The Breakdown
We are only two episodes away from the finale, and last night’s episode opened with a clever flashback involving Kyle and his friends. They’re in a tattoo parlor and the college bro buddies are all getting tattoos. Kyle says something about Hurricane Katrina destroying the neighborhood he’s from, and how he wants to make sure that will never happen again, and how he wants get a good job as an engineer and to be respectable, which is why he can’t get a tattoo. His buddies chose the worst tattoos by the way; some Chinese characters and an Irish shamrock.
Well…cut to present day, and Frankenstein-Kyle is crying and raging because HE now has these tattoos, since Zoey and Madison stitched him up with his friends’ body parts. It’s all very ironic because Kyle has not only been corrupted in the bodily and natural sense, but also in the ethical sense, because his very ideals and prospects to do good in the world have been shattered by the black and inhuman magic cast upon him.
Anyway. Madison has a voice over in which she explains another irony; she can’t feel anything since she’s been raised from the dead. She muses how she used to abuse drugs and alcohol to quell her feelings, but now she would “give anything” to feel pain again. Funny. She also says that we all think pain is the worst thing, when actually feeling nothing is the worst thing. Poor Madison.
Zoey wants to kill Kyle but she can’t go through with it. “You killed your mother Kyle!” she screams. This sets him off. She tries to kill himself but she stops him. The episode’s whole dead/alive irony comes full circle again. Isn’t it just ironic that Kyle is finally releasing his inner emotions of being sexually abused? He rants and raves in pain and emotes dramatically in a very cathartic sense, but this is something he couldn’t do when he was a living human being. He always hid his emotions, you see.
Queenie takes Daphne out to get fast food. Daphne says it’s the best food she’s ever had. This scene made me want to go and get Whataburger. Their awesome food-run ends when Daphne tells Queenie that her “Sisters” will never see Queenie as their Sister because she is black. That’s such a freaking mean thing to say, I couldn’t even believe it. But then again, what did I expect from a sadist slave owner?
Fiona and the Axeman go back to his place. What the hell! They really seem to be hitting it off. Huh. They were definitely going to get it on until Fiona stepped into the bathroom and found her hair falling out. The camera craned over the tub and we see an axed dead body. Uck, not sexy. She wants to bail (because of the hair, not the body) but he convinces her to stay and they end up sleeping together.
Back to Zoey and Kyle. She’s teaching him how to talk again. He’s picking up none of it. Madison strolls in and goes on about how much it sucks to not be dead. What a big complainer! Zoey leaves (big mistake) and Madison puts the moves on Kyle (she actually just sympathizes with him) and before you know it, they’re cuddling and then doing it. Zoey walks in. Oh man.
Before this happens, Cordelia tells Zoey that Zoey managed to bring the Axeman back to life, which is obviously super powerful magic. She warns Zoey that once her mother, Fiona finds out, she’s going to kill her. As Fiona gets weaker, she gets more dangerous. The only thing they can do is kill Fiona, says Cordelia. She’s dabbling in some serious matricide (she hates her mum, remember?).
Speaking of Fiona, she had a hot and steamy night with the Axeman (haha) but then, like lots of men, he messes it all up by opening up his big mouth. He tells her this totally creepy story about how he’s been spying on her since she was little (he’s an eternal ghost, keep in mind) and at first he thought of her as a DAUGHTER but then he watched her grow, and saw how beautiful she became, and completely fell in love with her. Ugh ugh ugh. Fiona doesn’t like it. She storms out and tells him to stay away. Good call, girl. But what’s he going to do now?
There’s a whole subplot regarding Queenie and Marie Laveau. SO basically, Marie tells Queenie that the Coven will never accept her as their own because she’s African American. But if Queenie brings Marie Daphne, she will let Queenie join them. “Who says I want to?” says Queenie. I have a feeling she’s having a lot of doubts…
It doesn’t help that Daphne tells Queenie a terrible story about how she killed a slave’s baby and took its blood for immortality (which doesn’t even work) and then the slave killed herself by jumping off the balcony. Queenie is repulsed, as are we. So in the end she rats out Daphne to Marie Laveau. It looks as if they are torturing her and taking her blood for anti-aging remedies. Tit for tat, I guess.
Oh, and at the end, Zoey is seduced by Madison into having a threesome with her and dead Kyle. Oh no. Jesus. The end.
The Analysis
I liked this week’s episode, but two “transition” episodes in a row with little climaxes or substantial plot development has left me a bit jaded. We need someone to die and we need more witchcraft. Maybe we’re just well past Halloween and its content (this is the most Halloweenie season of AHS yet), or maybe there was simply too little magic and too much gruesome. In any case, I still look forward to next week. Surely Ryan Murphy and the gang has some tricks up their sleeves.