Considering the anthology format of the series, I was holding my breath the entire episode to see what would occur as a result of this hour-being that Ryan Murphy is more than willing to toss out the big spoilers and Entertainment Weekly treats spoiler alerts the way that Fox News treats the truth, I had unfortunately read that there would be only one person left standing at the end of the series, so I expected a bit of a bloodbath. What I got, also, though, was a brilliant hour of television-one of the best of the series, and an ending so good it made me question which season of this daring television series was the best.
The episode was told through the eyes of Lana Winters, so wonderfully acted by Sarah Paulson all season, now an older woman. We see her, clearly successful, a hybrid of Truman Capote and Barbara Walters (even Murphy himself has admitted that Walters was his inspiration for the more senior Winters), in the life that she clearly deserved after all of the hardship that she endured in Briarcliff. She's an internationally renowned journalist, both in print and later in television, has a beautiful opera star girlfriend, and their evenings are filled with dinner at the Sondheims and, on the night of this interview, a Kennedy Center Honor for Lana.
Throughout the episode, Lana is telling a woman interviewing her about her life after our last episode (pointedly refusing to talk about the Bloody Face murders, but instead focusing on the time after them). We find out that Lana indeed made good on her word to go back to shut down Briarcliff, but not in time to save Sister Jude. Instead, Sister Jude had already been saved, years earlier, by Kit. Kit had gone in not for himself or Sister Jude, but in a well-acted scene, for his children. Kit needed someone to forgive, and to put the awfulness that happened at Briarcliff behind him so that he could be a strong father to his children.
We therefore see Kit, patient and devoted, taking care of the woman who had once beat him and was content to let him die in Briarcliff. In this, he found absolution, and fans of AHS got to see what might have been in a parallel universe had Tate Langdon been the perfect son that Constance had always dreamed of having. We saw Sister Jude, so at odds with her life choices, finally end on a happy note for herself, and embraced Death as a friend, not as a means to an end.
We also saw Kit, whom Lana became strong friends with (she was named godmother to his children) end his story on a somewhat happy note, once again finding love and watching his children become great successes. We did not, however, get a resolve on what is decidedly the weakest aspect of the second season of the series, the alien plot. This entire story line could have been lifted from the season without the remotest of consequences and no one would have noticed the difference. We never learned why Kit specifically was chosen, or if there were others that also had been abducted for their baby-making abilities, but we did see Kit, still handsome in his 40-year-old makeup, beamed aboard just before he was to succumb to death.
We also saw the fate of the Monsignor, who, after being accused (fairly, for the record) by Lana of allowing unspeakable atrocities happen at Briarcliff under the care of Dr. Arden, commit suicide before confessing anything, and thus never taking up the mantle of Pope (a path the show hinted in the final episode he may have reached were it not for Lana). There is a slight wink to the show's decided left-leaning principles when they point out that Lana, despite doing what was right, became vilified for this act by an unknowing public.
The episode's genius, though, lies in what happened in the final ten minutes of the show, which gave a whole new perspective on Lana and the completed season. We see earlier on in the show that one of the crew members is none other than Johnny, Lana's Bloody Face, Jr., and though Lana confesses to the interviewer that she did indeed have a son, and did once seek him out, we don't know until the final moments of the series that Lana knows that he's there, and there to kill her, and in fact was aware of what he looked like the whole time. In a scene that will surely snag Sarah Paulson an Emmy nomination, we see her manipulate, coerce, and eventually talk Johnny away from killing her, using his maternal issues to her advantage. You have to believe this is a woman who has never completely let her guard down in fifty years, and has always been wondering, looking behind her. Because this is AHS, we also get to see the tables turned, and just as you feel that Paulson has finally sent Johnny onto the potential road to rehabilitation, we see Paulson sneak the gun away from Johnny, and put it to his forehead and pull the trigger. This is not a woman who takes risks with her life anymore, and in what was fittingly a season that really told Lana's story more than anyone else's, it is Sarah Paulson who is the last woman standing.
And that's a wrap on our season of American Horror Story (sadly we've got to wait another nine months for the next batch of episodes, and hints of what is to come). What are your thoughts on our time at Briarcliff? Did you enjoy it more or less than the Murder House? Are you as thrilled as I that Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Jessica Lange are all going to be back next season? And what horrors are you hoping for in season three?
No comments:
Post a Comment