Saturday, December 01, 2012

Recapping AHS: Touched By an Angel


It’s morning at Briarcliff and two nuns are arriving for work. They talk about seeing Lilies of the Fields the previous night and one is reading the book. Nuns! They’re just like us! Morning rounds have begun and the nuns check in on Grace…who is bleeding like woah under the covers. In a haze, Grace sees a woman dressed all in black standing in the corner the nuns can’t see. The woman approaches Grace with a smile, suddenly sprouting huge black wings. She leans in to kiss Grace when one of the nuns revives her, snapping her back to awareness.

Just call me Angel of the Morning...

Act I! Sister Eunice finds Dr. Arden in his lab and chastises him for Grace’s botched sterilization. Arden insists that he never performed any sterilizations and she had better not raise her voice at him because he’s in charge here. He slaps her to make this point, clearly not appreciating that you NEVER SLAP A DEMON. Arden is thrown across the room for his attitude. In the kitchen, an inmate, Miles, is helping the nuns prepare lunch but he keeps hearing voices in his head telling him how worthless he is. In an effort to silence the voices, he persuades a nun to let him use the meat slicer and oh dear God in Heaven, are we really going to go there, American Horror Story? Yes. Yes, we are. Miles slices his arms open but good. The doctors get Miles stitched up, but as Eunice arrives to check things out, she notices that Miles has scrawled a word in Aramaic on the wall in his own blood. Eunice is outranged, and demands that Miles tell her if he “summoned her”. In his room later, strapped down, Miles is left alone in the dark when the black angel steps from the shadows. She tells Miles she’s here to help and Miles begins to pull out the stitches in his arm, letting out streams of blood. The angel leans in and kisses him, her wings unfurling. As Miles slips away, the angel senses someone else in the room – Sister Eunice. Eunice tells her to leave, but the angel recognizes that she’s more than human and sees something else in her, “one like me, but fallen.” For a moment, the real Sister Eunice surfaces and begs the angel to release her, but the demon regains control. Meanwhile, Arden is treating Grace for a massive infection. He tells her that he’s all about letting her die, but he’s not going to take the fall for her bad treatment. Nazism being all well and good, apparently, but being thought a bad clinician is just too much. Meanwhile, what’s Lana been up to? Getting raped repeatedly by Thredson. I’d say this couldn’t get more disturbing, but I’m betting this show will find a way.

Yes, Zachary Quinto is naked in the rape scene. You can find your own pics of his ass if you want them that badly.

Act II! Kit is meeting with his lawyer (‘bout time) who wants to know about his confession. Kit asks why they can’t just ask Grace to testify that she saw Alma, proving the Kit didn’t murder anyone? The lawyer reminds Kit that A) Grace is a mental patient, and B) she’s apparently quite sick and near death so let’s not get our hopes up. Kit decides to make a break for it, starting with beating his lawyer with a hole punch, which I can’t imagine that’s going to help his legal case. In Thredson’s basement, the angel comes to Lana. Lana sobs, saying death would be better than this, but when the angel offers to help her end it, Lana defers. At which point, Thredson comes down stairs to apologize for everything, saying he’s not angry and he probably shouldn’t have brought her here to begin with. He needs to correct this “impasse”, but don’t worry, he’s not going to hurt her. He doesn’t believe in guns, so would she rather die by strangulation or throat slitting? As he moves toward her to finish her off, Lana fights back eventually going all Leia on him, strangling him with her chain and fishing out the key to the lock. With that, she’s out and to the street and jumping into the first passing car. The driver of the car wants to know what happened, fight with the boyfriend? Well, it was probably something Lana did, since all women are lying bitches who just leave you after 10 years of marriage. The driver pulls out a gun, saying he can’t take it anymore and shoves the gun into his own mouth. He pulls the trigger, sending the car crashing and securing a place for Lana in the Unluckiest Person Ever Hall of Fame. Lana awakes, where else, back in Briarcliff with Eunice standing over her gleefully telling her that the accident was horrific and that she must be in terrible pain but she’s safe now.

Act III! Sister Jude is with Goodman’s body. She attempts to call 911 but stops when she notices the Eunice has left newspaper clippings around the room about the girl that Jude ran over and “murderer” written on the TV in blood. Flashback to 1949, as Jude remembers getting kicked out of her band who have grown sick of her drunk antics after the incident with the girl. In her misery, Jude drinks herself into a stupor and drives off. When she wakes up, she’s crashed her car right in front of a nunnery. Back in 1964, the phone rings in Goodman’s room – it’s Eunice calling to taunt Jude. Jude wants to know how Eunice knows about the girl, and Eunice confesses to being the demon. Eunice tells Jude not to come back to the asylum. Oh, and she left Jude a bottle of whiskey and razor blade okaykissesloveyoubye! Jude retreats to a diner. In the bathroom she slices her wrists before dying in a pool of her own blood. Kidding! Just a fantasy, although with the way this show is going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been real. Back at the booth, the angel is waiting for Jude. Rather than be afraid, though, Jude tells the angel that she isn’t going to try anything, unlike last time. Wait, what? Turns out Jude can see the angel because she attempted suicide a few years back after her fiancé left her when she told him that he gave her syphilis. Jude confesses all she ever wanted was a child, which she can now never have. The angel tells Jude that it goes to prove that God had a plan for Jude, but she deserves real peace now, and not the whiskey-induced kind. Jude says that she’s ready, but she has one thing she needs to do first.

Act IV! Jude is at the house of the parents of the girl she ran over, Missy, intending to confess everything when in walks an adult Missy, hale and healthy and working as a nurse, apparently having survived the accident all those years ago. Back at the asylum, Lana tells Sister Eunice that Thredson is Bloody Face. Eunice tells Lana that she believes her, the demon in her recalling seeing the truth about what Thredson was back in the exorcism. As she leaves Lana’s cell, though, she tells Frank the guard that Lana is delusional. In the death chute, Kit has found his way back to the asylum but unfortunately he’s been sloppy getting in and one of the zombie things from the forest is right behind him. Grace is in the kitchen, looking much better, when Kit finds her and the two begin to flee. Unfortunately, they are spotted immediately by one of the nuns who screams for security just before the zombie lunges from behind her, biting a chunk out of her neck. The zombie goes for Grace, but Kit distracts it, impaling it with a kitchen implement. All the commotion has brought Frank, who sees Kit and raises his gun. Grace jumps in front of Kit, taking the bullet square in the chest. As security takes Kit away, the angel appears to Grace, spreads her wings and asks if Grace is ready. Grace accepts the angel’s kiss, saying, “I’m free.”

It's saying something that this is what passes for a hopeful image in this show.

Next week: a Very American Horror Story Christmas Special.  

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