I’m going to start off this review by saying, I just returned from a trip to London and I’m jet-lagged, exhausted, and pressed for time, but I really want to get this review done. I also can’t seem to find any decent pictures that go along with points I want to discuss, so this review will likely be just me rambling. Hopefully it’s enjoyable. I apologize in advance for the lack of Lyme disease references but Doris is apparently camera shy these days.
Our episode starts off with some fishermen discovering the body of our dearly departed Chief Burleson, having been dumped in the water after she was sucked dry by Alma. This prompts an investigation from another officer, who goes to a town council meeting and can instantly tell she’s being lied to. Dear Holden Vaughn is on the council (His role in all this has beyond confusing...Is he a realtor? An interior designer? Is he on the pill? Is he a politician? But I can’t help but be happy whenever he’s on-screen.) and he does some of his signature Denis-O’Hare-character smooth talking (Holden reminds me of a harsher version of Liz Taylor sometimes.) to try and get this officer off the backs of the “good” people of P-Town. No police officer in the world wouldn’t be weirded out by a town where no one seems to bat an eyelash at murder, and Holden knows this, so he goes to meet with Belle, Austin, and the Chemist. He warns them against drawing this much attention to themselves because it will become bad for tourism if it gets out that people check into this town and don’t check out. (At this point I feel like I’m almost reliving the Hotel finale.) The Chemist gets annoyed at Belle and Austin because she assumed they’d have had the Gardners handled by now.
Meanwhile, Harry is making a proclamation that, since he has written about five years worth of work and will be set for life, the “entire family” will be going off the pill. I’m not sure what he means by “entire family” unless baby Eli has taken up the habit as well, (He’s also including Ursula in the conversation so for a moment I assume she’s on it as well but what would she need it for? Reading scripts written by amateurs faster?) but Alma, of course, is pissed. And on some level, I think she has the right to be because it’s been established that if you go off the pill, you can’t do anything in your creative wheelhouse again. And while I can understand Harry not approving of his daughter having to be a bloodsucker for success, the idea of destroying a child’s hopes and dreams for eternity is a pretty shitty alternative. But, she eventually agrees, or should I say, very clearly pretends to agree. We see her nod to Ursula and we know something is about to go down.
Soon after, Eli is missing from his bed, with a note from Belle in his place, wanting a meeting with Harry and Alma. Alma is 10000000% convinced she can hold her own against Belle and Austin and whoever else, because she took out a police chief, but Harry isn’t convinced. Ursula has another strange plan, though, in which she goes to the graveyard to find the Pales, and they somehow don’t attack her even though she’s not on the pill nor is she with anyone who is, and she tells them there’s a new pill that may reverse the effects of the original one. At first I think she’s just offering them a placebo, as we see Harry in a previous scene with some over-the-counter brain booster type drug, but that turns out not to be the case at all.
As the confrontation between Belle, Austin, and the Chemist, and Harry and Alma, is going down, suddenly the Pales start breaking through the windows and manage to take out Belle and Austin in basically a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sequence. The Chemist, it turns out, did strike a deal with Ursula and did also create a new pill, that manages to make the Pales turn on each other but also turn faster on the successful pill-takers. (She basically managed to bottle the effects of the “Rabbit Rabbit” film from that ridiculous Stories episode.) Harry is super relieved and tells Alma that now the three of them can start a new life and put this all behind them (I’m never sure if the third person he’s constantly referring to is Eli or Ursula to be honest.) to which Alma replies, it’s only going to be the two of them, and proceeds to bleed her father dry.
We jump ahead a little and see The Chemist, Ursula, Alma, and Eli living deliciously in Los Angeles, where Ursula has built an empire off of the pills, and The Chemist is slipping them to bad cops. Alma’s savage ways are being greatly encouraged by her new roommates (Ursula utters one of the best lines of the season, saying she’s surprised at how well Alma turned out having been raised by Harry and “that glass of warm oat milk”. I’m sorry but why does Doris seem to be so many people’s favorite character?) and she has a big audition coming up, where she ends up literally killing the competition. Ursula then shows up at a lecture for writers and basically pulls an Oprah on the audience, providing them with pills under their chairs, and most of them end up as Pales.
The story ends with the Chemist in the car with baby Eli, talking about going far away and maybe inventing a pill that will make them both immortal. We see an explosion off in the distance and the camera pans to the sky, I guess implying the coming of the aliens for the second portion of this season, and that’s that. (Once again I am reminded of Drive-In, which also ended with an explosion off in the distance as people went insane and killed each other, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s some kind of connection to be made here, or if the episode was just foreshadowing, since Ba’al seemed to be as well with the gaslighting of the pregnant wife and all, and there’s also probably an argument to made for The Naughty List, with its statements on how far people will go for fame.)
Overall, the episode was definitely rushed, but I can understand why. With production stopping twice due to COVID, and the reworking of Kathy Bates’ role into Frances Conroy’s role, there simply wasn’t enough time left to film in Provincetown while things still looked the way they needed to. They very specifically needed it to be winter, and when spring started to roll around, that’s how Double Feature was born. So I can’t truly fault the rushed ending, but I will say this:
The previous episode set the bar very high, especially with its death scenes. That episode managed to break my heart so many times, even for a character that I couldn’t stand. And so, I went into the finale knowing it was highly probable that more characters were going to die, but I almost looked forward to it in some kind of twisted way, because I thought any and all death scenes would be poignant in their own way, and fitting of the characters’ true personalities and histories, as they were for Karen, Doris, and even Mickey.
Instead, I saw my favorite character, arguably one of the bigger leads of the season, get offed as if she were some random extra brought in to be a casualty in a fight scene. Seriously, all the buildup we got for Belle, how she was this powerful entity that everyone feared, strong, untouchable, etc., and she went down in a literal second. I wanted my theory to be correct, that the story would end on a dark and twisted note and she and Alma would team up (Honestly it still makes a bit more sense than her relationships with Ursula and the Chemist...they may all be devious but Belle would’ve understood Alma on a whole other level, most likely seeing herself in the child.) but I did tell myself it was equally possible that, being the main “villain” of the season, Belle would die. I just saw something much heavier happening in the moment of her death. Austin’s too, but I came to think of him as more of a side character as the season went on, so the rushed death didn’t sting as hard with him. I’m also not really sure what was happening at the end...did the Chemist just get tired of Alma and Ursula’s devious ways and abandon them? And how will this tie in to the next portion of the season? I was expecting a little more of a hint.
I suppose we’ll find out...To be honest, I’m not exactly looking forward to Death Valley, as the alien subplot in Asylum annoyed me to no end and didn’t really make sense to me, but you never know what could happen.
Comments
Post a Comment