Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Recapping American Horror Story: Ben’s Got 99 Problems…

It’s episode 3 of your favorite wack-tastic new show and mine – we start with a flashback to 1983 where we see the former master of the house forcing himself on none other than SexyOldMaid, now young like how Ben sees her. The rape is stopped by the entrance of Jessica Lange and her shoulder pads. Southern Belle shoots SexyMaid in the eye, killing her instantly before doing the same to her husband. I get that this is all done out of anger and jealousy, but seeing as how it was rape this still seems like a pretty harsh outcome for SexyMaid. Cue the creepy theme music and take us to…

Act I! Vivien and Ben, in a rare show of common sense, have decided to move out of the house. Unfortunately, no one wants to buy. Turns out the scariest thing about this show is actually the Los Angeles housing market. Meanwhile, Southern Belle is stealing more of Vivien’s silverware, taunting SexyOldMaid and lecturing her about dignity. SexyOldMaid is not a happy camper and wants to “move on”, but can’t for some unstated reason. This is actually a really good scene and can I just say, sidebar, that I would watch the HELL out of a sitcom about these two characters?

Considering at least one of them is dead, "BFF" has a whole new meaning.

Regardless, we soon are with Ben as he “listens” to an extremely boring patient and starts to zone out, only to suddenly wake up in his yard with blood on his hands. Speaking as a former therapist myself, I can only say we’ve all been there. Ben goes back inside to see blood stains on the floor and SexyMaid cleaning up with her ass. Well, okay, maybe not using her ass per se. But given its prominence in the camera placement, it’s surely doing some of the work. Ben fires SexyMaid but she refuses to accept. We should all try that next time our bosses threaten to cut us loose. Moving to…

Act II! Ben deals with his suddenly missing patient and the cop trying to find her, only to have his mistress from back in Boston show up unexpectedly saying she didn’t get the abortion she claimed to have last episode and she’s decided to move to LA to be with Ben because she will NOT BE IGNORED! Vivien takes a Most Murderous Places in Los Angeles Where You Should Really Never Live bus tour. Three guesses as to whose house is the last stop. The Exposition Bus gives us some history –the house was built in the 20s by a milquetoast doctor for his snobby east coast wife. When they fell on hard times Lady Macbeth convinced her husband to start performing abortions to make ends meet. Man, the economy really does a number on all of us, doesn’t it? Almost as if some writer intended there to be a cruelly ironic connection between past and present, exactly as Vivien hears about this she starts noticing that she’s spotting pretty badly. What could possibly happen in…

Act III! Viv’s OBGYN/McGuffin-Supplier breaks the bad news: no moving for this family. Vivien’s nascent pregnancy is too unstable to handle the stress. Ben faints just to prove this point and the OBGYN orders an ultrasound of him. Not sure if that’s clinically appropriate and frankly, if I were Ben and Viv, I would ask to see the doc’s medical license again. Later Vivien is hunting for apartments in the LA Times (I guess Craigslist was down) when there is a knock at the door. GASP! It’s Lady Macbeth, wearing modern clothes but still talking with an early 20th century Mid-Atlantic accent. She says she wants to buy the house, so Viv takes her for a tour but she vanishes after saying she couldn’t put up with all the kitchen’s modern high-end appliances, thus further proving exactly how this show could never happen in the real world. How will we wrap this episode up? Only in…

Act IV! Turns out Ben didn’t kill his boring patient – she only got mad at him for not listening to her so she cut open her own wrists to get Ben’s attention. Again, we’ve all been there. Vivien and daughter Blossom check out new apartments, but Blossom totally has this post-second wave thing going on and says she wants to keep living in the house because it’s where they showed they were strong independent women by fighting off the home invaders together. Not exactly what Gloria Steinem had in mind, but okay. The OBGYN tells Ben that he was being drugged with Laudanum, the same thing the 1920s doctor was using for abortions back in the day. It’s unclear how an ultrasound deduced this. Ben’s mistress comes back and yells at him about how they need to be together. Basically, Ben is dealing with every crazy woman stereotype this show can think of. How to solve the problem? BurnVictim kills the mistress with a shovel. Then together they bury her in the back yard where they nonchalantly discover a skeleton.

Future buddy cops?

Unbeknownst to them, Southern Belle and SexyOldMaid are watching and Southern Belle is all like, “now you’ll never leave” which is actually kind of sad, but then Ben buries the mistress right there by the cover of daylight and builds a gazebo on top of her. Like, in all of three hours. That’s some productive guilt he’s got.

Next time! The Gimp comes back and Sylar…I mean Spock guest stars. No word on if these two things are related.

2 comments:

Maggie Cats said...

One tiny thing: I believe the OBYN also ordered a blood test and an EKG. That's how she found out about the drug in Ben's system, FYI.

I had literally just said, "wow she's a crazy bitch" about Ben's mistress when she got the shovel to the face. I might have cheered. Does that make me a bad person?

Clovis said...

okay, the blood test makes more sense. to be honest, i was pretty much just taking frantic notes during the show, so i clearly missed one of the details.

personally, i'm hoping that the dead mistress comes back as a ghost. this show is just crazy enough to do that and frankly Ben clearly needs more shrill female characters in his life.