American Horror Story: Hotel S05E09 – She Wants Revenge

The usual downhill spiral continues on American Horror Story: Hotel with “She Wants Revenge”, which is maddening because the promise is there. Everything was going so well. There is no way they’re sorting this all out in four episodes. Let’s go….

-We open with the Countess talking about how she is a century old now, and she is staring into the hallway where she knows Rudy and Natasha have been hidden, but they’re not there anymore. There should been another episode about this story, or at least split that with the “Ten Commandments Killer” episode. I’m still pissed about that. It didn’t need to be a whole damn episode.

-Oh, shoutout to Gaga for getting a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Hotel. I think she has been great in spite of some bad storytelling. She is up against some stiff competition and shouldn’t win, but I bet she has shocked some people.

-In the present, Will Drake is telling the Countess that he wants a big wedding, but she wants something more intimate. Hell, I forgot they were even getting married because there are 47 storylines, but aight, cool. She just wants him to design her dress and she’ll handle the rest, and then Elizabeth asks Liz to order her some flowers. To which Liz hits her with a “bitch, what?” and tells her to buy her own flowers. He is obviously still salty about what she did to Tristan, which is fair, and all that was missing from this was a finger snap and a neck roll. Elizabeth is still playing the victim and says she did it because Tristan could have never loved Liz because he didn’t know how. Liz don’t care, bruh.

-Elizabeth and Alex are watching the news, and by that, I mean Alex is Elizabeth’s servant and getting her a nice glass of blood, while Elizabeth is chillin’. They see that a man has his blood drained on the news, and witnesses saw children at the scene. I thought they meant the little blond children from the hotel; I forgot all about the kid who had the measles that Alex saved when she had her little buffet at the hospital. Who knew that a show could have multiple crews of child vampires?

-Elizabeth then gets a call from an investigator who says that he found her man, and she goes to a cheap hotel, where she finds Rudy, who escaped the hotel with Natasha. He greets her with a kiss, and Natasha won’t be happy about this.

-But quickly, because the Countess doesn’t like to go too long without a penis, we flash to her at the hotel, riding Donovan. He, of course, catches the feelings and wants her to only be with him and she’s like, cool, I’m getting married on Wednesday, but I should be good to go by Thursday. They’re making a list of people that they’re going to kill, but all we noticed was that Gaga has great boobs, which we can clearly see because FX made them slap some stars over the nipples. Really, what is the point? Just put the titty out there. We can seriously see the whole thing. Stop making us work for nudity.

-After the credits, a trio of people are waiting to check into the hotel, last name: Stormcock. They’re so obviously a porn shoot, but Iris has some zingers. She hits them with that “douchebag convention is over at the Hilton”, how she’ll bring ’em extra towels and shit. This ain’t her first rodeo. Also, we learn that the female porn star doesn’t like getting rimmed, which means a tongue in the ol’ poop chute. I had a completely different definition of rimming, so AHS be outchea educating the people. Iris goes on a speech about how she doesn’t mind porn when it’s done right, but she doesn’t want to enable it anymore since she was turned, and goes up to the room, where she slits Mr. Stormcock’s throat and stabs ol’ girl while the dude runs into the bathroom. Donovan finds her draining the girl of her blood and is impressed with her work, but she tells him that it isn’t safe for him at the hotel, and the Countess would find out they are working together with Ramona. Mmmmmhmmmm……Donovan is about to rat you out. That Countess vagina is a helluva thing. Before he leaves, he kills the dude in the bathroom; we don’t see it, but it’s easy to make that assumption. –

-Also, she told Donovan that Elizabeth confronted her about Bartholomew The Gerber Baby going missing, and she ratted Ramona out to Elizabeth, but didn’t say that she and Donovan were involved. Not your best work, Iris.

-Will is getting Lachlan ready for the wedding, and Lachlan still can’t believe that his dad is marrying a woman, and Will explains the idea of bisexuality to his son. You can see “The More You Know” flashing on the screen, but like a true child, Lachlan isn’t really caring about what his father is saying because kids ain’t shit. Out of nowhere comes Miss Evers, who warns Will against marrying the Countess and tells him that it is basically like committing suicide. Will tells her to get out and she leaves, but not before she says that she can’t wait to clean the shit out of his clothes after Elizabeth kills him. Yo, has Will ALWAYS been that orange? That’s some Jersey Shore spray tanning. Also, Miss Evers says that Elizabeth will bleed him dry and Will is like, I got this prenup and she’s like, uhhhh……that’s not what I mean at all.

-Elizabeth talks to a contractor to install a new door, to fill the hole that is hiding the hallway where Rudy and Natasha was. He tells her that it’ll be impossible to do it in 24 hours, and March pops up to play foreman, telling him what he needs to do and how to do it because he has had experience with these kinds of rooms. She slaps him when the contractor leaves and she is pissed that he locked up Rudy and Natasha, and never wants to see him again. He just wants his monthly dinners, and she wants the door done by the morning, so that appears to be the trade-off, because Countess vagina gets what she wants.

-Donovan heads to Ramona’s with a gift, and it’s the male porn star, so he didn’t kill him….not yet anyway. Ramona calls Donovan a pussy for getting back with the Countess, and he says it’s all a part of the plan as he is getting married and will be distracted. Meanwhile, Angela Bassett dominates the screen and they could be talking about ice cream for all I know.

-Then we get into the best part of the episode: Ramona tells the story of her parents, which is where she went after Elizabeth broke her heart. They were both sick, but her mother passed away and her father got worse with Alzheimer’s. Then the house got broken into and two robbers almost beat him to death, and Ramona fed him her blood to try and keep him alive, and hopefully slow down the Alzheimer’s. It kept him alive, but didn’t help the disease and Ramona had to kill more to feed him blood to keep him going until one night, she came home and he had killed two more intruders. He didn’t understand what was going on, so Ramona fed him Xanax, I believe, one of those drugs, and drowned him in a tub. Over the years, she has fumed over what Elizabeth has taken from her, while being mad that people are now watching her movies for free on the internet, and Ryan Murphy is dropping all kinds of messages in these streets this season. She wants revenge on Elizabeth, and plans to get it. This really could have been the plot of the entire season and I would have been fine. Give me all the Angela Bassett, please.

-Alex goes to a house where a pizza is being delivered, and the house is Max’s, the measles kid. He and his friends are chowing down on the pizza delivery guy, and Alex tells them that they’ll be found out soon because the pizza place will wonder where he is. The kids’ plan is basically to eat everyone in their way, and they’ve already eaten their parents, and now one of them wants to eat the kids that don’t want to eat people. Is this cannibalism or vampirism? Can it be both? Anyway, these kids are assholes and they leave Alex to talk to the cops. Kids make stupid plans, I think is the moral of this story.

-Donovan had told Ramona that he drugged Elizabeth to put her out, which of course was a lie, and she wakes up, and Donovan tases Ramona. He takes her to the dungeon to put her in the same contraption that housed the two blond girls from earlier in the season and Iris is confused about the plan, to which Donovan is like, “Bitch, there is no plans, I lied and am under the spell of Countess vagina”, or something similar to that. Donovan thinks he is the only one for Elizabeth, and Iris scoffs, and Ramona wakes up in time to second that scoff. Dogg…..how many times has she done this? Why do you think you’re special? Her vagina is the truth, bruh.

-Meanwhile, Elizabeth is back at the hotel with Rudy, and Finn Dogg is trying to sound Italian, but it is coming off super Russian. Like, Putin Russian. There is no Italian in this at all. Dude sounds like a villain from GoldenEye. Anyway, they’re about to kiss and Natasha struts in from a shopping trip as Elizabeth gave her a credit card, and we realize that it is Alexandra Daddario, whom you may remember from the first season of True Detective. I think Woody Harrelson was having sex with her? Anyway, she was naked and it set the internet on fire for like, 24 hours. Elizabeth invites her to a night at the hotel and Natasha is afraid of March being there, but Elizabeth tells her that he is dead and she’ll be fine….which means she’s obviously about to kill her so she can be with Rudy. Natasha knows something is up with Elizabeth and Rudy, while Elizabeth leaves and is seen by Donovan, who I keep forgetting, is a heroin addict and I’ve been giving him too much credit.

-Elizabeth and Will get married in the hotel lobby, and Elizabeth’s dress is pretty awful. Liz objects to the whole proceedings on the grounds that Elizabeth is a bitch, but no one seems to care because they just need a witness. Lachlan just wants to go upstairs after the wedding because kids don’t care, and Elizabeth wants to change into travelling clothes because they’re going to Paris. Before that, she walks up to Liz threateningly, but only gives him a bouquet and wishes that he finds true love….oh yeah, Liz will die before this is all over.

-At the bar, Will is joined by March for a congratulatory drink, and March says something about blended families, to which Will is like, yeah, she loves my son. March is like, ummmmm, nah bruh, you ain’t met her son yet? So he walks him up to Gerber Baby’s room and Will is obviously horrified, when Elizabeth walks in and knocks his ass out for saying all sorts of ignorant shit about her child in true motherly fashion.

-He wakes up in the same room as Ramona, who persuades him to let her out, but while he is running around and screaming for help, we realize that he is in the sealed chamber, so I guess Elizabeth got her door done. Will is like, we gon’ starve and Ramona is like, um, I won’t….and then proceeds to buffet his face and life. Elizabeth is watching this on a screen from her room, while Miss Evers laughs at Will because she’s petty and was right.

It isn’t that I hated this episode, or even how AHS does this every season, because this show is always entertaining and the fuckery is right around the corner. But at the end of every episode, I have an arm’s length of questions that need answering and I get frustrated because I know they won’t be. They made John a huge part of the story and he wasn’t even in this episode. Shoot, is anyone gon’ notice that he killed the black cop? Still no sign of Scarlett, the blond kids from the hotel and now they have to figure out what to do with the measles army. Did Alex have to talk to the cops to cover for them? What is gon’ happen to Lachlan? He’ll notice his father is missing at some point, right? Will he be the Darth Vader of the vampire children, or avenge his father’s death? Shit, what about Sally? And I assume Rapey Drillbit is done?

I hope I’m wrong about all this. But it’s American Horror Story and I’m probably not.

 

 

 

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E08 – The Ten Commandments Killer

American Horror Story: Hotel returned after a week off with “The Ten Commandments Killer”, which follows what I thought was the best episode of the season, “Flicker”. Of course, that was the wee I decided to take off, but the Countess’ backstory continues to be the best part of Hotel, and it should get more play, but it’s AHS, which means there are 14 other things they need to focus on. Let’s go….

-We open with Wren’s suicide from the last episode, and he flashes back to seeing her in a coffin, while people standing around the scene are like, should we call the cops on this mufucka? Seems pretty suspicious since he just kinda runs away. Anyway, he runs back to the hotel, where Liz is putting on makeup and seems to be over the Tristan death, and John runs up on Liz demanding answers. Liz is like, you better watch your tone, bruh, and says that Wren was full of lies. He grabs Liz, who I think would kick his ass, but Sally steps in and says she has the answers he wants. Liz also gives him a gun in case he finds what he is looking for. Here is a hint: if I need a gun, I don’t need to look for it. But I would have left the hotel a long time ago.

-They go to Room 64, and Sally tells John that this was March’s office, where he died on a February 25th, and it was 2:25 am when he died, so that explains that. Behind a wall, John finds a hidden room, where he finds a number of body parts, ranging from murders in 1926 to the recent killings that he was investigating. Through a series a quick flashbacks, it is revealed that, viola, John is the Ten Commandments Killer, just like I said like four episodes ago. That was some bootleg Usual Suspects shit. Why else would he have been invited to the serial-killer party?

-John’s partner, whose name is Hahn apparently, is looking over Wren’s corpse and asks another cop to go and check on John’s family; when that cop leaves, John shows up out of nowhere and tries to confess that he is the Killer. He says that he first went to the hotel in 2010, where he met the likes of Liz, Sally and Donovan and he was still drinking at the time. They interrupt the monthly dinner of March and the Countess, and March was PISSED because he doesn’t get much time with her. He starts yelling, I don’t know what he is even saying and combined with the 1920s accent, I’m in tears. Evan Peters is just destroying this season. Good for him. Anyway, March sees something in John and kicks everyone out, even the Countess.

-These mufuckas talked and drank absinthe for two days, which I’m not sure is even possible. John passes out and talks to Elizabeth about bringing John into the fold, and she’s like, aight cool, I’ll kidnap his son and we’ll get this poppin’. Then John wakes up in a car outside of his house, not knowing what is going on, and walks in his house, where Alex is like, dogg, I don’t care where you’ve been. Holden cares and runs up on John, who says he’ll take him to the carnival, which is where he gets jacked by Elizabeth. Things are moving quickly in this episode, and they’re saying a lot…..but not saying a lot, you know?

-John continues telling Hahn his story of a double life, which takes place at the hotel as well as at home, where they’re still tryna find Holden. March thinks that he should get justice for his son, and shows him his accountant’s head, a trophy from someone who tried to wrong him. John returns to the hotel on Holden’s tenth birthday in 2015 and March shows him pictures of a man, Martin Gamboa, who was allegedly molesting a 10-year-old at the hotel, trying to get John to go after him. John offers to meet Gamboa via Craigslist, where he offered to buy his Oscar from him, and after showing Gamboa the pictures, he beats him to death with the Oscar. Then he tries to hang himself and pass over to the ghost world, like Sally, but March reminds Sally of their deal: he will protect her from the Addiction Demon, if he keeps bringing people to him. Hahn does confirm that Sally is indeed a person that killed herself at the hotel, but he is still skeptical of the story itself. A lot of us are, Hahn.

-John barely remembers any of this happening, but Sally tells him that the hotel suppresses his memories, and March tells him that he needs to finish the legacy of the original Ten Commandments Killer. I’m not sure if it’s Wes Bentley or the writing, or something, but something just isn’t jiving well with all this. I’m happy I was right about John being the Killer, but the way that they got here, I don’t know if it’s too complex or too easy.

-Whatever Krampus is, it looks like it sucks, b.

-So, John goes about assigning himself to the Ten Commandments Killer case, which he uses to visit crime scenes and cover up evidence. While he is in bed with Sally, John realizes that Alex has been having an affair with Hahn, who he then stabs repeatedly and Hahn says that he doesn’t deserve Alex. Shoot, he might be right, and Alex ain’t shit. He says to Hahn that he shouldn’t covet his neighbor’s wife, because commandments. He goes back to the hotel, where Iris is happy because she never knew which John she was getting from visit to visit. She tries to get him to never come back, but John is like, NOAP, and wants to go see March in Room 64. He also has a bloody paper bag….which apparently has Hahn’s penis and testicles in it to add to the Ten Commandments Killer trophies.

I have so many problems with this episode and John’s story that I don’t know where to start. Do we know who the OG Ten Commandments Killer is? Why didn’t he just stay away from the hotel in the first place?  If he drank absinthe for two days with March, why did he pass out like a little bitch during the serial-killer party? How is he gon’ be mad at Alex for sleeping with Hahn when he was sleeping with a fucking ghost Sally? When is Wren gon’ come back? Do we even know where Alex and Holden are? AND WHERE THE FUCK IS SCARLETT? As I said, I don’t know what it is, but they’re spending a ton of time on the least interesting character of the season and I don’t know who is at fault for it, but I couldn’t care less about John Lowe or anything he is going through.

That’s not even counting the stuff with Ramona, and the next two episodes have the word “revenge” in the title, so she’ll be back at some point. Don’t forget about Bartholomew the Gerber baby, Will Drake and his son are still around somewhere, and Donovan made a brief appearance here, but I assume he is still aligned with Ramona?

Sigh. This is where it all starts to go downhill for Hotel. They better start wrapping up these loose ends soon before there is another mess of a finale. My expectations are mad low for AHS right now

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E05 – Room Service

American Horror Story has always had a problem with starting up too many storylines, because it all feels rushed when they’re tryna wrap it up. Hotel is starting to fall to the same problem, and a couple more get added in “Room Service”, which was all over the damn place. Let’s go…

-We open with Alex wandering through the hospital, looking like someone who, well, just turned into a vampire. She checks her temperature, which is at a solid 75.5 F, which isn’t normal….well, it is if you’re a vampire. She heads into the room of the little boy who has the measles, but now he has a staph infection and is on the verge of dying. All Alex wants is a damn meal, and she looks at the kid and his mom like they’re lunch, but she tells the mother that she’ll keep trying. If I were the mother, I’d be like, ummmmm…..you sure you’re OK? Because you kinda look like actual death.

-Next thing you know, Alex is in a room, going to town on bags of blood and one of our viewing party called the hospital, “a McDonalds for vampires”, which was pretty good. Sucks for everyone that needed blood transplants, but these things happen. Then she comes up with a plan: Alex takes her blood and injects it into the kid’s (Max is his name) IV, and he starts to have a seizure before opening his eyes…..and credits. Great. Inject the kid with vampire blood. Nothing could go wrong…….right?

-Donovan shows up at Ramona’s house with a strung-out Iris, who if you remember, was also turned by her son. Ramona isn’t happy about him showing up with her, but Donovan has a plan: Iris will be the mole on the inside at the hotel, Ramona is a little hesitant, but eventually agrees, and that’s fine. But the star of this scene? The posters on Ramona’s wall of her movies, Slaughter Sister and Bride Of Blackenstein. Slaughter Sister isn’t a real movie (but I REALLY want it to happen, someone send that shit to Tarantino) and neither is Bride Of Blackenstein, but Blackenstein is an actual movie that I saw a long time ago. I really recommend you watch it. It’s a hot piece of shit, dogg. Like, hot steaming garbage in the middle of the summer. But it’s worth it for the hilarity.

-Alex returns to Max’s room and he is gone, and she’s like, oh shit, but he brought back by a nurse and his mother, and he looks as good as new. Everyone is shocked by his quick recovery and they start the paperwork for his release, but at the end of the scene, his mom looks at Alex like, something ain’t right with this woman. But she’s not looking a gifthorse in the mouth because her son is okay. I can respect that.

-Iris shows up at the hotel, looking like stir-fried shit, and Liz knows what is good right away. He takes her to the bar and gives her a blood/Triple Sec martini to take the edge off, but he reminds Iris that she has to start feeding regularly to keep this under control. She starts going on about how invisible women are as they get older, and I really don’t know what she is talking about because AHS has never been a show with great writing, but Kathy Bates be actin’, bruh.

-Max is dressed like a pirate, so I assume it is still Halloween in these streets, but before he catches the school bus, he has a light breakfast: his mom. So does that mean she is a vampire now, too? Anyway, he goes to school and there is a party, and he takes his little friend into a closet to explain to her that he had the measles. But they go in to kiss, and it’s a little uncomfortable because, well, these mufuckas look like they’re in elementary school. I have no qualms with him biting her lip so he can taste her blood, but it’s all a little weird; it’s very sexualized for young children. You have to keep moving your moral goalposts for AHS, because they’re always gon’ do something to shock you. Anyway, the teacher wanders into the closet and is like, the fuck y’all doing, and Max slices her shit up. Meanwhile, the rest of the class gets sick because Max has been tainting their food, and then a principal or something walks in and he gets fucked up, too. The SWAT team is called into the school and the kids escape, but Max concocts a story about getting attacked and everyone sticks to it. It’s a very strange scene all around, and now I’m like, am I supposed to care about the child-vampire army? Is this another thing? Isn’t there enough going on already?

-Meanwhile, John is telling his boss what happened to him with the serial-killer party and all that, and dude is looking at him like he is absolutely insane. He knows it sounds crazy, but he stakes his reputation on it and his boss is like, your reputation ain’t shit, bruh. He fires John, who hands in his gun, and I don’t care. Honestly, if they got rid of John and started the child-vampire thing, I’d be okay with that.

-Iris is at the hotel, tryna get back to life, when in walk a man and a woman looking for a room. The man is named Justin and played by Darren Criss, who I learned was on Glee, so that makes sense with the whole Ryan Murphy thing. He and his lady are apparently in the social-media business and they want a room because Will Drake owns the hotel, and their job is basically to be a pair of hipster assholes, which they play quite well. They’re very demanding and driving Iris crazy, but meanwhile, she’s trying to put Elizabeth and Tristan off her scent as they walk through the lobby, looking all fancy, and they notice that Iris is nervous. Tristan is actually smelling her and they know something is up, but Iris chalks it up to Halloween nervousness, which, sure, I guess that could be a thing. I don’t how you get nervous about anything after working in this hotel, but who am I to ask questions? Even Liz is looking like, they gotta know, b.

-Then Justin calls downstairs to try and get room service, and he wants some grilled romaine lettuce and other bullshit that this place obviously wouldn’t have, so he orders Iris to call and get it delivered. Didn’t take long, but I can’t wait until these mufuckas get their faces eaten. Oh, and they wanted pate, so Liz puts some cat food on a silver platter because fuck them, that’s why. Anyway, Liz and Iris start talking and Iris says something about not being homophobic, to which Liz states that he’s not gay and Iris is confused…..so we get Liz’s backstory FINALLY.

-Liz was a married man from Topeka, and he only married this woman because of her dress size. He would go away on business trips and when his colleagues would go out to strip clubs, he would stay in his room and dress like a woman. He got champagne ordered to his room and someone leaves it outside, but we never see who it is and I’m interested to see who it was. But he turns around and Elizabeth is behind him, telling him that his blood smells like a woman. He starts to cry and says that he is ugly, so Elizabeth offers him a life as a goddess and does his makeup for him so they can go out on the town. He’s not ready for all that yet, so Elizabeth tells him to go get some ice and of course, he runs into his coworkers, who start calling him a fag and wondering if they got AIDS from sharing a Sprite because yo, it was the 80s and mufuckas didn’t know any better. Actually, mufuckas still don’t know any better, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation. Anyway, Elizabeth pops up and slices their throats, and Liz Taylor, as he is now know, stays at the hotel. He sent his family money until his kids turned 18. So…..his wife never came looking for him ever again? I have a feeling we’ll see her by the end of Hotel and oh yeah, Denis O’Hare is getting nominated for something for this sequence. Remember where you heard it first.

-He also tells Iris that she should teach the hipsters a lesson, and she takes the cat food and a bottle of wine upstairs. They continue to complain, although they say that the “pate” is decent, and they bitch and they bitch, until Iris snaps and stabs ol’ girl in the neck with a corkscrew, and then gets Justin with a knife, all the while yelling about how they don’t know anything outside of their sheltered lives. Then she drinks their blood because, well, why not? Can’t let that shit go to waste. They got what was coming to them.

-John wakes up in bed with Sally, and he doesn’t remember any of it, so Sally tells him what happened and he was like, nah, you gotta go, so of course, she flips because women aren’t fans of that. But while we get a flashback of the sex, we see Rapey McDrillbit behind him for a flash of a second and he’s like, WHOA…..but goes back to the sex, because SEX. Anyway, she says some shit about this being real and it’s destiny that they should be together. He’s a killer, dogg. He has to be. She knows that shit when she sees it.

-Iris feels better as she and Liz push the dead hipsters down the hall and then they toss them down the chute where the bodies go. They also drink the wine that they didn’t finish. Again, can’t let shit go to waste.

-Elizabeth tells Holden to give Alex a kiss, and that it is past his bedtime, and Alex is like, huh? She wants to spend more time with him, so Elizabeth has a special gift for them: a two-person coffin where they can do whatever it is that vampires do in coffins. Alex rightly asks about what about seeing John in the hotel, but that shit is gone when she sees the coffin. They’ll figure that shit out later, I guess.

So, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy this episode of Hotel, but it’s just…..man, there is a lot of shit going on right now. Now we have the child-vampire army, to go with John’s relationship with Sally, his wife and son are vampires, we didn’t even see or hear about Scarlett in this episode, Ramona’s revenge plot with Donovan and Iris, who is now enjoying that vampire life, and they barely touched on that. Oh, and the Ten Commandments Killer thing. Oh, and Will Drake. And March. And will we see the serial-killer crew again? Don’t do this to yourself, American Horror Story. In a series known for a lack of focus, this might be the most unfocused joint yet. I’ll still watch, tho because if nothing else, it’s entertaining.

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E4 – Devil’s Night

What would American Horror Story be without their annual Halloween madness? Hotel continues the trend with “Devil’s Night”, which is straightforward and to the point. But before we go further, let’s rank the past four Halloween AHS joints

1. Asylum –  Asylum was still ascending when they hit “Nor’Easter”, which was the third episode of the season. Lily Rabe starts to become her crazed-nun character, while Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters run into some shit in the woods and Chloe Sevigny gets her legs cut off. I REALLY need to re-watch Asylum. Those last 4-5 episodes were trash, tho.

2.  Murder House – A two-part episode called “Halloween”, because fuck tryna think of a name.        A dead doctor tries to sew animal parts on his dismembered child, while “pretty girl” Jamie          Brewer gets hit by a car and dies. Dylan McDermott’s side piece (Kate Mara) comes back to          life, and Jessica Lange reveals that Evan Peters was really her dead son, to the surprise of            Taissa Farmiga. It’s here where you were like, “Oh. So this is what AHS is all about. Fuckery.”

3. Freak Show – The Edward Mordrake joints, dude who killed people because a face on the back     of his head told him to. But really, the best parts were the backstories for Kathy Bates and           Twisty The Clown.

4.  Coven – Another two-parter, Evan Peters kills his molestful mother, we get Gaby Sidibe vs. the     Minotaur, Lily Rabe shows up to bring Frances Conroy back to life, the witches vs. voodoo war     kicks off, there is a zombie party and Sarah Paulson goes blind. Minotaurs are in last place.         Welcome to American Horror Story.

Let’s go………..

-We open with a dude bursting through the front door of the Hotel Cortez, and we learn that it is Richard Ramirez, who has a standing invitation for Devil’s Night, and he wishes that Charlie could join them…..yep, Charles Manson, who is somehow still alive. I learned, via our weekly viewing crew, that Richard Ramirez was a serial killer known as the Night Stalker, and he did his work in Los Angeles and San Francisco. If nothing else, Ryan Murphy and crew love to take historical shit and build their series around it. Liz takes him to his room, and he has a gift waiting for him: it is a sleeping couple, who he, of course, brutally kills. Well, he kills the man, but the woman gets away and runs into James March, and she thought he was gon’ save her. NOAP. So March is hosting serial-killer parties on Halloween. Sounds about right.

-John gets a call from Scarlett, who is at her grandmother’s and she doesn’t really wanna go trick-or-treating, which is fair. John is like, yeah, that’s cool, I should probably go though because there is blood pouring from the ceiling. Well, he doesn’t tell her that, but there is blood pouring from the ceiling, all over his diagrams of the Ten Commandments Killer, who really isn’t even a storyline, but we came up with some theories about that, which I’ll get to at the end.

-John goes upstairs and knocks on a door to a room, where Miss Evers is tryna get out stains, because that is what she does….however, this stain keeps reappearing, which makes the job pretty damn difficult. She lets John in and proceeds to go into her backstory, which also involves her losing her child, Albert, who I bet we’ll see again at some point. He was literally right behind her when he got snatched up by some perv and taken to a farm, where he is presumably killed. She tells him all this, and John is like, so someone else gets it, and she gets all worked up about the night’s party before leaving. But John, being a good cop, doesn’t ask her about the blood, which he even sees in the bathroom, and he’s just like, well, chalk it up to the game. Our viewing party isn’t feeling John. He’s kinda the worst. Just MEH.

-Alex has taken Holden home and she takes his temperature, which is at 75, but nah, he’s not cold. The dog is frightened, so Alex puts it in the bathroom and then Holden says he is thirsty, so she goes into the kitchen to pour them some juice. She starts to cry in the kitchen, but shit only gets worse when she returns to the living room, and as soon as I saw the dog, I was like, Holden’s gon’ eat that mufucka. Guess what? Holden ATE that mufucka and has the nerve to say he isn’t feeling well. Between this and Fear The Walking Dead, it hasn’t been a good TV year for dogs. He also says that he wants his other mommy, which is a kick in the junk for Alex.

-John does a little bit of research to find that the murders that Miss Evers were talking about are the Wineville murders, which happened 85 years ago and they had to change the name of the town. YOOOOOO……85 YEARS, DOGG. WHY ARE YOU STILL STAYING THERE? This also happened in real life. There is a lot of background research this season.

-Alex takes Holden back to the hotel, where he decides that he needs to nap in his coffin, and Alex is like, the fuck is going on? There, she runs into Elizabeth, looking elgantly ghoulish as Lady Gaga tends to do in real life anyway. Elizabeth says she saves children from neglect and Alex says that Holden wasn’t neglected, but Elizabeth might have been talking about John, who went to answer Alex’s call and she probably kept him on the line over some bullshit, which is when Elizabeth snatched him up. Elizabeth explains that Holden has a virus and if Alex has it, she can spend eternity with Holden, and then Alex pulls out a gun, but Elizabeth looks at her like she ain’t shook. Then Tristan walks in and punches the absolute shit outta Alex, who gets up like she has taken a punch before, and Elizabeth tells him to let her go, and she leaves. Tristan then wonders if Elizabeth is banging Alex, too. Oh, that’s coming, my friend.

-John goes to the bar and is like, you know what, give me a double martini, dammit,. Of course, on the night John decides to start drinking again, in walks Aileen Wournos, played by Lily Rabe, and if you don’t know, I fucking love her. She was the best part of Asylum as Sister Mary Eunice, and of course, as Misty the Stevie Nicks impersonator in Coven. Anyway, you might know Aileen Wournos from Monster, which earned Charlize Theron an Oscar for Best Actreess, and she is probably the best-known female serial killer in history. They did some good makeup work to make this happen, and Lily Rabe is fucking awesome; that hair flip is everything. Anyway, John thinks it’s a costume, while Liz is lookin’ at all this like, you dumb mufucka, and he takes Aileen up to his room. He gets knocked out and tied to a chair, but he manages to punch and subdue her, and I don’t know how it happened because he’s not very bright. He handcuffs her in the bathroom and looks at her license, which says her name, and heads down to the lobby, where he reads the names of the killers in the guest book. Liz even tells him what’s going on, and he thinks that he is gon’ arrest Aileen, but Liz is like, nah, she won’t be there. She isn’t, and he finds a bag with a suit in it on his bed as he has been invited to the party by March himself. Hmmmmmmmmm…….

-He gets to Room 78 for the party, where he finds Aileen, who apologizes and wants to sit with him, but March is a stickler and wants everyone to sit where he has them. Introductions are made, and we have Aileen, of course. There is the Zodiac Killer, who has a mask on and Richard razzes him for wearing it. John Wayne Gacy is there, played by John Carroll Lynch, who played Twisty in Freak Show, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer and Ramirez are played by actors outside of the AHS franchise, but they both do excellent jobs in their short time on screen. They were all brought together by March, who gave them tips on how to kill, but they usually went astray and that is how they got caught. Then they drink absinthe, but it only affects Lowe, because well, he is human, and he gets handcuffed to a chair. At some point, he pointed to his gun, and we all laughed. Silly mufucka, you.

-Miss Evers serves dinner and Richard starts dancing with Aileen, and it’s trippy as hell, but it works. Dahmer starts doing work on a drugged out dude because that was his thing in real life, and John goes to shoot him, but yo……they’re fuckin’ ghosts, b. Meanwhile, Dahmer has perked up after they brought him out a salad, and he obviously doesn’t eat that shit, and March pats him on the head. Man, I can’t stress how good Evan Peters is this season. By far his best performance in AHS and it isn’t even close.

-While this is going on, Sally is outside with a guy she just met, and he wants to party, so she takes him and gets him all jacked on the heroin. Little does he know, he is dessert for the killer party, in return for March letting Sally live here for another year. Also, Dahmer has drilled a hole into his victim’s head and put acid in there to make him, like a zombie and I don’t know, is this so he tastes better later? Dahmer was about that cannibal life, and I read more about him when I was younger than I care to admit. Serial killers fascinate me. I’m always curious as to what makes a mufucka just SNAP. Anyway, Miss Evers brings out all of the knives and the killers pounce on the heroin man, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. John is freaking out, but Sally appears and convinces him it was all a hallucination because of the absinthe. She takes him away so March and ’em can finish what they’re doing, and March gives a look like he doesn’t trust John at all, which he probably shouldn’t.

-We go to Elizabeth, getting all prettied up, and then she walks int a bedroom with Alex, who has apparently decided to become a vampire. They kiss, and then Elizabeth runs her nail down her breast, and Alex takes her first drink, then re-opens her eyes. So is she a vampire now? What happened between pulling a gun out and now? I want to see her “pros and cons” list. Also, that is hopefully the last time we see Alex in a beret. Our viewing crew was quite happy to see it go, one in particular.

Ehhhhh, I’d probably put this above the Coven Halloween episode, and maybe above Freak Show, too. All those serial killers, man, that shit was like a murderers’ row, literally. So, the John theory is this: he is actually the Ten Commandments Killer, and he has done all this shit, but he blacks out for whatever reason, possibly booze, and he just hasn’t realized it yet. Why else would he be at that party? Either that, or he is going to be in training. And now, what about Scarlett? Her mother and brother are vampires, her father is either gon’ be a vampire or a serial killer, and they’re all staying at this creepy hotel? Just gon’ leave her with Grandma? I guess.

Next week, I assume we get back to the Ramona Royale revenge plot with Donovan and Iris, but fuck, it’s American Horror Story. They’ll probably had three more storylines, because American Horror Story.

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E03 – Mommy

The thing about American Horror Story is that you don’t usually know who all the major players are, and what the main storyline will be, until a few episodes into the season. The third episode of Hotel, “Mommy”, sheds a little light on John’s wife Alex, but also on the Donovan/Iris relationship and of course, we get introduced to a new character played by an old (not, like, age….she won’t track me down, dammit) favorite. Let’s go……..

-We open with Tristan, who seems like he has settled into this vampire thing, and he’s looking for March, his new homeboy. He has studied up on March, who pops up and isn’t impressed about all his information being out in these Google streets. And then Tristan tries to hit him with a high-five, and March looks at him like he’s nuts, and says, “GOOD”. You really have to see it to get the full effect. I had to hit pause, I was laughing so hard. March tells Tristan that the hotel has a bunch of hidden rooms, including the “Black Closet”, which is a dark room with a spike in it that impales a mufucka as soon as they run into the place. I’d be fine if March was the focus of the storyline and not the vampires, and maybe he will be eventually. I hope so.

-Will Drake is with Claudia and his son, taking a tour of the place when they run into Tristan. I now think that Will Drake is a descendant of Edward Mordrake from Freak Show, if they’re gon’ continue to tie seasons together. He tells Tristan that he has to leave the hotel, but he notices that the cut on his face is gone, the one Tristan made upon his retirement from the modelling business. Plans are made to tear the floor out, and Miss Evers is pressed about where she’ll clean the linens. On the low, she might be my favorite so far. She just wants a clean hotel, bruh. But Tristan said he got it, so someone gotta die.

-The kid who has the measles has gotten worse, which leads Alex to go back into her memories on being a mother. Also, I think that kid will end up at the hotel. She didn’t have the best childhood, but everything changed when Holden was born, and she admits to not even loving Scarlett that way. I was confused when she said that it was like a drug, but she kept smelling him, which I’ve heard of before. She didn’t love John as much, so when he lost Holden, whatever love she had evaporated and she gave up hope of ever finding him. She also went to a therapist and attempted to commit suicide in a tub, but John found her. The family has their own group meeting with a therapist and Alex accuses Scarlett of trying to hurt them and she’s like, dude, for real, I SEEN IT. If only John would pipe up and tell mufuckas that he saw it, but that’ll come later. Alex perks up a little when Scarlett says that he smelled like lavender, so that must have been the addictive smell.

-Claudia is in her room, tryna talk on the phone when the service cuts out, but she doesn’t think anything of it. Then she goes in the bathroom, looks in the mirror and sees a flash of Rapey McDrillbit, so what does she do? Lies on the bed and tries to go to sleep. That doesn’t work out for as Gabriel pops up from the mattress, strangles her and then stabs her to death. I’m not going anywhere I can’t use my phone, bruh. That’s a hint that something isn’t right.

-John and Malik Yoba (his name is Adam, fine, I’ll use that) are investigating a new set of murders where two writers for a gossip site have had their tongues nailed to their desks, which in biblical terms, is “Thou shall not bear false witness”. As he returns to the hotel, Gabriel pops up outta nowhere, covered in blood, and asks John to help him. Like, out of thin air. Nah, fuck yo help. I don’t care that I am a cop.

-Tristan gets into Will’s room and apologizes for the whole ordeal at the fashion show and the face-cutting thing, and says that he is clean and sober. Dogg, you’ve been hangin’ with Elizabeth, no way in shit you’re sober. Will is tryna go over the blueprints for the hotel, but Tristan is tryna eat and he seduces him to the point that he goes to bite his neck, and up pops Elizabeth with the NOAP throat-slash, telling Tristan not to do it. Tristan is like, awwwww man, and Will is like, the fuck just happened?

-John takes Gabriel to the hospital, and Gabriel basically blames everything on Sally before overdosing, then he goes to Claudia’s room, but he only finds Miss Evers,and I mean….come on, bruh. How bad of a cop are you? All of these signs, shit, Iris told you all about the place, and nothing? Then, oh AND THEN, she drops a line about the Ten Commandments and then when John handcuff and takes her to the elevator, she tries to seduce him, the lights keep flickering on and off, Rapey keeps popping up and then they both disappear. BRUH. GET THE FUCK OUT, B.

-Iris tells Donovan that she has been looking up places to live, but he’s like, nah, that ain’t happening and proceeds to tear into her, saying that everything was her fault and he hates her and he may have wished death upon her as well; he said a lot of hateful shit in there. We also learn that there was a bad breakup between Iris and Donovan’s father, and it seems like she was, well, let’s just say overbearing. Iris starts to cry, and at least once per season, you remember that, oh shit, this is Kathy fuckin’ Bates actin’ on y’all punk asses. She is good at what she does.

-Donovan feeds on a junkie to get both of his fixes at the same damn time, and then he finds someone who is having car trouble, so he’s like, cool, another meal. But then he gets tasered and guess who it is? MS BASSETT BACK! She throws him in the trunk and drives off, and I get to partyin’. I love Angela Bassett. Just everything about her; she is elegant, but reeks of “I’ll fuck your whole life up if you mess with me”.

-Alex finds John at the hotel, because why not bring your whole fucking family there. She wants him to have a drink and he’s like, nah, I’m good. She’s like, oh, you should have one because here are these divorce papers, bruh. She’s done with it all, for Scarlett’s sake, and he gets his Keith Sweat on to beg her, but she seems set in her decision. Then he drops that he is seeing weird shit and is sobbing, which of course, makes her stay. Tears can change a whole ball game, yo.

-Then it is Elizabeth’s turn to put the moves on Will Drake as she rolls into his room and he’s like, you know I’m gay, right? Elizabeth can’t be bothered with that, though….she wants that neck and says something about him dying. But even though he is gay, he tries to get it poppin’ with her before Tristan walks in and is like, yo, you JUST stopped me from doing the EXACT SAME THING. But Elizabeth’s motive is money: she got trapped in the Bernie Madoff scandal, which is, to make a long story short, a Ponzi scheme that got him convicted in sent to jail in 2009. Elizabeth lost almost all of her money and wants to get it back, which means getting Will to marry her, so she can take his money. Will Drake is in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s a bitch to get your money taken and then killed, but then he would turn into a vampire? I guess we’ll see.

-Alex takes John to his room and finds his work on the Ten Commandments Killer, but somehow he ends up getting her back into bed, where he almost gets it in before suggesting that they have another baby and Alex is like, oh for fuck sakes. He killed that mood with the quickness and she hits him with those papers again. Cold world, dogg.

-Then she leaves the room, and runs into a bloody Claudia, who insults her clothing choices, and then she sees Holden, who calls her “Mommy”. I’m just happy for Scarlett that mufuckas might not think she is crazy anymore. But Holden is the key to John getting her back, and I don’t know how feasible that is because, well, he’s a vampire. Maybe a vampire family is in order?

-Sally gets a needle ready to give to Iris, who wants to die after what Donovan said to her, and Sally is like, I’ll do this, but dogg, you gotta leave me alone in these halls. Iris says yes, but she’ll go back on that shit in a second.

-To get rid of the heroin, Donovan is receiving dialysis from Ms. Bassett, whose name is Ramona Royale, and she explains that she was a Blaxploitation actress from the 70s; think Pam Grier (and if you don’t know who she is, for the love of God, Google her). She wanted more roles in that era, but of course, CISM. But then she meets Elizabeth and is turned into a vampire as well, and she ends up turning a rapper named Prophet Moses, which is just about the worst rap name you could ever think of. Ryan Murphy, just stay away from rap music, let Empire handle that, bruh. Anyway, Elizabeth got mad and ate all of the rapper’s entourage and then blew his head clean off, so Ramona wants revenge and thought she could use Donovan to get it, but he tells her that Elizabeth cut him off. She lets him go, but it is in the cards: Ramona and Donovan vs. Elizabeth and Tristan. Sure, I’m in for that.

-Also, this is extremely shallow, but thumbs up to Gaga and Ms. Bassett kissing. Because I’m 12 and I don’t care.

-And yes, I’ll always call her Ms. Bassett.

-Donovan goes back to the hotel and runs into Liz, who proceeds to give him shit for how he treated Iris because no matter what she did, she is his mother and no one will love him like she does, even though she did some messed-up things to try and keep him safe. Donovan realizes that he is right and goes to see her, but Sally had to put a bag over her head because apparently, Iris has a high tolerance for heroin and won’t die. Donovan slits his wrist and holds it to Iris to try and bring her back and Sally is like, well, ain’t that some poetic-justice ass shit.

I’m quite surprised on what they did with Alex’s character, because I was fully ready to not care about her, but I’m interested to see what she does now that she knows Holden is actually, well, not alive, but he is a thing. Now Donovan is dealing with Iris, then you have the vampire battle royal that is about to pop off, then March is hangin’ out with Miss Evers, Rapey McDrillbit, the Ten Commandments Killer, Scarlett…..and I bet there will be more shit added to the mix next week. If nothing else, you can’t ever say that American Horror Story is boring.

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E02 – Chutes And Ladders

After reminding you what life they’re about in the Season 5 premiere for American Horror Story, Hotel doesn’t take its foot off the gas with “Chutes And Ladders”, with an emphasis on “chutes” and the introduction of some old favorites. Well, one old favorite and one that might actually be good this season. Maybe. Let’s go…….

-We open with Sally smoking and sewing the hotel’s latest victim, Gabriel, into a mattress. I knew I recognized him from somewhere, but Gabriel is played by Max Greenfield, who plays Schmidt on New Girl, which I’m a big fan of and that’s quite the change in scenery and mood for an actor. He wakes up and tries to guilt her about lying, while she responds that he shouldn’t have tried to cheat death. There has to be more to Sally’s story and I’m ready for it. But then she hears someone yelling for help…..

-It’s Agnetha, who is getting buffeted by two of the children feeding on her wrists and when Sally goes to complain, Iris is like, it’s fine, she’ll stop eventually. She does, but then the kids say she tastes gross and Iris is like, welp, she’s dead now. So Liz, the housekeeper (Miss Evers) and Iris start the elimination process, I’ll call it, which is Miss Evers tryna clean the sheets and then dumping the body into a laundry chute, where she joins her dead friend and the thing that popped out of their mattress. Miss Evers, her story is gon’ be something else, as well. So pressed to clean the damn sheets.

-The kids are chillin’, watching TV like normal vampire children, and they’re getting blood taken, which Iris uses to fill a decanter to give to Elizabeth, and she asks about Donovan, to which Elizabeth slams the door in her face. Of course she feeds on the blood of children. Shit looks like red Kool-Aid. Anyway, she wants to go out to an art show and hunt for new blood, while he wants to stay in and watch House Of Cards. Does he not know that the third season is terrible? I might actually prefer to drink blood than watch that shit again. And shoutout to that red dress Elizabeth is wearing. That has “I’ll suck your blood written all over it”.

-Side note: I just realized I never finished recapping House Of Cards and I never will because that shit was TURRIBLE, KENNY)

-Alex, John’s wife, is at work, taking blood from a child and she tells his mother that he has the measles because she didn’t have him vaccinated. Nice way to slip that in there, I guess. It’s important, but I’m not here for American Horror Story to teach me about some shit. Leave that shit for the interviews.

-John wakes up in Room 64 at Hotel Cortez, of course at 2:25 in what looks to be the morning, and Miss Evers walks in his room talkin’ about some turndown service. If you don’t get the entire fuck outta my room at this time of night, ma’am. If you’re comin’ in here that late, you better be ready to get it. Then a couple of weird things happen very quickly. He closes his eyes and sees what Wikia calls the Addiction Demon, which is what we call Rapey McDrillbit, so that wakes him up. Then he goes to the bathroom to wash his face, but he hears something in the shower and it looks to be two dead people having sex and they invite him in for a threesome before he wakes up again. How in the hell are you going back to sleep? WHY ARE YOU STILL IN THE HOTEL? Then of course, he sees Holden again and chases him, but to no avail, but Sally, Liz and a bar just kinda pops up out of nowhere. When this dude gets raped, I won’t be upset. You brought in on yourself, bruh.

-Over a ginger ale while Sally drinks Johnnie Walker straight from the bottle, we learn that John used to be an alcoholic. On the day of his last drink, he was investigating a case where a man was mistakenly accused of killing his wife and children, but he was actually trying to keep them warm and poisoned them with carbon monoxide by accident, so he killed himself. Then he went on vacation because of stress, and that’s when he lost Holden; now he stays sober because he doesn’t want to get lost again. This dude is so tortured….but I don’t buy it yet. Certainly not enough to believe he’s just gon’ chill in this hotel. But it’s American Horror Story and I’ll get over it by next week.

-John’s partner (Malik Yoba, I don’t know if he has a name) tells him that the Bel Air couple, those of the super-glued genitals, had texts go to their phone that made it seem like they were from each other, much like the text from Alex’s phone that sent John and Scarlett to that house. But John already knew this; the killer told him that, I think. Then he gets a package from what he thinks is a bomb, but it turns out to be an Oscar, which you should remember from last week, but you’ll be reminded of where it was from later on.

-Will Drake, your man tryna buy the hotel, is apparently setting up for a fashion show where we see Liz doing the “Vogue” and throwing all sorts of shade at Claudia Bankson, who is played by Naomi Campbell, who like Malik Yoba, was on Empire. This joint is starting to be like The Walking Dead and The Wire. She says she is spending the week at the hotel, so now the countdown is on to her death, and she sees John and gives him those eyes, while he is tryna find Scarlett, who is with a cop. He is tryna take her to his room, but Will and Claudia won’t let him go and pair her off with Lachlan, Will’s son who saw Rapey McDrillbit. While this is going on, Sally is being denied entrance to the show because, I mean, LOOK AT HER, and she makes a scene. But before she leaves, she gives Scarlett a creepy look and John better keep her away from his daughter. Scarlett will have a needle in her arm by age ten. Shoot, she might anyway, but I digress.

-The fashion show is starting and Elizabeth makes a grand entrance with Donovan, and the models start to come out while Donovan inquires about John and Elizabeth kinda fawns over him. Claudia says to John that “they need some excitement and they just might get”, and just then, we get introduced to Tristan, who is played by Finn Wittrock, crushing up some sort of pill of snort. Those were some big-ass pills, b. Anyway, we all know Finn Dogg, who stole the show as Dandy in Freak Show, and he is a fucking MESS. On his little walk, he drinks someone else’s champagne and throws that shit on the ground, sneers at a buncha mufuckas, kisses someone’s woman and then slaps her dude in the face and gets pushed to the ground. He goes to pick up some glass to stab dude with, but he looks at Elizabeth in the eyes and she can smell his rage, while Donovan is like, are you fuckin’ serious? In the back, Will tries to chastise Tristan for his actions, but Tristan cuts his own face to signify the end of his modelling career. So yeah, Finn Dogg back!

-Lachlan is taking Scarlett to where the children are sleeping in their caskets, and she recognizes Holden, who opens his eyes. This might be the most intriguing storyline of Hotel right now. After the commercial break, Scarlett is watching a home video on a laptop to confirm that was her brother.

-Meanwhile, Tristan is raging around the hotel, tryna find some coke, which he can smell in Elizabeth’s room and well, he has a point. Like I said in the Fear The Walking Dead recaps, junkies be knowin’, bruh. Donovan interrupts him and when Tristan starts being an asshole, he almost gets his shit eaten, but Elizabeth stops him. Tristan peaces out, but doesn’t seem to be bothered and gets in the elevator, which takes him to a dark floor where he keeps hearing random shit. He eats someone’s sandwich and realizes there are maggots in the shit and backs into someone’s room, where of course, he starts looking for stuff, coke, pills, anything.

-Here, he meets James March, who is played by Evan Peters, who is the only person besides Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe (yep, she’ll be in Hotel at some point) to be in all five AHS series. However, I’d wager to say that he was only good in Murder House and he might good in this joint as well. He is a proper old-school wealthy dude who has a hankering for killing people as Miss Evers brings in a tied-up prostitute, and March tries to goad Tristan into shooting her, which he can’t. But March can and does, and when he takes off his scarf, you notice that he has been cut across the throat. Miss Evers complains about the stain. She ain’t never gon’ keep this hotel clean. Anyway, Tristan runs out, but gets caught by Elizabeth in the elevator and you can only imagine what happens next.

-Scarlett is on a city bus, apparently, looking at a picture of she and Holden, and she has gone back to the hotel to find him, but his casket is empty; the other three as well. She finds him eventually and he asks what took her so long, and he says he remembers her after she asks him. She shows pictures of the family and wonders why he hasn’t aged like she has, and she wants to take him home, but he is already home, he says, and yeah, this little mufucka is dead, yo. She tries to take a selfie with him, and Holden gets hungry, so she jumps away and he’s lookin’ at her like, what’d I do? This is how we get down. She leaves to find Sally in the hallway, whose mouth is bloody and her teeth fall out. This entire sequence, but especially the scene with Holden and Scarlett, was by far my favorite of the episode.

-Scarlett goes back home as John has the police looking for her, but she evaded them once again and she isn’t having good luck at being protected by them at all. She tells John and Alex about Holden being at the hotel and John freaks out, and she tries to show them the picture, but Holden is a blur because he’s a damn vampire. But you can surely make out that it is something.

-Speaking of vampires, Tristan is getting the vampire rules from Elizabeth, while poppin’ that thang from the back as the old Roman poets used to say, and here they are: they can’t age, don’t drink diseased blood, don’t get caught and don’t fall in love. We learn that she was born in 1904 and that she loved the 70s, where I assume she picked up the coke habit, but can we just revel in the fact that she rode into the club on a mufuckin’ horse? That might be the illest entrance you could make. Mufuckas holdin’ her Rapunzel-ass hair, too. I ain’t even mad at the fact that she was eatin’ a mufucka like, two seconds later. Hatin’-ass Donovan comes in to express his disappointment, but barely gets it out before Elizabeth tells him to pack his shit and go because there is a new sheriff in town. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh! He was tryna make her feel guilty, too. That shit ain’t work at all.

-John rolls up on Iris angrily and slaps handcuffs on her as an accessory to murder, and he’s mad because she “let” Scarlett roam around the hotel, but yo, why don’t you watch your child and not let her on city buses? Don’t blame Iris for you being a fuckass parent, dogg. Anyway, Iris is fed up with the whole thing and is like, I’ll tell you everything. She tells him the story of James March, who was one of the new rich, but needed somewhere to do his dirt, so he built this hotel. She says he was killing people at a rate of three a week at times, and that there is no escape from the place, which should make sense to John as he basically ran in circles tryna find Holden. Miss Evers was his faithful servant, right up until the time they met their death as the cops found bodies with his monogrammed handkerchief beside it. Miss Evers was about to kill herself, but she would be honored if she were March’s last kill, so he shot her and slit his own throat, which explains the wound on his neck. Of course, John doesn’t believe her, but then Iris tells him that his office was Room 64, which explains so much about the fuckery that goes on in this place. But he has to be skeptical at first to push the plot along and really, I believe that he doesn’t believe her, after everything that has happened to him, because he’s fucking stupid.

-Malik Yoba tells John that the blood on the Oscar belongs to the man in the pictures in the premiere, who got, ummmmm, well, as we discussed as we watched it, homeboy got “butt-effed by an Oscar”. We laughed for a good few minutes over that. Like, probably longer than we should have. I’m laughing about it right now. Anyway, John puts together that this new killer is murdering people based on the Ten Commandments, and March wasn’t a fan of religion, so this person is continuing March’s work. Malik Yoba clues in that John is staying in March’s old hotel. The cops on this show are buffoons, bruh.

-Tristan is on Grindr, which I didn’t know was a thing until this episode, and he lures a victim to the hotel, where they start making out and Elizabeth enters. The dude is like, I’m not really down for this, but it doesn’t matter because Tristan stabs him in the neck before he and Elizabeth have sex on the corpse. Good for them. Fuck him, his man bun, his beard and his suspenders. I bet he was wearing shoes with no socks, too. He deserved it.

I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of this episode, mainly because the Blue Jays game was on that day and I might have had a few drinks. But after watching it again, it was typically good stuff from AHS. The introductions of Tristan and March were extremely well done, if not bloodier than a mufucka, and that scene with Scarlett and Holden was chilling. I was like, nah, they won’t kill a child in this show, then I remembered that they killed a baby and framed Pepper for it on Freak Show, which sent her to Asylum, so that is now on the table. Donovan is mad, so he’s about to try something stupid, and Naomi Campbell gotta die as well (I also felt that way about her Empire character). Still waiting on Ms. Bassett, too. And of course, the next time we see Rapey McDrillbit, the shit won’t be a dream sequence. Just another episode in the life of American Horror Story.

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E01 – Checking In

The first series in the post-Jessica Lange era for American Horror Story, Hotel, kicked off on Wednesday night with the aptly-titled “Checking In”. FX has been generally pretty liberal with the show, as well as Sons Of Anarchy and even The League, in terms of what they let them get away with. Hotel takes that up a notch within 30 minutes. Let’s go…….

-We open with these two blond tourists getting out of a cab, and they don’t speak English and the countdown is on to some shit happening to them. They walk into the Hotel Cortez, and man, is this set ever beautiful. It’s really old-school, but classy, and I’m looking forward to seeing some flashbacks of what is like before mufuckas started dying there.

-Oh, did you not know that mufuckas was gon’ die in this hotel? This must be your first AHS series. Welcome. Mufuckas gon’ die in this hotel.

-They get to the check-in counter, although they do note that there is NO ONE in this giant lobby. After ringing a bell twice, they’re greeted by Iris, who is played by Kathy Bates, and in true Kathy Bates form, she is not here for their shit. They’re not getting refunds, they ain’t got no wi-fi and Iris says this place is a cell-phone dead zone, which is clue #2 to get your ass outta there.

-She takes them to their room, which is dark and shady in the first place, and when the girls ask for ice, Iris tells them it’s down the hall. They have like, two small mickeys. Fuck do you need ice for? Anyway, one of them (Vendela is her name) goes to find the ice, where she walks by a laundress who is steamcleaning some bloody sheets from Room 51; clue #3, we’re at now. Then she sees kids at either end of the hall, but when she goes to find them, they’re gone. I’m not counting clues anymore. They deserve what they get.

-As Vendela is scooping the ice, a metallic glove creeps up on her and seems to touch her hair, but again, she turns around and there is nothing there. She gets back to the room and her friend, who is named Agnetha, says that the room smells like a dead animal. They demand to get another room, like Iris gives a damn about what they are demanding. Agnetha looks at the bed and notices something weird about the mattress; it’s like it has been stitched up through the middle. Vendela is the bold one who cuts the mattress open, instead of, you know, getting the fuck outta there. And out pops a….I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s naked, whatever it is, and it has messed-up teeth. A demon? A ghoul? How about some shit that lives in a mattress? That should be enough.

-I’m not sure how AHS hasn’t even been nominated for an opening-credits Emmy, but anyway, the shit is outstanding like it is every season. There is plenty of shit with mattresses, and kids with gas masks and a whole boatload of blood. It’s about to get real.

-After the first of 27 commercial breaks, we return with the girls walking with Iris, who acts like nothing just happened and tells them they’ll be arrested for evasion if they leave. I don’t even know how that works. But they don’t question it, they just go to another room to wait for the police instead of, you know, trying to get the fuck outta there. She takes ’em to room 64, which the camera lingers on and the homegirl Lindsay was like, mmmmmmhmmmm, that’s the killin’ room. Extra emphasis on that when Iris says that they never rent it out. After an hour, there are still no cops, and instead of tryna leave, they’re going to leave a bad review on Yelp for the hotel; if only they could get service. After more hours of waiting, Vendela had fallen asleep and Agnetha is nowhere to be found. She searches around the room and finds her friend in the bathroom, being eaten by the children she saw in the hallway. You wanna know what? At this point, fuck it, b. I’m out.

-The paramedics are rushing into another hotel, where a woman and a man were having sex, but she has been impaled with a pole, both of their hands have been nailed to the headboard, and his eyes and tongue have been cut out, but he is still alive. He is tryna ask them to speed up the process, and that he is still inside her, but that shit has been super-glued. Turns out that these two were married, but not to each other. Some anti-Tiger Woods fan is going after the cheaters, apparently. The main detective is John Lowe, played by Wes Bentley, who was Edward Mordrake in Freak Show. Good to see him in a bigger role. Also, his partner is Malik Yoba, who you may not from Empire going all the way back to New York Undercover, which was fucking AWESOME.

-John goes to his office to work on the case, which includes looking at other cases. This also includes one where a dude was anally raped with something that left traces of gold paint chips. The pictures were graphic as shit. And that’s not the last butthole reference in this episode. But he stops to talk to his young daughter, Scarlett, so they can read “Little Women” before her bedtime. He refuses to take a call related to the case, and then when he leaves the office, that person (with a disguised voice, of course) tells him to go to the Hotel Cortez, where he is in room 64, and he also killed that woman and left the man alive. He also says he’ll kill again, so John obviously has to go.

-At the hotel, some douchebag is waiting at the counter and asks for a room, and not only does Iris give him room 64, she charges him $150 instead of the $30 it says on the sign. He is obviously there to do drugs, so now we get to meet Sally, a strung-out junkie played by Sarah Paulson, and if you have ever read these and/or spoken to me about AHS, you know that I ride HARD for Ms. Paulson. Personally, I think she’s the best part of the entire series, and now we get to see her as a “bad” person (because good and bad are so relative in AHS)? I’m in. She calls dibs on douchebag, so that can’t be good for him.

-He gets to the room and breaks out the drug stuff, and soon he is in his own world. He sees a shadow, then he sees the laundress from earlier and before he realizes what is going on, he gets jacked by, um…..so this thing has no face, like it’s in a body-length suit, but the suit is made of skin. Then the thing (it’s different from the thing that came out of the mattress earlier) proceeds to flip the dude over and rapes him with what we think is a drill-bit or something. It’s metal and spiky and jagged, and it doesn’t look very fun.

-John walks into the hotel and Iris immediately guesses him for a cop, and he wants to go to room 64. Iris sends him up with Liz Taylor, played by Denis O’Hare, who was Stanley in Freak Show and the creepy butler in Coven. Liz is a man, but dressed in drag, and could be transgender, but he might have both sets of genitals, or none at all. Because, AMERICAN HORROR STORY.

-Dude is still gettin’ his rape on upstairs and Sally wants the victim to tell her he loves her, and it’ll all be over. He does, and then he dies, and the rapist is gone before Lowe gets to the room. But yeah bruh, we saw that rape. Like, all of it in a mirror. Honestly, I was more bothered by the heroin use. I HATE NEEDLES. Yay for desensitization!

-Anyway, John gets to the room and no one is there, but he does a half-ass job of checking shit out. Doesn’t even look under the bed, instead, he lies down on it and decides, hey, this would be a good time for a nap. Good grief. Had he looked under the bed, he probably would have found the victim, whose name is Gabriel, who wakes up, but John doesn’t hear him gasp.

-Remember the time, 2:25, dunno if it’s AM or PM. Lots of bad shit seems to happen at that time. That’s when Vendela woke up to find her friend getting buffeted. John wakes up and sees one of the children from earlier and he says, “Holden”, who you can assume is his son. He chases the child, who disappears, as they’re known to do.

-And here we go. We hear some music, which is “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge, and there is a woman getting ready to go out, and a man in a bath. She does one of the largest bumps of cocaine in recent TV history, joins her man and the two, dressed to the nines, head out. Her name is Elizabeth, and it’s the first appearance for Lady Gaga, and when this part was cast, a lot of people were skeptical, especially with Lange gone. But I think she’ll do alright because she’s just off enough (her persona, anyway) that she should fit into AHS nicely and she is very talented, whether you like her music or not. Anyway, they’re off to see “Nosferatu” at an outdoor cinema, where they flirt with another couple there, and eventually, they take them back to the hotel for an orgy that seems to go on forever. FX is really not giving any fucks about nudity or violence this year, because Gaga’s tits are basically out except that her nipples are covered, but I mean, we know what they’re about. Anyway, Elizabeth and her companion, Donovan, use their metallic gloves (like the one that crept up on Vendela) and slash their throats, so they can drink their blood. Of course…..”Nosferatu” is a silent movie about vampires. BAM. Gaga will be just fine on Hotel. She’s the least of my worries.

-John goes home after sitting outside in his car being creepy, and you get the idea that he and his wife don’t really get along. She’s mad because he is late, which made her late for some house calls as a doctor, and after she leaves, John takes Scarlett for sushi because fuck the dinner you made, apparently.

-Iris takes dinner to the two tourists, although we saw one of them being eaten, but it’s AHS, so whatever. She has a feeding tube for their food and Sally wants Iris to show them some compassion as she yells at them, calling them “Swedish meatballs”. But it seems like she is feeding them to fatten them up, or help their wounds, so they might actually be dead at this point. Sally says something about Iris being here for 20 years, and Iris blames her for everything. Iris says Sally can do her job, but warns her about having to explain to “her” why they tastes like shit. “Her” seems to Elizabeth, also known as the Countess, so yeah, Iris traps people and feeds them to the vampires.

-Then Sally goes off the rails after Iris leaves to feed something else, and screams at Vendela to run after letting her out of her cage. Vendela runs while her friends cries not to be left alone, but you know Vendela is fucked. She is running and running and gets to the front door, where Elizabeth is waiting, and slashes her throat. She then tells Iris that this can never happen again. So Elizabeth is the leader of all this weird shit.

-Over sushi, Scarlett tells John that she has been having dreams of her brother, the Holden that he referred to earlier, but they leave dinner when he gets a text from his wife asking for help at some random address. They go there and there is a cop waiting, and John asks the cop to watch his kid, but of course, he gets drawn away by something. The voice he spoke to earlier calls him again, and John finds a shadowy figure in the house, while Scarlett wanders in to find two men strung up with their guys hanging out. She screams, so the man gets away as John runs to her. Shoutout to that cop for leaving a little girl in a car by herself. Well done.

-Through a flashback, we learn that John was with his son, but he turned his back for a second and Holden was gone. This is a point of contention between he and his wife Alex, who is scared out of her mind as she didn’t text that message to John, so the voice had hacked into her phone. John says that he’ll leave, but there will be cops there to watch them. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. They do such a great job as is.

-Back at the hotel, we meet Will Drake, his son Lachlan and Marcy, a realtor who is negotiating Drake buying the hotel. You might also remember Marcy from Murder House, as she sold the house to the Harmon family. There is your first intra-season connection and after the end of Freak Show, you can expect to see a few more in Hotel (there was one nod to Asylum that I can’t remember right now). Anyway, they meet Iris, who doesn’t know anything about a sale, and they find a naked Donovan, who also doesn’t know about it and when he finds out, he isn’t happy. Lachlan sees the thing with no face, but decides not to tell anyone about it because why would you do that?

-They also meet Elizabeth, who is quite charming when she isn’t killing people, and as Marcy continues her tour with Will, Elizabeth takes Lachlan to a secret room, where all of the other children are, including Holden. Shit has video games and unlimited candy. You know what? Hotel Cortez might not be all that bad.

-Iris and Donovan are discussing the hotel sale, and the dots are connected. In 1994, Iris followed Sally and Donovan (who is Iris’ son, we learn) here as he was scoring drugs from her, and Donovan dies from either a dirty needle or an OD. Iris is pissed and pushes Sally out of a window to her death, and then returns to the room to find Elizabeth, stroking Donovan’s face and telling Iris that her son has a jawline for days. Gaga looks an awful lot like Alexandra Breckenridge, who played the young nanny in Murder House and she was in a couple episodes of Coven as well. This show fucks with your head like that.

-John leaves his house and heads straight to Hotel Cortez, because why not and if you’re gon’ go back, might as well stay in room 64, right? “Hotel California” by the Eagles plays us out and ends the episode on a fitting note, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.

There was a lot packed into this 90-minute (including those 27 commercial breaks) episode, but the synopsis of Hotel so far is that people die there and their ghosts feed off anyone who comes in. The only one who isn’t a ghost is Iris, who is there because of her son, although we still don’t know what’s up with Liz Taylor. American Horror Story went for the gusto with the Hotel premiere, and there were a few stories wondering whether or not Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk went too far. Those people haven’t watched this before. In a couple episodes, we’ll be asking, “remember how tame the premiere was?”. Welcome to the wonderful, insane world of American Horror Story.