Recapping AHS: Who's Your (Baby) Daddy?

OMG you guys –shit just got real. We begin six months ago, as the Harmons are moving in. Lady Macbeth is moving through the house weeping and deeming everything “all wrong”. She seems confused as to where she is and why the furniture that isn’t hers is so cheap, which just goes to show how successful Ethan Allen Furniture would have been in the 1920s. A shadow-y man enters and she demands to know what’s happened to her baby. The man says he will help her and we cut to the first episode and the first of what would become many Gimp/Vivien slash scenes. As Ben does his naked walkabout from that night, he actually passes the gimp leaving Vivien’s room, walk of shame be damned. The Gimp goes downstairs and unmasks to reveal… Tate. Meaning that in addition to every other bit of crazy, this story now has a ghost who’s impregnated his girlfriend’s mom.

Act I! Vivien, Moira and Marcie, the real estate agent, look at the old pictures of Lady Macbeth and hilariously suggest that maybe the ghost was just a doppelganger. That disappeared from the kitchen. Marcie is worried because Sleazy from last week hasn’t returned her phone call about an offer on the house. Heh. In a flashback, Spock has coffee with a girlfriend and talks about his problems with his husband, who no longer wants a baby like they originally planned. Instead, he’s been distant, distracted, sleepwalking and making sexy talk online with guys at an S&M social network. They really do have one of those for everyone, I guess. GF suggests that Spock do something to make married life interesting again, so Spock checks out a sex shop and looks at really painful toys. The clerk suggests buying the gimp outfit, which is meant to dehumanize the wearer and is also very slimming in black. That night, Spock dresses as the Gimp and approaches Mr. Spock, who laughs off the seduction saying he prefers leather, not rubber. The two argue and somehow Mr. Spock gets even more naked before storming off to hook up with hotleatherman25 or something.

Somewhere, a repressed Star Trek fan's head just exploded for joy.

Spock cries and we flash confusingly forward to Lady Macbeth crying in the same position before Hayden yells from the other room that she’s ghosting over here and would you please keep it down? Hayden’s had a busy afterlife, hooking up with all the other ghosts in the house, including Constance’s murdered husband. She tells Lady Macbeth that she’s dead, get over it, but Lady Macbeth doesn’t remember killing her husband or herself. They bond over the fact that they’ve both lost children, Lady Macbeth to a psycho and Hayden to Ben and his shovel, and they get angry that Vivien is going to have two – maybe they should take them from her?

Act II! Vivien is going to bed when she thinks she hears something in the hallway and then the red rubber ball rolls toward her out of the darkness. Hayden’s disembodied voice is suddenly laughing while making lights spark and generally acting like something out of Craig T. Nelson’s homeownership nightmares. Cut to Halloween of last year, the GimpTate is killing Spock when Mr. Spock walks in. Beat downs ensue and, as was foreshadowed back in episode one, Mr. Spock gets the business end of a fireplace poker up his, well, business end. GimpTate explains to Lady Macbeth that they were going to have a baby, but now they’re not, so if they’re dead, maybe a new family will move in that can give Lady Macbeth her baby back? Back again to our time, Violet is playing in the basement with the red ball and talking kindly to something in the darkness. Ben is worried because Violet hasn’t been to school in two weeks. And she’s stopped eating. And feeling sullen. Aw crap, Violet’s totally dead, isn’t she? We’ll have to wait to find out for sure, because in the kitchen Vivien is telling Moira about having hallucinations. Moira tells her not to worry, it’s not that she’s going crazy, the house is just wicked haunted by at least 11 ghosts. Vivien is all “oh HELL no” and grabs Violet, saying they’re leaving pronto. They try to drive off, but the ghosts of the two home invaders from Episode 2 are waiting in the backseat and scare them back into the house.

Act III! Ben is pissed at Vivien for trying to take Violet out of state to Florida. I’ve been to Florida. I’m on Ben’s side on this one. Ben says maybe the hallucinations are the result of mad cow disease, which one gets from eating raw brains, done anything like that lately, honey? Upstairs, Violet and Tate have apparently just had sex because they’re more or less naked and in bed, marking the first time this show has not gone with the sexy. Tate tells Violet he’ll always be there for her, but she can never tell Vivien about the ghosts in the house. Meanwhile, Vivien is going all Roswell, claiming that everything is a giant conspiracy between Ben and Hayden to get her out of the house and also there are ghosts. She asks Violet to corroborate, given the home invasion, but Violet lies and says that she never saw anything ghostly that night. Vivien calls Marcie over then pretends to get a migraine so she can steal Marcie’s gun from her. Smooth move, actually. That night, as she tries to sleep someone is in the room with her, moving in the shadows. Vivien hits the panic button (literally) and grabs the gun, shooting wildly and accidentally hitting Ben as he comes in to see what’s going on.

Act IV! The cops arrive, including Luke the security guy. Ben says the bullet didn't hit him. Possibly a plot point, possibly just bad writing. We'll see. Luke tried to get in because he doesn't trust Ben, but also because he wants to sex Vivien, who is apparently the new Ben in terms of needing to have someone try to have sex with her in every episode. Upstairs, Vivien is struggling under the Valium that Ben gave her to calm her down. Hayden starts yelling at Vivien, saying that Ben is pathetic. Vivien (and all of us) agree. But then Hayden wants Viv's babies and brings GimpTate for yet another round of But-It-Was-Just-A-Dream sex ending with Ben and Luke having to hold Vivien down and call in the men in the white coats. Ben's had Vivien committed because she's a danger to herself and the babies. Vivien is walked out of the house in dramatic slo-mo, shooting Violet a deathlook on the way out for not backing her up.

Make 'em pay... make 'em all pay...

One final flashback to Tate and Moira in the basement with dead Mr. Spock and a rapidly dying Spock. Moira instructs Tate, still in the gimp suit, on how to kill them both to make it look like a murder-suicide. Tate remarks that it’s kind of romantic; this way they’ll be together forever and btw he’s still totally not gay. Also, how is that Basement so clean and free of blood stains? This is, like, the 25^th murder to happen down there.

Next week – The Pope shows up. Seriously, you guys, the mothereffing Pope.