gone into the woods. Also, ghosts apparently play Ring Around the Rosy.
- Oh, thank God you’re back, Cricket/Leslie Jordan! Denis O’Hare was here but then got shot with a bunch of arrows! Please help us! Bring us Evan Peters!
- Leslie Jordan and Lady Gaga should have their own show. She could show up and haunt places and demand sacrifices, he would come in and exorcise her. Over and over, until he was rich and she had enough sacrifices, then in the series finale buy a house like Blanche’s and retire happily in Florida, forever.
- Drifted off for a moment. Sorry. Anyway, The Butcher’s son has an awful accent. I’m not really sure what any of these accents are supposed to be. “Sound weird.” Except for Kathy Bates, she’s exceptional. And soaking the earth with their blood.
- “Sage, sacred herbs, pocket book of chants … ” Oh, Cricket.
- Backstory of a backstory of a backstory … exposition, exposition, exposition. But Lady Gaga’s antler hat/crown is awesome.
- CRICKET! NOOOOO! Okay, that’s a little gross. Well, shit. What now?
Recap:
Pretend I have my head in my hands, and you are sitting across from me. I’m going to tell you everything: We learn the origins of Lady Gaga’s Witch. We learn the fate of Kathy Bates’ Roanoke clan and how she bound them to the land with blood. We learn what happened to all the other people who ever tried to live in the house. We learn all this through expository speeches. In fact, this whole episode is pretty much just one voiceover or heated monologue after another. Denis O’Hare dies. Leslie Jordan dies. The six-day kill window, when the Roanoke clan led by The Butcher can murder the living for blood sacrifices, opens. And believe me when I say PLEASE LET THEM ALL DIE. END IT.
I’m ready for the twist. I’m ready for the mid-season change-up. With it comes an end to voiceovers and Wes Bentley’s horrifying accent, a goodbye to Sarah Paulson’s Uggs, hopefully some sort of closure, and so help me God, maybe even Evan Fucking Peters and the rest of the cast we’ve been promised. Anything would be better than six more episodes of voiceovers.
… except Dandy Mott, of course.
There are lots of clues to connections to Murder House (S1) in this episode, clues that Denis O’Hare is already dead and that even Cricket, by the time he shows up a second time and is disemboweled. There are clues to things all over the place, but it would be much better to enjoy the episodes as they roll along as opposed to just scavenging for clues to the Great Mystery.
I’m scared, you guys. Tired. Don’t leave me out here alone in the woods with all these whining urbanites!
AMANDA GOWIN
