Oh Briarcliff, you really are the Murder House on acid. It always takes a bit of time to get adjusted to new characters, but I think I may be almost there with Sister Jude, Kit, Lana Banana, Dr. Arden, and poor, poor Shelley (where the hell was Joseph Fiennes this week, though?).And again, I know I'm late, but my TiVo didn't work this week, so I had to catch up on iTunes, and thus the delay. This week, we were treated (or tricked, depending on how you look at it) into some demented stuff on the show. The first thing that's popping to my head is Lily Rabe's suddenly possessed Sister Mary Eunice, a character that got a whole lot more interesting this week (and showed what a talent the Tony-nominated Lily Rabe is). I love that she wasn't spewing split pea soup the second she got possessed-a demonic and diabolical nun is just what this show needed to throw some chaos into the seemingly perfectly etched story lines that were playing out. I am curious what the devil's agenda is here, and you have to love that on American Horror Story, the devil is just one of four potentially non-human characters, where as most shows would have just stuck to one.
For on AHS, suddenly we also have aliens in the basement, scaring the crap out of Jessica Lange (but clearly not killing her-what's their agenda here, are they just after Kit?). Lange was a hoot this week-I cannot remember ever seeing her intoxicated onscreen, and she just killed in that monologue before The Sign of the Cross (an unseen film in the OVP, for the record, and one that I'm far more intrigued by now that I got that introduction to the film). Lange's Sister Jude is being harassed by the demonic Sister Mary Eunice (though she doesn't know the culprit yet) and is having a crisis of faith, including a relapse into alcoholism. At some point I hope that Ryan Murphy shows the strong woman we came to know in the first episode once more, but I think a journey through hell for a while may be good for her character arch (and a great way to show of Lange's range as an actress).
I'm giving the aliens one sentence, since they appeared for such a short time that if you were live-tweeting the series, you missed them. I'll give the creepy humanoids in the woods slightly more time, mostly because they are by far meant to be the biggest question marks of the episode. We got to see yet another escape attempt from Kit, Lana, and Grace, and Lana has come to realize that Kit is not the killer she assumed him to be. Like I said last week, I think that may have been the only shot for at least one, if not all three, of those characters to escape. I stand by that this week, when they were suddenly surrounded by the flesh-eating, molten skin Donner Party in the woods. I can't say that I didn't blame them heading back to Briarcliff, but just how many people are there in the woods, and why do they only have to feed them through the winter (as Dr. Arden alluded to to Sister Mary Eunice)? Was there really no way to outrun them outside, as I don't know that Briarcliff is that much of a better option? I guess we'll see in next week's two-parter, but I can't tell if they are tied to Bloody Face/the aliens or if this is a case of Murphy's tendency toward "more, more, more" (he said lovingly as someone who watches 2.5 hours worth of Murphy television a week, at least I will once Glee returns).
There was also the terrible fate of poor Shelley, played each week by the intoxicating Chloe Sevigny (if you ever get bored one day, ponder the 1999 Best Supporting Actress lineup of 5 first-time nominated actresses Sevigny, Angelina Jolie, Catherine Keener, Toni Collette, and Samantha Morton and what vastly different paths their careers took). Shelley, this time included in the escape mission, decided to take one for the team and seduced a guard/doctor (it's hard to tell what that guy was) while the other three escaped. She was then raped by Dr. Arden, and she made the fatal mistake of laughing at his "delicate masculinity." When she awoke after Arden smashed her in the head, we saw that Arden had monstrously amputated both of her legs at the knees. It was a devastating and heartbreaking scene, and showed the truly awful evil behind Dr. Arden's menace (does anyone else think that Murphy may have seen The Skin I Live In more than once?). I'm looking forward to Dr. Arden getting his in the upcoming weeks (though I have a feeling it will take a while, this being AHS-they need at least one above-the-line villain).
That was the close of the show, but I'm going to close with the opener, as it has me most intrigued. Of the four creations on the show, you can make plausible explanations for what's to come in the demon, alien, and monsters-in-the-wood stories, but I'm at a loss of how Bloody Face is both around in 2012 and also the only story famous about Briarcliff (indicating the demon, aliens, and the monsters never gained notoriety in the modern timeline). From the looks of things Adam Levine and Janna Dewan Tatum are both dead as doornails, though I would question that because unless someone gets decapitated or gets a farewell speech in the horror genre, it's safe to assume they're still breathing. Either way, I'm most perplexed about what's going on with this story line, since I believe this is taking place almost fifty years earlier, so either the new Bloody Face is a new character, or it's an older character, and the only male of the right age to still be alive fifty years later is either Evan Peters or Zachary Quinto, though both would be bordering on 80 even if we're being generous about ages. Does anyone have any thoughts on what's up with Bloody Face? And on the episode in general?
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