So that was a doozy of an episode, wasn't it? After weeks of mysteries, we got treated to a lot of solutions, though we still have a ton of cliffhangers to get through the rest of the season. I have to say, while it wasn't quite in the same league as the first part of the episode (the Anne Frank story line was pure inspired "WTF" genius, and I wasn't 100% certain I liked the resolution), this episode had a lot to lend to it, and I'm getting more and more into this season.(Big giant spoilers ahead and throughout, so the see the episode and stop on back if you haven't gone there yet) I'm just going to dive right into the most obvious and glaring spoiler of the week, that of Dr. Thredson (Zachary Quinto, and yes, I know his name now) proving to be the killer Bloody Face. I had been thinking more and more that he would end up being the killer, as it didn't seem to make sense why he was in the show (and top-billed, at that)-what secrets lurked there behind him, and why was he there? Of course, suspecting that it was coming and actually seeing it, with the creepy lamps and the skull bowl and the frozen carcass of Lana's lover on the floor of his creepy surgery theater, it still creeped me out royally. I'm nervous about exactly where this story goes, as we have half the season left, and it's not like Lana (poor, poor Lana who never should have crossed Sister Jude and should have stuck to just asking for the recipes) has anywhere to go. It also poses a lot more questions-what drove him to become Bloody Face? Is he really a psychiatrist? And is Kit really going to take the fall for him, as it appears he will?
That clever bit with Kit this week, where Dr. Thredson tricked him into confessing to Bloody Face's crimes, seems like Machiavellian cruelty in hindsight, which it is. Kit's story this week, otherwise, seemed a bit week and confusing. He avoided being sterilized, but Grace did not (at least that's what it seemed toward the end of the episode), and somehow Alma managed to factor back into the plot. I'll admit that the alien story has become the least interesting of the four to me, which is sad because complicated, innocent Kit is one of my favorite characters on the show. It's just that these aliens that don't get much screen time naturally take a backseat to the serial killer, Nazi war criminal creating monsters, and of course the devil in the body of Sister Mary Eunice.
With the big reveal of Sister Mary Eunice, am I the only one scratching their head as to why she didn't try and identify a bit more with Dr. Thredson, and his evil games? As the devil, her devotion to Dr. Arden makes much sense considering his obvious cruelty and his sadistic treatment to people, especially women, but why didn't she also latch onto the guy who is cutting women in his basement? Missed opportunity there, though it may have given away some of the surprises to come.
Dr. Arden's story was a tad predictable this week, and this is why I'm disappointed. While it seems to have been indicated that Anne Frank (aka Charlotte) was not in fact the young girl, given her husband's evidence to the contrary, we never got a concrete answer to that question, and almost certainly never will. It seemed obvious the second that Arden stepped onto the screen that the woman would be receiving a lobotomy, though considering how cogent she was in those final, 1950's-Douglas Sirk style scenes, I suspect they were just a projection of what the husband hoped their life to be, which makes the reveal in the final moments, where we see that Dr. Arden was indeed a Nazi soldier in the photos on the wall, all the more disturbing, as it leaves the door open to the fact that Charlotte was indeed who she said she was, and another voice was silenced by Dr. Arden's malice.
We'll end with the stupendous Jessica Lange, who has really taken a wild and unexpectedly rough journey these past five episodes, hasn't she? She's gone from the woman-on-the-top-of-the-food-chain to a woman who has completely lost her way. Who would have thought after that first episode that she'd end up being one of our "heroes" on this show (at least as much as one can be a hero in American Horror Story)? And yet, there she was, trying to fight for Anne/Charlotte, and eventually confessing to Frank, the doorman, that she was finished, in a soliloquy that if it doesn't net her an Emmy nomination, there is no justice. Her final descent back into a life of one-night stands and drunken bars was so sad, and I'm curious how she decides to rejoin the story next week. Lange's acting prowess on this show is just astounding (well, her acting prowess anywhere is just astounding), and every week she continues to awe and make me wish there were more avenues for "women of a certain age" to play out-of-the-box characters on cable and not just cops/lawyers/doctors.
And that's where we're going to leave it, but if you do have any thoughts, sound off in the comments. I didn't even get to poor Shelley crawling around the playground or the mysterious amount of knowledge the Monsignor has about Dr. Arden's activities, so feel free to give them their due below!
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