American Horror Story: Nor’Easter
As usual, this post contains spoilers.
A storm is heading for Briarcliff and that is about the only coherent thing that happens in this episode. Alright, perhaps coherent isn’t the right word. What I’m getting at is that this episode once again bounces around between several story lines, throwing one thing after another at the viewer and we are left to process and try to follow what is happening.
Present: The honeymooners are still trapped in the asylum and while in the last episode it looked like Bloody Face had slaughtered the husband, he actually didn’t and the couple was able to get away. But not quite as two more Bloody Faces (that sounds weird) pop up and one of them shoots them to death. This was a WTF moment as it is revealed that Bloody Faces were just guys in masks but wait, what is that strange noise…the real Bloody Face?
1964: As the storm approaches, Sister Jude decides to distract the inmates with movie night! She has arranged to have all the inmates watch a movie pretty much unsupervised. Dr. Thredson is still hanging around and Lana has asked him to pass a message to Wendy. Oliver goes to Wendy’s house and finds traces of a Bloody Face attack. The police don’t believe him but Lana does and starts trusting Kit. The storm and movie provide the perfect opportunity for Lana, Kit and Grace to attempt another escape, this time joined by Shelley (Chloë Sevigny). Shelley doesn’t make it very far as the orderlies are looking for a missing Mexican patient and distracts one of them using her feminine charms, then knocks him unconscious and continues to try and escape. The other three do make it out of the asylum into the storm and the woods. And right into the creatures that Arden has been keeping. They look like men turned into ravenous, cannibalistic mutants. Needless to say, Lana, Grace and Kit decide not to continue their escape and run right back into Briarcliff more terrified than ever.
Meanwhile, Sister Jude is on the verge of totally losing it as the now possessed Sister Mary Eunice screws with her head about the little girl Jude killed, pushing Jude back to booze. Back to the Mexican who Jude goes to find while the flick is playing. Earlier, the demonic Sister Mary Eunice sliced her throat open with pure glee on her face. That was brutal and so was her attempted seduction of Dr. Arden. She spread her legs for him and he was horrified that she was not as pure and virginal as he had envisioned her. Enter poor Shelley. After Arden desecrates and destroys a statue of the Virgin Mary, he runs into Shelley trying to escape. He drags her back to his office and attempts to rape her but can’t do it. She mocks him, he knocks her unconscious and when she wakes up in his lab of horrors, he has cut off both her legs.
Final Thoughts: I liked the Tricks and Treats episode and was hoping that American Horror Story would continue with that more straight story telling but this episode faltered with throwing too much at the viewer again. It touches on Sister Jude’s past, Arden’s depravity, Sister Mary Eunice’s possession, Wendy’s murder, the creatures in the woods, Arden’s continued experiments on Kit and his alien abduction, Bloody Face in the present (I didn’t care for the twist at the beginning) and the not so great escape. Maybe I’m being too critical but I think they need to focus on tightening up the story lines instead of diverging off in all directions. I’m guessing that eventually all the stories will merge but right now, it’s too scattered for an hour long show. It’s not hard to follow along, I just wish they would tell the stories more fully instead of 2 minutes here and there.
Dawning Creates 