I've been having a hard time even remembering I have to write this review, as this episode left me feeling all sorts of "meh".
This is going to be a tough one for me to write about, as I can't even pinpoint exactly what about it didn't work for me, I just know that something about it seemed really off somehow. It was a really good concept, very ambitious and unafraid to "go there", but it just missed a mark for me somehow. It could have been better but I'm sure how to explain how.
Sam winds up meeting a guy named Charlie at work. Charlie is the dude in charge of transporting bodies and he is similarly fascinated by death. He and Sam are clearly kindred spirits and I can tell you I've never rooted so hard for someone to cheat on their significant other in my life. As someone with an odd set of interests, who knows what it's like to be surrounded by people who don't support you or what you're into; and has definitely been in an unsupportive, unfulfilling relationship in the past, I found Sam really relatable. And to see someone understand her so deeply instantly made me root for this pair, even though I'm not usually a big "shipper".
Sam gets interrupted as she's about to tell Charlie about her mother's murder (even though she's never told anyone else, even Jesse), by Jesse calling to remind her his parents are over for dinner. Turns out it's a ruse for a proposal in front of everyone they know, and not gonna lie, this kind of shit makes my eyes roll. (Side note: I don't see myself ever getting proposed to, but if I did, I wouldn't want an audience.) The rose petals Jesse left all over the floor, though, trigger the memory of Sam's mom's death, and she tells Jesse she's too messed up to marry him and leaves. At this point I don't think she's too messed up, just too three-dimensional for a guy who seems like a walking Pinterest board. But honestly? If she never felt comfortable telling him about what happened to her mom, that should have been a red flag that maybe he wasn't "the one". I'm not the most open book in the world, but I can't see keeping a secret that huge from someone I supposedly love.
Anyway. Next thing we know she's back at the morgue, and who is on the slab? Charlie! Not gonna lie, this shocked me, and I felt sad for what could have been for these two. (Maybe my issue with this episode is that I just saw so much of myself in Sam to a point, that it's hard to be diplomatic about it.) Sam is obviously really shocked, breaks down, and...winds up having sex with his dead body. Now, I'm not going to say it wasn't uncomfortable or that it should ever be done in real life, but given the circumstances here, I found it oddly understandable as to why she did this. This is a girl with a lot of heavy shit in her past, who has never given herself time to process what she's been through, and on top of that, she's just started to realize how wrong her current relationship and lifestyle outside of work is for her, and had only gotten a very brief glimpse of what it would be like to be with someone who actually gets her. Now suddenly that person is dead, permanently removed from her life as quickly as he came into it, and she's perceiving this as the last opportunity she'll ever have to be close to someone who understood her on that level. In that moment, she snapped. And she clearly felt disgusted with herself afterward, but the why is so clear and tragic. This may have been her last opportunity to really feel something.
On some level, the episode could have ended there, on a sad, tragic, fucked up note. But then things start to get really convoluted.
Charlie, it turns out, was never really dead. He ordered some pill online to simulate death and had a buddy efficient in SFX makeup give him some autopsy scars. All because he wanted Sam to see how unhappy she was with her life. I instantly go from rooting for this couple, to finding them so toxic that they make Tate and Violet look like Nicholas Sparks protagonists.
How absolutely unhinged do you have to be to pull a stunt like that? I meant, what if he was wrong?! What if Sam didn't have any feelings for him at all and was perfectly happy with her life? I mean, it was pretty obvious that wasn't the case, but still. Also, the way this guy talks reminds me a lot of my actual stalker...I'm not sure if even he would have been crazy enough to fake death in such an elaborate way, but the way of thinking is most definitely the same, which made this character become kind of triggering to me. (I do feel inspired, though, to tell the story here one day soon now, if anyone would be interested. I mean I guess it fits the horror theme.)
If I were Sam in this situation, I honestly probably would have attempted to just step away for a bit, and try to figure my own shit out, but what does she do? She basic bitch-ifies herself into a Sephora makeup artist and plans to marry Jesse after all. This girl very clearly has some major issues dealing with traumatic experiences. She literally just retreated and obliterated her entire personality and turned off her interests and passions to become a normie. One of her friends actually calls her out on this at the wedding, which surprised me a little as they all seemed a little creeped out in the first scene they're in talking about Sam's mortician job, but I'm glad it was at least said.
The wedding starts off and it's as gag worthy as I always find weddings, but maybe more so knowing what's happened to Sam and seeing this transformation into a Stepford wife. But, after they exchange vows, a video montage starts to play...and it somehow, suddenly cuts to a video of Sam having sex with Charlie's "corpse". (It's not enough he got her to do it in the first place, but he also managed to film it?!) Everyone freaks out, even after Charlie appears in the church, obviously not dead. Sam tries to play it off as a joke, Jesse declares it's still cheating even if he wasn't dead...although this happened after Sam initially turned down his proposal and ran out, so were they technically together? I would kind of consider that a breakup, or at least "taking a break"...? But regardless, everything goes to shit and the next time we see Sam, she can't get a job because she's been labeled a sex offender. It's never made clear but it's kind of implied she's living in her car.
Eventually she gets fed up, finds Charlie at the cemetery near where she used to work, and threatens to shoot him for ruining her life. Charlie continues his stalkerized routine about how happy they could be just being fucked up together, and Sam seems to give in at first, saying she thinks Charlie is the only one who could truly make her happy. But then she shoots him anyway, knocking him into an open grave, and then jumps in after him, and the two finally have proper, living person sex as a dump truck starts pouring dirt down into the grave, suffocating them.
It's...a fucked up, somewhat tragic love story, but I still felt beyond unsatisfied with where the story went. Maybe it's because I related so much to beginning-of-the-story Sam...I'm honestly not sure if I've ever related to a character in the AHS universe so much before. I wanted a better story for her, and a better ending, but I'm not sure what that even would have been. Even a more fucked up scenario where maybe Charlie really did die and it made Sam realize she actually was in love with death to the point of being a necrophiliac would have been more satisfying than what actually happened.
The way this went, I feel like it may have worked better if it had just been a side arc in a different, larger story. Sam and Charlie both became so unlikeable by the time this was all over, that whatever the show was going for with that ending, it just didn't hit the way it should have. And I think it could have, if things had gone a little differently. Like, if Charlie hadn't come off like a crazed stalker and Sam hadn't completely obliterated herself to become what Jesse wanted, and just at least attempted to deal with trauma properly. Much like the "walking away from the explosion" scene in last season's, in my opinion, biggest stinker Drive In, it just didn't feel earned. It actually felt somewhat like they were trying to recreate Karen and Mickey, possibly the most tragic couple ever to exist in AHS, from Red Tide, but those two were more "lovable misfits" from the start, where Sam and Charlie just became kind of excruciating by the time this episode was done.
All in all, I definitely liked this episode, but something still fell really flat for me. It had a lot of potential but something, something I can't quite identify, just didn't hit about the execution.
Anyway, tomorrow already brings us the final episode...we'll see how this season goes out!
Stay spooky, my friends.
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