American Horror Story: Coven ‘Fearful Pranks Ensure’ Recap- Episode 03.04

The Breakdown

Halloween’s weekly episode got off to a tragic start with a young high school boy brutally murdered in racist 1961 New Orleans just because he was black. This sort of tragic scenario is typical of AHS. Well Marie Laveau knows his mother from her beauty shop, and is none too happy. She summons some ZOMBIES to get medieval on the racist perpetrators’ ass. ZOMBIES! I wonder if the ZOMBIES show up again. Spoiler alert: obviously they show up again.

The show rewinds a bit to the creepy house butler, Spalding, having a super weird tea party with the CREEPIEST DOLLS EVER. And there’s like, a thousand of them. He hurries downstairs when he hears Fiona fighting with Madison, witnesses Madison’s murder, and helps Fiona dispose of the body. Fiona makes some comment about him being tongueless. Hmmm uh oh.

Predictably, war continues to brew between Laveau and Fiona. Cordelia. Always the rational one, warns her mother not to provoke Marie Laveau just because she sicked a minotaur on them. Fiona isn’t going to listen to that! Fiona kills Laveau’s beloved minotaur, and sends his still blinking (?!) head in a box. Marie Laveau is super pissed. Turns out she signed a peace treaty back in the 70’s with the previous Supreme, whom Fiona murdered. Her assistant/bff reminds Laveau of this truce, but that is no matter. She’ll get her revenge, yes, indeed. Let’s remember that this all because Fiona wanted to remain young forever.

Queenie is sick. She seems on the verge of death until Fiona breathes life into her. Whew. But now that Madison is missing, the school is up in arms. “The Council” pays a visit. Turns out the Council was summoned by Nan, who called them because she couldn’t hear Madison anymore, telepathically speaking. Remember how Nan was the one who “heard” Daphne LaLaurie under the ground? Which in turn lead to Fiona exhuming Daphne, which basically lead to the war between the Supreme and Laveau? And now this!

It appears that Nan is increasingly responsible for all the trouble the Coven encounters. She’s an important character, is my point. Back to Zoey. She considers poisoning Kyle with rat poison. She’s created this monster, after all. She’s about to do this when she find that Kyle has run off! And it’s Halloween. You would think his Franken-character would come into play somehow (a real Frankenstein roaming around New Orleans!) but curiously, we won’t see him again. Oh well. The show has bigger fish to fry.

The Council consists of three members, one of whom is the fire-headed Myrtle. Yay a new character! Myrtle has a vendetta against Fiona and believes she is not only responsible for the murder of Madison (she is) but also murdered the last Supreme to take her place (she did). They grill the girls, inquiring about Madison. Queenie tells it like it is; if Madison is dead it’s because she drank too much. The Council decides Fiona is implicit in all this somehow. Of course Fiona is livid.

We get some gnarly flashbacks of the 1970’s when Fiona took over as Supreme and geeky Myrtle, whose powers is truth seeking, vowed to entrap Fiona for her crimes. We come back to Spalding, the tongueless bartender. He refuses to rat out Fiona, and instead admits to cutting off his own tongue, so he would not speak. It’s all pretty gruesome, like I really needed to see THAT flashback.

Back in normalville (sort of). Cordelia’s husband Hank is a sleazebag. We find out about this through a gross display of animalistic behavior with a young girlfriend in a hotel room. Even worse, she really seems to like him. Post pillow talk, she repeatedly opens up to him with things like, “When I was a little girl…” blah blah. The tension in these scenes is high, to the point when I almost wondered if she was the nefarious one, playing coy in order to screw him over. Nope. For some reason yet to be explained, Hank shoots her in the head shortly after the poor girl confesses, “I really like you.” Cold.

Things only get worse for poor Cordelia. She goes out drinking with her mum, good times indeed. Fiona reminds her daughter that Hank is a sleazebag. Well now you tell us! Cordelia goes to the bathroom and vomits. Is she pregnant? It doesn’t matter because a black hooded figure comes out with a tiny glass of ACID and throws it in her face. She runs out screaming. She is most likely disfigured and blinded. Now, my first instinct was: THERE IS NO WAY MARIE LAVEAU WOULD BE SO CRAVEN AS TO USE ACID AS REVENGE. That witch is waaaay too cunning and talented for such an easy task. Then who is responsible??

The episode includes an irrelevant albeit creepy revelation that Spalding is keeping Madison’s decomposing body locked up in his room for his appalling little tea parties. I’ll be the first to write it… AAAHHHHHHHH! Oh yeah, and then Laveua summons zombies on the school. And there are TONS of them. It’s just like The Walking Dead but better. And it’s Halloween. Happy Halloween! The End.