We’re only one episode away from the finale of the Red Tide portion of AHS Double Feature and shit is getting real. Not that it’s really had many slow points thus far, but still. A lot happens in this one episode.
We open with Doris finally giving birth to her baby (I know it’s only been five episodes but I feel like she’s been pregnant forever.) and it takes her forever and a day to pick a name for him, so in my mind he instantly becomes little LD Gardner, short for Lyme Disease, of course. Harry is doing his fatherly duties in the delivery room and if course, all of the blood is just too much for him to handle, so he ends up drinking the placenta blood from the linens left in the garbage can. Definitely one of the more disgusting things I’ve ever seen on this show.
Anyway, the Gardners get home and Doris is being her annoying self, with Alma still wondering why her mother even needs to be a thing anymore. One night, Doris wakes up to see Alma drinking from little LD’s leg, and while Ursula, who I’m fully convinced is banging Harry, or at the very least, wants to, at this point (she reminds me very much of the mistress from the Ba’al episode of Stories in this episode) manages to convince her it was all a dream, Alma decides to just come clean about everything, and it’s honestly abundantly clear that she knows exactly what will happen if her mother takes the pill, but she tries to convince her anyway. Doris refuses (What if the pill gives her Lyme disease?) but this is far from the end of the discussion.
Elsewhere, our boy Mickey is living the life in his replica Speed Racer car, and he desperately wants Karen to take the pill so they can be together. I honestly got no inclination that they had any feelings for each other beyond close friendship before, but this episode paints them as having been in love for a long time. Anyway, Mickey takes Karen out to the beach so she can paint, or rather about halfway there before she gets fed up with his begging for her to take the pill and gets out and walks the rest of the way, and while she’s there, Belle appears with a mission for her: Steal the Gardners’ new baby for her to drink from, because apparently nothing is better than newborn baby blood. (Alma definitely can attest to this fact, as drinking from little LD made her play so beautifully that she made herself cry. Humble, she is not.) Karen goes back to Mickey and, after berating him for telling Belle where to find her, declares that she does want to steal the Gardner baby, but not for Belle. For herself to raise, as a way to make up for all the babies she’s handed over to Belle, and to try and get her own life on track. Karen believes that being responsible for a baby will make her more likely to be responsible for herself, which Mickey thinks is pretty outlandish, and frankly so do I, that’s some 16 And Pregnant logic right there, but he agrees to help her anyway because he’s Mickey and that’s what Mickey does.
Meanwhile, Harry has invited the always delightful-to-see Holden Vaughn to the house to “help” Doris finish her interior design project. Doris comes downstairs to overhear him absolutely roasting her boring excuses for “visions” and Alma seizes the opportunity to finally convince her mother that taking the pill will make everything better. Can I just say, this kid is an incredible actress? The way she speaks to Doris in this scene vs. the ones when she’s being an absolute hard-ass with no regard for anything but her violin was almost enough to make me believe that perhaps Alma really did only want what was best for her family and believed that her mother just hadn’t fully tapped into her talents yet. But, alas, Doris’ talents turn out to be non-existent, and she almost instantly begins the transformation into a Pale. Is anyone really surprised?
The transformation really kicks into high gear the night Karen and Mickey decide to come and re-enact Home Alone. Harry, Alma, and Ursula have all gone out for the evening, with Alma smiling smugly because she knows exactly what’s going to happen while she’s gone, and Doris is starting to lose her shit. Mickey and Karen make it to the baby, but when Karen sees what Doris has become, her intense fear of the Pales causes her to abandon ship, and she bolts, only to be confronted by more Pales on the streets. Mickey is able to keep them at bay, as they won’t attack those who have already successfully taken the pills, but he decides to leave Karen with a decision: Let the Pales kill her, or take the pill he’s given her, as he takes off. Karen takes the pill at the last second and it immediately stops the Pales from attacking her. The instant effect is a little strange, but maybe she’s just that talented.
Back at the Gardner abode, Harry stops what he believes is a rando Pale from murdering little LD, who has now been officially named Eli (short for Elyme?) and then realizes it’s none other than his wife. He locks her in the bathroom and then gives her a speech the next morning about how he thinks he’s always cared more about his work than Doris anyway, and they were likely going to break up either way. As annoying as I’ve found Doris throughout this whole thing, I have to say I do feel sorry for her here. Harry is being absolutely brutal here and I can’t help but think he should’ve had the balls to say all this shit to his wife before he got her into this situation. He could’ve just divorced her like a normal person, rather than letting this happen, yet somehow he thinks this was the better way after all because now she won’t have to deal with seeing him date starlets and the like. Real nice. He’d rather she be a monster than have to actually deal with the fact that he hurt her. Alma and Ursula also admit that they fully knew what was going to happen when Doris took the pill and just wanted her out of the way. Doris may have been a bland pain in the ass with an unhealthy obsession with Lyme disease but did she ever even stand a chance with these people as her supposed support system?
Meanwhile, the pill’s effects are racing through Karen and she’s desperately trying to fight it, wishing she’d just have let the Pales kill her. As much of a mess as she is, this woman is truly pure of heart, not wanting to have to kill to live. Mickey convinces her that she needs to feed, asking her to envision what her ultimate dream painting would be. They go back to the beach, and Mickey is happy when he sees there is a man there alone. However, Karen surprises everyone by instead lunging at Mickey and feeding off him instead. She then proceeds to work on her painting, which we never see, and once she’s finished, she gets up, walks to the ocean, slits her wrists, and lets the ocean swallow her.
Now, I have cried over many a death on this show over the years, but there’s something so terribly tragic about Karen’s. I can’t put my finger on why, exactly, but this death hit me differently than any of the others, even some of my most favorite characters. Just, the humanity in Karen right up til the end, the fact that she was genuinely good and would rather have died than wound up like Belle and the others, regardless of what it could have given her. Her love for Mickey and her desperation to keep him from becoming as inhuman as the others on the pill...Just...this was a good character who didn’t deserve to die, and yet she did, tragically, but on her own terms, before she could even really get a taste of living her dreams at a terrible cost. She could have had it all, but she chose to remain good. It’s an image that’s going to stick with me for a long time. My heart breaks for Karen, for all that she was and all that she could’ve been.
The episode ends with Harry, Alma, and Ursula letting Doris out to play with the other Pales as if she’s a family pet being abandoned and left to the local group of stray dogs, and Ursula is taking Alma to meet the Chemist. When Alma asks why she’s going, Ursula responds that it would be hard for anyone to resist her sweet little face, but I think there’s definitely more to this. I have a feeling Belle will be waiting for them, but I do still stand by my theory that Belle and Alma will ultimately team up.
I definitely don’t see this story ending “happily”, in any capacity. In the previous seasons, there is almost always at least part of an ending where the good characters prevail, even if it’s in a twisted way, but the “good” characters are really all gone now. Stories did finally prove, after nine seasons of ultimately ending the main show on a good note, that this show can write a dark, twisted ending, and I think that’s what we’re going to get from Red Tide. We’re living in the villains’ world now, and I’m thinking, for once, my tendency to gravitate toward villains may just be a good thing. Although, even if Belle Noir is officially named Queen of the Universe, it won’t undo the pain of watching Karen die.
Do you have any theories for how Red Tide will end, or how it will relate to Death Valley? I would love to hear them!
Stay spooky, my friends.
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