Sunday, November 03, 2013

Recapping AHS: Kill Your Masters

Happy (belated) Halloween, everyone! To celebrate, here is the first of two recaps from the past two weeks of American Horror Story. Enjoy!

Fiona can’t sleep, so she wanders down to the liquor cabinet, as all good insomniacs do, to search for something to help. Along the way, she remembers Anna-Lee, the Supreme who ran the school in 1971 when she was a wee lass herself. Turns out Supremes aren’t born – they’re made through election and “mastery of The Seven Wonders.” Fiona believed she was ready to be the next Supreme, using as evidence that Anna-Lee had been fading, falling sicker with Diabetes and heart failure while Fiona was getting stronger.  Anna-Lee felt that Fiona wasn’t the right choice to be the Supreme. Fiona felt differently and decided to take things into her own hands by cutting open Anna-Lee’s throat in the living room of the school while Spaulding, the butler watched. The problem is, in modern times, Fiona is starting to resemble Anna-Lee way more than she does her younger self. She is still desperate to become younger and has made an appointment with a plastic surgeon for a facelift.

Elsewhere, Zoe has hunted down Kyle’s mother, a salt-of-the-Earth woman who smokes weed while talking with Zoe about how she misses her son, sleeping in his room now that he’s gone. Mom tells Zoe how Kyle was the one who took care of them both, on top of going to school and being a tutor and probably walking elderly ladies across the street and saving kittens from trees. She’s clearly miserable, confessing that she was actually about to kill herself out of grief when Zoe called her. Zoe tries to comfort her, promising that she’s see Kyle again.

"Again, like, in a totally not fundamentalist Christian kind of way."

Back at the school, the neighbors are moving in. The neighbors, BTW, include the requisite stud-muffin who takes off his shirt provocatively while moving heavy boxes while Queenie, Nan and Madison watch eagerly. The ogling is not unnoticed by the lad’s hyper religious mother. Upstairs meanwhile, Delphine is watching Barack Obama giving a speech and sobbing. “LIESSSSSSSSSSS!” she hisses at the TV when Fiona tells her about all the progress black people have made.

Thank you, Jesus, for giving us this scene.

Anyway, Delphine has to make a living in the modern world. Fiona has decided to make her the new Maid. As her first task, she berates Queenie when Queenie asks for a sandwich, calling her a “foul negress”. A fight almost breaks out until Fiona intervenes, deciding the best way to resolve this particular problem is to make Delphine Queenie’s “personal slave.” Oh Delphine – the future isn’t always bright, is it?

In the swamp, Misty cuddles on the bed with ZombieKyle and signs along to Stevie Nicks. Honestly, I kind of love these two together, more than Kyle and Zoe. The show is clearly going to force us to go with the boring pairing when this one is way more interesting. Either way, Zoe arrives to find that Kyle is mostly bodily healed, even if he’s still nonverbal. Misty wants them both to stay for dinner, probably because she’d like to talk more about Fleetwood Mac with someone other than a reanimated alligator, but Zoe insists that she has to get Kyle back to civilization. Misty tries to keep Kyle, but Zoe separates them, promising to come back for Misty. “No you won’t,” she mutters sadly to herself as they leave.

Nan and Madison are bringing a cake to the cute boy next door. Madison has dressed her best “I’m here to get laid” dress, but cute boy Luke seems impervious to her sexy talk, preferring to talk with Nan about the cake. It’s lemon cake, “I knew it was your favorite,” Nan tells him. Luke is totally into it, although his mother is quick to shoo the girls out, saying they’re on their way to church, despite it not even being Sunday. “You know that’s a crock of shit,” Madison tells them, seductively holding the cake knife. When the mother struggles with it, Madison causes the knife to go flying across the room and the curtains to spontaneous light on fire. “I didn’t know you could do that,” Nan says. “Neither did I,” Madison responds.

Cordelia is back at the doctor’s getting bad news. At the same time, so is Fiona. Both of them have concerning blood work. For Cordelia it means no baby. For Fiona, it means no elective surgery, and possibly something else. Later, as Fiona is contemplating her fate, she gets a visit from Joan Ramsey, the religious mother next store who has brought her a copy of the Bible, something she always does when she visits a new place. She’s not happy with the girls “invading” her property and dressed so scandalously that she fears for her son’s virginity. She also spills the beans about the knife and the curtains, which raises Fiona’s interest. Madison enters the room to taunt Joan, scaring her away. Fiona, however, wants a longer talk with Madison.

"I do what the Good Book tells me. Like judging people indiscriminately and casting stones."

Zoe, brain trust that she is, has brought Kyle to his old home, left him on the front porch and rings the doorbell. Apparently “The Monkey’s Paw” is not on the curriculum at Miss Robicheaux’s. Either way, Kyle’s mom is ecstatic to see her son again. Perhaps too much so. That night, Kyle lays in his bed and his mother is still trying to figure it all out. She sits next to Kyle, asking how it is that his body looks different than she remembers it. Why does she have such attention paid to her son’s body? That’s odd. But it doesn’t matter, she insists, laying next to him and kissing him lightly. Then more than lightly. Then moving her hand over his chest. Then farther down. Then OH DEAR GOD, PEOPLE – WE HAVE INCEST! WE HAVE MAJOR INCEST HAPPENING! OH GOD IS NOTHING SACRED?!?!

Cordelia has gone to the other side of the tracks to get a meeting with Marie Laveau. Marie is sitting on a throne (literally) made of gold and alligator bodies and bones and lots of other things. Awesomely, she’s also playing Solitare on her iPad. Loves it. Cordelia wants to know about Marie’s world-famous fertility spell. “You know that spell ain’t no picnic for anyone involved,” Marie warns. We see Cordelia led to a fire while Marie dances while eating the hottest pepper on Earth and throwing a mason jar of Cordelia’s husband’s “Baby gravy” over the fire while Cordelia is covered in the blood of a goat’s slit throat. Just Kidding! That’s what would have happened if Marie was feeling up to helping the daughter of her now-sworn enemy, Fiona.

"It's for the best. It takes days to get rid of White Eye."

Zoe gets a call from Kyle’s mother, saying Kyle’s come back but it’s not him. She then tells Kyle that she knows that she’s “been possessive” but it’s time for him to move on with his life, even if she knows that he needed it as much as she did. Kyle has moved from blank nonverbal to threatening nonverbal as his mother tries to begin the make outs with him again. “That girl doesn’t know how please you, not like I can,” she tells him as Kyle finally manages to remember the word for “NOOOOOOOO!” and grabs one of his sports trophies and begins to smash in his mother’s head. Later, Zoe arrives at Kyle’s darkened house to find a pulpy mother and a bloody Kyle.

Fiona and Madison are having brunch. Fiona is eager to teach Madison what she’s needs to know, telling her that she’s going to be the next Supreme. As a test, she tells Madison to make a man standing across the street walk into busy traffic. Madison manages it, though the man is unhurt when the cars stop around him.

At home, Queenie has made Delphine make her dinner, including Peach Cobbler. Delphine tries to tell Queenie to stop eating if she wants to even land a man before noticing something in the darkness outside. Suddenly the Minotaur appears at the window and begins to bang against the door with his horns. Delphine spills the beans that she’s not just some racist maid, but she begs Queenie to save her from the Minotaur in any case. Queenie cuts open Delphine’s palm and obsorbs some of the blood onto a towel before sending her upstairs for safety and then heading outside. Terrified, but strangely excited as well, Queenie lures the Minotaur to an alley behind the house. “You just wanted love, and that makes you a beast,” she tells it. “They called me that too, but that’s not who we are. We both deserve love like everyone else. Don’t you want to love me?” Because why not, American Horror Story? Why not also have necrophiliac bestiality in the episode about incest?

Availing ourselves fully of the "parental discretion advised" warning tonight, I see.

Madison and Fiona have been having quite the day, ending it now at a pool hall and cleaning up while drinking and flirting with men. For a coke-head, Madison can’t really hold her liquor. They come home boozy and Fiona lays her cards on the table – Madison is going to be the next Supreme. She knows because her exploration into surgery has revealed that she has terminal cancer, which she attributes to her powers waning because the new Supreme, Madison, is taking her lifeforce, just as she herself did to Anna-Lee 40 years ago. Madison wants to help Fiona, but Fiona doesn’t want to go out of life ugly, bald and on chemo. “I’ve led a disreputable life, but I’ve done it in style and I’ll die likewise,” she tells her. Fiona recognizes that she’s been a shitty Supreme, wasting her power on herself instead of promoting the other witches like Anna-Lee did.

Fiona admits that she cut Anna-Lee’s throat right where Madison is standing with this very knife. Fiona tries to give the knife to Maidson, asking her to do to Fiona what Fiona did to Anna-Lee. Madison struggles, insisting that she can’t and doesn’t want to and suddenly Fiona is opening Madison’s throat, just like Anna-Lee’s. Spaulding is even right back in the room, watching like before. Madison bleeds out all over her white dress and onto the white rug on the floor before collapsing onto it. Fiona looks equal parts horrified with herself and pleased. “Bury her deep,” she tells Spaulding. “This coven doesn’t need a new Supreme. It needs a new rug.”

Well, this didn't go as planned.

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