We did it, boils and ghouls.
We made it through an entire episode of the Red Tide portion of AHS Double Feature without hearing a word about Lyme disease.
And that is because this week’s episode was a flashback/backstory episode that didn’t feature the Gardners at all. Did I miss them? Not really. Especially not Doris. Maybe Alma, a little.
Anyway. Our episode starts off with Holden Vaughn, Denis O’Hare’s character who I honestly wasn’t sure if we’d ever see again, selling a house to the Chemist (who still doesn’t have a name besides The Chemist), nine years in the past, some time around Halloween. Holden is perplexed as to why she’d want to move to a place like Provincetown, and suspects she’s looking to start a meth ring, to which she responds that meth is below her pay grade. We soon find out that the Chemist actually worked for the military, and was put in charge of creating a drug that could actually destroy one’s creative impulses, for the sake of stopping free thinking among soldiers. But in order to slow that down, she first has to find a way to speed it up, and, as she explains to Mickey, who turns down her offer to be her first human guinea pig, but agrees to bring her test subjects for fifty bucks a head.
Mickey’s first attempt is a wannabe singer. This man does not have what it takes to handle the pill, and we gradually watch him morph into the first of the pale zombies. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to my ex’s brother, so feel free to take that however you wish. We also find out where the Pales get their impeccable sense of style from. Unable to get himself warm amidst his transformation, we see him visit Lark, who I completely forgot even existed prior to this moment, and who apparently owns a vintage clothing store in addition to a tattoo parlor and a dentistry practice. Forget the Muse pills, this chick must be on some kind of speed. But anyway, yeah, she sells him the be all end all of shoulder pad jackets that will go on to become the Pales’ legacy, because now that they know they lack talent, what more can they have beyond looking like a throwback goth-rock music video? After this man makes his first kill, he returns to the Chemist, trying to understand what’s happening to him as he used to be a pacifist, and she explains that while the bloodthirst happens regardless, now that he’s been confronted with his own mediocrity, he’s angry at the world for giving him dreams that were too big. Honestly, I felt that and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me sad. But yeah, that’s the whole Pale situation in a nutshell.
Experiment Number Two is the much more successful Belle Noir. We see her starting off as a struggling writer, selling only a book or two at every stop she makes on her self-guided tour for her self-published novel, and with a husband whose picture is probably next to the term “asshole” in the dictionary. Seriously, the way this man speaks to this poor woman, berating every aspect of her and her creative endeavors is absolutely sickening, but I suppose that’s the point. (When he calls her boring, I would hate to see what he’d make of Doris if he met her.) Luckily for Belle, though, the one book she sells on the P-Town leg of her tour is to the Chemist (who asks her to make the autograph out to ‘The Chemist’ and I’m really starting to wonder if this woman’s parents just had very high hopes for her and this is actually her birth name. I suppose it’s better than being called Baldwin Pennypacker, at any rate.) and she is impressed. After a night out at the Muse bar, partying with Mickey after her husband is an asshole once again, Belle is introduced to the little black pills and goes home to write quite a novel. Her husband comes in the next morning announcing he fucked someone else at the ghost tour he went to last night and is leaving her, and Belle explodes, killing him and then surprising herself by drinking his blood. Honestly, even if the pills didn’t give her vampiric qualities, no jury should convict this woman for killing this man. The blood enables her to start writing part two of whatever she created the night before, and the Chemist is fascinated by her. Belle vows to go on, whatever it takes, and she, too, eventually visits Lark’s House Of Teeth, Tattoos, and Tacky Jackets, and reinvents her look, right down to the sculpted teeth.
Shortly after transforming herself into some kind of vampiric 1980’s lady-who-lunches, Belle goes to a drag show where, in the only moment people seem to want to talk about from this episode, Austin Sommers is there, performing in drag under the nom de guerre “Patty O’Furniture”. Why Belle even gives him a second look when he can’t even come up with a creative drag name, I couldn’t really tell you, but I suppose she can sense something in him, and recognizes his struggle. It also turns out that she killed the guy who was supposed to help him with a play he wrote, so there’s that. So yeah, Austin gets the pill, kills and drinks from the drag queens that made fun of him, and that’s how that starts. It’s probably the least poignant piece of the episode (I personally found Belle’s struggle and the tragedy of the inaugural Pale much more interesting/thought provoking.) but, this fandom has always been very Evan Peters-centric so, there it is.
And so ends another episode, leaving only two left for this piece of the season. I do worry a bit that dedicating an entire episode to backstories and flashbacks was a little much for such a tight timeframe, and I’m hoping the final episodes don’t suffer too much for it, but I have to say I’m happy that the writers did this. AHS has almost always been pretty fantastic at fleshing out the characters it creates, with a few exceptions (Mallory comes to mind instantly.) and that is something I really missed during the Stories series. There’s not really a character in this season aside from Doris that I don’t enjoy seeing on screen.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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