American Horror Stories 1x07: Game Over//October 325th, 2021

 For consistency’s sake, I’m titling this post after the episode as I have been doing since the beginning. But the actual title I want to give it, is “WTF Did I Just Watch?”. I need to start this review off with a disclaimer that I truly did not understand most of this episode, nor do I understand what it means for the AHS universe as a whole or some of the characters we’ve met during this series. I’ve often said this show has left me with more questions than answers, but this episode has me asking more questions than Ken Jennings probably did during his 74 episode winning streak as a Jeopardy contestant. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

This episode starts off, like so many have before, with a car driving up to the Murder House. This time our potential victims are a young couple, Connie and Dylan (I see what you did there, Mr. Murphy.) and all seems almost boringly same old, same old until Connie mentions what big fans they are of American Horror Story. I actually had to rewind back to the start, because, hold up, did this show just break the fourth wall for the first time?!

I’m confused AF, but the references to AHS just being a TV show just keep on coming. Apparently the Murder House is an Airbnb now, which it actually was in real life at one point, and the owners offer an “escape from Murder House” experience, much like Scarlett’s dads planned to do in the inaugural episode.  Connie is just going on and on dropping as many references to the show as she can. She is so pumped and I’m sure I’d find that a lot more relatable if I wasn’t so confused by the fact that she’s talking about a show she’s supposed to be a character in. Eventually Dylan is attacked by Infantata and Connie instantly folds like a napkin, screaming “Stop! We don’t like it!” over and over and over again. I know this character has only really existed for five minutes at this point but I already find this reaction annoyingly out of character. But anyway, they start to run back up the stairs and bump into Adelaide Langdon, who, as Connie correctly points out, shouldn’t be there because she died in the street. Addie says everyone is joining them for a special occasion, “the day they (Connie and Dylan) die” and then out of the blue, Bloodyface and Twisty, who I instantly know is not being portrayed by John Carroll Lynch because I would recognize my dear guardian angel clown child anywhere, appear. Twisty starts hacking away at Connie and...she starts glitching out, like a hologram. Suddenly a message flashes across the screen: “Game Over: You’ve been killed by Twisty”, and we realize we’ve been watching a teenage boy play a video game based on AHS Murder House.

The boy is Rory, an AHS superfan, and the game is actually the brainchild of his mother, Michelle. Rory gives her a pretty harsh critique of her game, stating that even casual AHS fans will be confused by Adelaide’s presence despite not dying in the house, and also the presence of characters that have no connection to the Murder House at all, like Bloodyface and Twisty. Valid points, I say. Michelle is sad that he doesn’t like the game, as she’s gone broke to produce it, quitting her day job, and was also hoping that creating a game based on his favorite show should’ve been a way for them to bond, to which Rory, appropriately, responds that she could’ve just watched the show with him. Quitting your job and trying to develop a video game for the sole purpose of connecting with your kid is truly extreme. Rory leaves for his dad’s because he apparently can’t handle his mother’s weirdness, and Michelle spends the next who-knows-how-long binge-watching Murder House.

But a binge watch isn’t enough to get the vibe right. She winds up going to the Murder House and trying to buy it. She mentions the suicide of Ruby McDaniel from the second episode of this series, confusing me more. Ruby exists in this universe but the OG Murder House fam are just characters? Hmm. Anyway, Michelle low-balls her offer on the house but the realtor thinks it just might go through because they’re so desperate to sell it. Apparently, murders have happened in this version of the house but mostly as a direct result of it being a filming location for AHS...? But I guess the Rubber (Wo)Man arc exists in this universe and is therefore real while the storylines that have taken place on the main show aren’t? But then how is Infantata there? And presumably Beauregard Langdon and Ben Harmon? 

Anyway. Michelle returns to the house on Halloween, after telling Rory she’s going to a horror convention to talk with actual crew members from AHS. Why she didn’t tell him the truth is beyond me...I mean, if my parents wanted to bond with me by actually purchasing the house from my favorite show, I would be more than happy to put any and all differences aside for a chance to live there. (Though, Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, I personally would prefer Hotel Cortez.) But Michelle is weird. As she approaches the house, she sees most of the spirits leaving, and also runs into Ruby and Scarlett doing their whole Halloween night reunion thing, but is unable to find them when she tries to follow them into the house. She does, however, eventually run into Ben Harmon, who she perceives to be Dylan McDermott, dropping by the house to fuck with people as what she believes to be a Halloween prank. Ben is ever the awesome parody of himself (I’m sorry, I’m probably in the minority here at this point, but the crying while masturbating joke will never get old for me.) but I’m rapidly getting even more confused now because, if the original AHS is just a show in this universe, how is Ben Harmon here and why does he look like Dylan McDermott? He also mentions the rest of his family, and also Tate and Hayden, so it’s very clear that the residents of the Murder House we already know, do exist. I’m just very curious as to why they’ve been treated as fictional up until this point, despite the fact that they already seemed to exist in the same universe as characters like Ruby, who have been treated as real up until this point. 

Anyway. We catch up with Michelle the next Halloween, trying to connect with Rory, but he wants nothing to do with her and doesn’t even like Halloween anymore thanks to his mom’s antics. He also comes up with the idea to burn the Murder House down. Instead of bonding with her son, Michelle has fully and completely turned him into a party pooper. Rory does eventually appear with gas and matches though, and all of the ghosts except Ruby seem thrilled at the idea of moving on. This is a bit of a contradiction to the end of the second episode, where everyone seemed happy enough, and also, I know this was due to not being able to get most of the actors back, but it’s inconceivable to me that some of the more prominent Murder House spirits, particularly Constance “This Is My Fucking House” Langdon, would not have anything at all to say about it. I wasn’t expecting to see most of the OG cast again, I fully understand why we didn’t, but somehow I just can’t accept that none of them would have done a damn thing if some teenage hooligan was outside trying to burn the damn house down. 

Ruby sends a 911 text to Scarlett, who rushes back but can’t stop Rory. We see her consider just jumping into the flames, but she turns and leaves once again. The whole time I’m thinking, this can NOT be happening, but then we see Rory watching the news later that night, conforming that the Murder House burned to the ground and is gone for good. Believe me when I tell you, I was ready to start a riot about what a massive disservice this was to the show as a whole. If the Murder House had to go out, it should’ve been on the main show, for a better reason, at the hands of a more important character in a much deeper storyline, and with at least some of the more prominent residents present. The idea that the setting that started it all could just simply be obliterated by some rando with mommy issues, in a spin-off series that’s had far more mediocre episodes than good ones, just made me want to punch someone, and Murder House isn’t even my favorite season. (If this happened to the Cortez, I can assure you either myself or the TV wouldn’t have made it to the end of the episode.) I was a terrible combination of livid and sad.

After the break, we flash forward to three years later. Scarlett is buying a condominium for $1,000,000 cash that she made as a hired assassin. I have no doubt in my mind that this is a condo complex built on the Murder House grounds, and of course I’m right. Apparently there has been no spiritual activity at all since the house burned down, and this makes Scarlett sad. That night, as she lays in her bathtub, she calls out to Ruby that she’s finally ready to be with her forever, but knows it’s too late. That night though, Ruby appears in bed next to her and says that she’s the only spirit from the Murder House who held on, and that she watched the others all go. I find it a little hard to believe that Ruby would be the only one whatsoever with any “unfinished business” (thank you Casper for preparing me for AHS) or some reason not to move on, but for the sake of this storyline, I’ll deal. The camera then pans out to a shot of the new condo complex (Murder Condo?) and I’m trying to take it all in and accept it as a new piece of the AHS universe, when suddenly fireworks start exploding from the windows and a message declaring “YOU WON! YOU ESCAPED THE MURDER HOUSE!” flashes across the screen. Cut back to Rory, playing the new and improved version of the video game his mother created.

He compliments her on this one, and also asks, and they talk about whether or not a ghost from the Murder House could possibly escape into the world if the house burned down and they didn’t feel compelled to either stay where they were or move on. As they walk out of their house, Beauregard Langdon’s ball rolls across the floor. And you can color me confused once again, since haven’t we just established that the Murder House didn’t actually burn? Or did everything just really happen and Michelle is a ghost now leaked back into the world?

As stated previously, I have so many questions about this episode. Obviously a good portion of the episode was actually gameplay, but starting at what point? Did Michelle actually attempt to buy the Murder House, or was that solely a concept she came up with for her game? Did she ever actually interact with any ghosts? Possibly my biggest question is, does Scarlett even really exist? Or has she just been a character in this game the whole time? There are a lot of things that really don’t make sense here.

First of all, Michelle mentioned the suicide of Ruby McDaniel to her realtor. So it sounds like Ruby is a person who exists in the “real” world and killed herself in the Murder House because of AHS, not for any actual history that it has in previously established AHS lore. So are there actually two sets of Murder House ghosts? The ones from already established AHS canon, and some who actually exist in “our” world, dead on the grounds because of the influence of the show? But then, how could Ben Harmon exist in both worlds at once? Are we to believe that in this universe, AHS Murder House is based on true events? Still doesn’t explain why Ben Harmon still looks like Dylan McDermott, though.

I know AHS has already started creating a “multiverse” type situation, based on things like Valerie Solanos claiming the Zodiac killings, and Richard Ramirez having been said to have died in his jail cell while also still being killed over and over again at Camp Redwood every day, but this was just a lot to take in within one forty-eight minute episode. What’s real and what isn’t? 

Honestly, I would hate for it to turn out that Scarlett has been a video game character this whole time, because I think she’s a pretty solid addition to the AHS universe, and could work in many different scenarios in the future. She’s the one character from this spinoff that I wouldn’t mind seeing again, even in the main show.

This episode definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was ultimately just too confusing to really rank as one of the better ones. I’m glad it seems the Murder House didn’t actually burn down (Or did it, based on Beauregard’s ball...? So confused. And would fire really do anything because hello, Roanoke ending? They burnt the house so that no one would ever buy it again but the ghosts stayed...That was kind of the whole point with Lee and Rory’s superfan ass should’ve known that! Or maybe it was just that the property was haunted? Hmm.) but, as evidenced by the fact that Roanoke is the season that I (and apparently Sarah Paulson) shit-talk the most, the “show within a show” concept just doesn’t work for me, and this particular one could’ve been explained a lot better.

Overall, I’m not too upset that this season has come to an end, and I’m ready to get into the real AHS season, Double Feature, next week. (I’ll be reviewing that too, and I promise I will have some more original posts sprinkled in, things have just been a little too busy for too much original writing lately.) I hope that when American Horror Stories returns for the second season it was recently renewed for, that all of the episodes will be of the same quality and the previous one, Feral. Hopefully we will visit some more classic locations, too, though I’d appreciate it if the matches could be left at home. 

But seriously, if anyone wants to discuss this episode, share theories, anything, I am totally open to any and all conversations. 

Stay spooky, my friends.