Nathaniel's in LA for the week so welcome Adam, who previously covered True Blood, for the latest AHS: Freakshow epsiode. Here's the rundown and commentary. How'd you like the episode?
The Motts. They're the best part of "Freakshow," yes?
Plot: Elsa continues to plot against Bet and Dot since they’re in the position to replace her front-lining status at the Freak Show. Stanley and Maggie conspire to murder the Freaks, choosing money and notoriety over human compassion. Gloria and Dandy each come to terms with his new 'hobby,' she in the way of clean up and him in the embracement of his murderous urges. Desiree realizes she may not be as “freakish” as she once thought, while the Strongmen combats his inner self-loathing for that which he cannot change.
The Strong Man joins the rest of the planet in lusting after Matt BomerGuest Star of Note: Matt Bomer! ♥ In what begins as a slightly boring intro, more needed for its revelation of the strongman’s love for a man than anything else, becomes exponentially more interesting when Dandy enters the picture. Also, that hair and those eyes. *swoon* (Gabourey Sidibe makes a brief Horror Story return as Patti Labelle’s inquiring daughter, but that scene was more about revealing Gloria’s inner pain from being an absent mother than announcing the presence of a new character.)
QUOTABLES & SPOILERS after the jump...
Most Quotable
a little meta joke about Lange's career?
I would rather be boiled in oil than on television!"
Most Quotable: Elsa’s dry rebuff to Stanley’s offer to put her on TV! “I would rather be boiled in oil than on television.” Or Gloria’s example of other famous family cases of inbreeding. “Jack the Ripper was a Windsor for God’s sake.”
Best Line Reading: For how seductively he expresses his menacing desires, Dandy’s voiceover during his workout regiment: “…to introduce me to the sweet language of murder…”
Episode MVP: Angela Bassett. When Desiree is told that she is biologically a woman – a tip-off from a once-thought impossible miscarriage – the camera holds on her face, the voice of the doctor drowning out as her facial muscles convey her newfound sense of self. What ostracized her from the majority of people for most of her life, what has been her sole identifier as a freak, is an attribute that can be changed, reversed, erased. Her womanhood can be restored. The hermaphroditic appearance that has been crippling her, insofar as remaining married to a man only because she doubts her worth and desirability to other men and limiting her role in society to performing under big tops, is no longer inalterable. She can be the woman she was always meant to be.
Movie References: American Psycho! That voiceover was on point. Missed opportunity: An American Psycho tribute without a blue face mask or shots from Dandy's post-workout shower?
Body Count: 1. Just Matt Bomer, but his murder was a perverse, homoerotic and macabre frenzy of maniacal butchery that really cut to the dark core of what AHS can be when it actually tries. When he pleads for Dandy, who’s feeling slightly guilty when faced with Matt Bomer’s body refusing to die, to kill him after one arm has already been dismembered, only to have the other arm hacked off instead was truly frightening.
Was That Really Necessary?: The fantasy sequences in the beginning of the episode and midway through involving Stanley and Maggie (one showing the human seal’s corpse on display and the other featuring Bet & Dot’s death and heads exhibition) could’ve been exciting ‘gotcha!’ moments but were instead labored, overly-long and ultimately wasteful of time that could’ve indulged in other more interesting storylines. Stop giving us filler-bullshit, AHS!
Funniest Moment: For the simplest of reasons, Ma Petite’s miniature violin just slays me.
Musical Break: Elsa’s shattering and mostly silent number in which the audience members of Jupiter outright reject her. They barrage her with popcorn and other objects, crushing her deluded sense of vocal and performance talent. Her face registers years of pent up insecurity finally welling to the service and bursting through at the first crack.
Episode Grade: B. Were it not for Elsa’s been there, done that storyline the grade would be much higher.
A Note on the Season So Far: Jessica Lange is the backbone of the series. As far as I’m concerned, the show lives and dies on the stability she creates. So far – and I’m willing to be proven wrong – her character’s storyline this time around is nearly the EXACT SAME as Coven’s. The once Head-Bitch-in-Charge is being usurped by younger protégés and drastically retaliates. The first season of the show was singlehandedly responsible for Jessica Lange’s career resurgence, just look at her stack of Golden Globes and Emmys for her performances in this series, and this is how she’s repaid? By playing the same character repeatedly? She deserves better than that, and we viewers deserve more from a show whose ratings boundlessly grow with every season.