AHS: Freakshow "Test of Strength"
Friday, November 21, 2014 at 12:00PM 
I ran into Celia Weston today (I feel like her stalker. Always running into her in the city, I am) and told her that she sure has been causing a lot of trouble on Freakshow. She told me a vague but juicy anecdote about a scene she was prepping for the day before but immediately swore me to secrecy, damnit.
Sorry to dangle that carrot!
Plot threads are getting ever more tangled and destructive as we near the winter break. Lobster Boy springs Bette & Dot from the Mott mansion (our favorite place to be this season - hail Finn Wittrock & Frances Conroy) as all three of them begin to sense danger even if they can't yet put their finger on what exactly is wrong with Dandy. Then Lobster Boy reveals Elsa's lies to the freaks only to be betrayed by the twins he just rescued who are planning to blackmail Elsa instead. The Bearded Lady overhears Richard & Elsa's plans to off the twins and wants to off Dell the Strong Man off herself after he is blackmailed by Richard to kill a freak to keep his queer closet door shut. Etcetera etcetera etcetera while not one but two characters are seeking dangerous operations and so on and so on and so on.
Things are... messy. It's one hour of double and triple crossing as everyone turns against each other, lies to each other, and continues the march toward what we assume is their communal doom. Things are going terribly for just about everyone.
Body Count: 1. Ma Petit squeezed to death by the Strong Man, damn him, and sold by Richard to museum director Celia Weston. We'll never again hear Ma's high-pitched voice (this was a very disturbing death with her pitiful squeaks and tiny quivering limbs) or be amused by her little violin and those adorable butterfly imitations.
Musical Interlude: Nirvana's "Come As You Are" via Evan Peters for some reason. Elsa was not amused.
Best Line Reading
You read my diary."
In some ways Dot, who despises Dandy, is his perfect match. They're both childlike devils and their shared petulance rubs each other the wrong way. I love the amount of loathing accusation Paulson shoves into these four words, with a kind of moral superiority dangling from it... which is hilarious since she sort of wants to saw her sister off which Dandy would also surely love to do.
Most Unexpected Delight
It's been hilarious for entirely off-show reasons to watch Jessica Lange continually demolish Meryl Streep's Daughter's piece of mind. And now, this playfully gross series is the first entertainment to successfully stop one of the Gummer girls from looking like a defective Streep clone. We just didn't ever expect that this moment would arrive via an all face tattoo torture!
Best Moment
"Amazon Eve" beating the shit out of the Strong Man. Sorry, Chiklis bothers me and with Eve we have our third consecutive trans actor well cast on a hit TV series (following Orange is the New Black and Transparent). It's in some ways the surprise showbiz story of 2014.
Who's the Strong Man now ?!
Most Quotable
This is blackmail. My my my
-takes one schemer to know and respect one.
I want to keep my balls!
-best said with drunken slur
Oh, you wave the wand. That's all you do!
- The perfect fairy godmother insult! Not that that will come in so handy.
Plus, a new audition monologue for actors via the teary Bearded Lady (who has really grown on me with Kathy Bates's capacity for conjuring a life's worth of sorrow and disappointment.
You know what your problem is? You're stuck on the rosy notion that the world operates on goodness, decency. Truth is all goodness guarantees you is an early grave. But the biggest joke of all? The thing that will sink you every time is hope. Hope that the world will right itself, that the just will be rewarded and the wicked punished. Once you buy into that horseshit you're dead in the water.
The only way to survive in this disgusting godforsaken world is to take control. Aint nobody going to take care of our people but us.
Funniest Moment
Bette's makeover and Dot's "caterpillar" reaction. The entire scene is priceless from the hairdresser's delight to Bette's Mildred Pierce quoting, to Dot's humorlessness and Elsa's 'Fairy Godmother' offer.
Look at us, Dot. We're like the perfect before and after picture. It'll be our new act. We'll call it the metamorphosis.
Episode MVP
Given this season's most challenging role, Sarah Paulson is exceeding expectations as girlish naive Bette & bitter complicated Dot. She's like the tragicomedy actor masks as siamese twins. She's funny, hateful, delusional, abrasive, pragmatic, childish, and sympathetic and sometimes all of those things at once. It helps to have two faces to act with, I suppose. If Jessica Lange really wants to move on, or take a smaller role as she keeps indicating, Paulson has more than earned the headliner position after four seasons, I'd say.
And a major shout out to Evan Peters who finally justifies his major screen time this season with that drunken little boy despair in an alleyway. I actually felt it.
Grade: B+
Reader Comments (29)
Celia? Bowed down to her in admiration!
Love me some C-West, but I don't know, Nat. This season, which I so-o-o looked forward to, is turning into a bigger mess than Coven (which I enjoyed much more actually on second viewing). AHS may have jumped the shark.
I think if they put Sarah front and center, they should bring her back as the first character she ever played, the hilarious Psychic.
Mareko -- you think so? It seems so much more coherent than usual.
Mareko - Messier than Coven? Hmm, i don't think it's that bad yet.
How the hell did they get Ma Petit's body to Celia Weston so fast? Did they FedEx her jar?
It was horrifying to see her go but they also undercut a great deal of that with the whole fakeout from last week.
Speaking of the Hollywood Reporter roundtables and Amy Adams, the ONLY interesting thing that woman has ever said is that she'd like to get a lead role greenlit for Celia Weston.
I cried Ma Petite was being murdered
Maybe if she stopped campaigning for five minutes (that woman has not come up for air in almost 10 years) she could make that happen.
I love Celia Weston. I've worked with her a couple of times and she is just as sweet and charming in person as her characters. But with a twinkle in her eye that tells you she could be a rascal if she wants too.
Hayden - do you think people will turn on Amy when she wins for wanting it like they turned on Kate?
You can't really blame Adams for trying. Her Oscar win clock is ticking. J Moore was nearly as constant on the circuit for years (4 noms in 5 years) and then hit a dry patch about the same age Adams is approaching now. The stats will tell you that if a woman hasn't won by age 40, it probably won't happen. This year for J Moore is the exception (if she wins that is). Nat has spelled this out so many times. Only one woman winning when between 50-60? And that was half a century ago.
"AHS may have jumped the shark" in the pilot episode. That's not a phrase I would ever apply to this show.
Paul - agreed. If Ryan & Brad could figure out a way to cast a real live shark who could jump and deliver lines in any of theses seasons, they would. Not to be taken seriously!
If AHS has indeed jumped the shark, next season could be a redux of Jaws, with Paulson in the Scheider part and Roberts as Dreyfuss. Kathy is Robert Shaw, she already has the beard.
with Jessica Lange as Jaws.
@Nathaniel - I don't know that Winslet is a good analog to Adams. Maybe Renee Zellweger. I can totally see Amy Adams scoring a Globe-Comedy nomination for some mess like Miss Potter subsequent to her Oscar win, as her career spirals out of the mainstream.
And following that up with a Bridget Jones-style sequel (Enchanted 2?), an ill-advised screwball comedy (Leatherheads), more Muppet and Superman movies, and the occasional Forest Whitaker drama that can't break into the conversation.
Season 6: American Sharknado Story.
Paul Outlaw; LOL With Angela Basset chainsawing her way out of Kathy Bates belly.
I think Jessica Lange is ready to throw her cigarette holder in the ring for either the always-talked about "Baby Jane" or "Sunset Blvd." remakes--or both! She's got scary crazy narcissism down!
Besides, won't it require a Cold Mountain moment of acting that keeps pundits groaning for years to finally win Amy Adams and Oscar?
LOL. Paul, perfect! Can Tara Reid do a cameo as fish food?!
This is the best comment thread ever
As long as Ryan Murphy & co. have a place for Ian Ziering, I'm good.
Beverly Hills Have Eyes 90210. With Shannen Doherty as Baby Land Shark.
ASS (American Sharknado Story) Guest staring Tara Reid as Ariel "Chum" Chumsky.
Very fitting, Henry! When it comes to his shows, Murphy's always rectum.
What I got most out of this review is that Celia Weston is a tease and a gossip. Delicious!
I can just imagine the Gummer family dinners.
Meryl: "Dears, back in my day we just did Holocaust movies or did bedroom scenes with Jack Nicholson to show our range. We never had to look gruesome."
Grace: "But what about Aunt Angelica and Aunt Jessica?"
And correct if I'm wrong but wasn't Eve Arden a redhead?
Like many Golden Age actresses, Eve Arden sported every hair color in the spectrum during her career.