AHS Coven: The Perfect Man?

The second episode of American Horror Story: Coven provides a bit more background to our characters as the budding (and former) rivalries between the big divas of the show. We also witness the reappearance of a few dead, but not really dead, but mostly dead characters and I’m completely relieved by their return. Here’s where we are…

 

Stupid Cordelia (that’s her name for now):

Cordelia is having reproductive problems. She and her husband (who knew she had a husband?) consult with their doctor who tells them that the fertility drugs she’s been taking aren’t working. Cordelia’s man apparently knows all about her magical background and wants her to just use a spell to get knocked up. It’s easier, cheaper, less stressful, and she might be able to use that extra fertility treatment time keeping her students from killing people. Just sayin. So Cordelia does some sort of a dark spell complete with a pentagram, and she and her husband proceed to have evil black magic sex while covered in snakes. Chances are she now has a demon baby in her oven. Stupid Cordelia.

 

The Youngins:

We learn that Precious Queenie arrived at Miss Robichaux's Academy via one nasty customer service incident. She was formerly a manager at a Popeye’s or something like it. Holy stereotypes, Batman! Really? The heavy African-American girl worked at a fried chicken place? Classy stuff, AHS. Anywho, there was a dude there who acted incredibly rude, calling Precious Queenie awful names while trying to secure an extra piece of chicken. The lengths to which some people go to for good soul food… She retaliated by shoving her arm in a fryer and scorching the dude up. As Precious Queenie explains this story she also lets us know she’s descended from Tituba, a very famous house slave from Salem. I assume we will hear much more about this in the episodes to come.

When we first see Zoe in the hour, she is reading the obituary for our dearly departed frat boy, Kyle. Madison interrupts, apologizes (but doesn’t really mean it) and says it was for the best. After all, if they were to take their relationship too much further, he would have succumbed to her toxic vagina. Again, sucks to be Zoe.

The girls’ conversation is cut short when they are called into Stupid Cordelia’s office for questioning. Seems the local police are onto the young witches. One of the detectives calls Zoe out on visiting the douchebag fraternity guy who survived the bus accident. He links her visit and douchebag’s death to the death of Zoe’s former boyfriend, Charles.  Zoe freaks out almost immediately and tells the detectives everything. Oh good lord. Can I punch her? Can someone? Thankfully, Fiona steps in does better than that. She employs some pretty phenomenal brainwashing and the two detectives forget everything and are allowed to leave (mostly) unharmed. Fiona then throws both girls against the wall and tells them “The weakest of us are better than the best of them. The only thing you have to be afraid of is me.” Duly noted. I’m still waiting to see how much strength it’s going to take her to send Queenie flying…

 

And how do the two young witches handle their scolding? Do they lay low? Take the day to help Queenie get over her distressing Popeye’s experience? Nah. Zoe and Madison break into the morgue with a resurrection spell. Throughout the room they find various parts of the fraternity boys on the bus, including Kyle’s. And yup, they think this is the perfect opportunity to make their own Frankenstein. Frankenkyle maybe? Yeah, I like that. This is really Zoe’s only chance at love. I imagine her toxic vagina will have no effect on a dead man.  

 

The Frankenkyle spell works, but only after Madison thinks it failed and leaves Zoe alone with all of the dead bodies/parts. As Zoe drives off with Frankenkyle, Misty Day pops up in the back seat of the car. Lily Rabe is back! Yaaaaaaaaaaay! Sure, she’s only really haunting the land, but I was SO pissed last week when I thought she had just made a cameo. Misty takes the young lovebirds home to her shack and vows to nurse Frankenkyle back to health.  They listen to “Rhiannon” and Misty tells Zoe that Stevie Nicks is “The White Witch. The only witch before you I've ever known.” Oh how she makes me smile.

 

The Divas:

Fiona has quite the smell coming from her chambers….tends to happen when you have a woman who’s been buried for almost 200 years tied to a chair in your bedroom. After Nan shoos Madame LaLaurie from the house, Fiona finds her sitting outside her old home, and Madame LaLaurie finally tells her story.  She’s not dead at all. She’s immortal after being tricked by “The Black Devil.” You see, Angela Bassett (I now know her character name is Marie Laveau, another real person) didn’t poison her after all. Instead when Madame LaLaurie woke up from the love potion slumber, she found Marie outside of her house with a mob. They had hung Madame LaLaurie’s family, and I was surprised to see her display such grief over these deaths...well, just her daughters. She had apparently planned to kill her husband anyway. Having murdered Madame LaLaurie’s family, Marie explained that she had given her everlasting life, not a love potion. Madame LaLaurie was then buried alive but wishes nothing more than to die at this point.

Somehow Marie Laveau bestowed immortality (or one hell of a youth spell) upon herself as well. She now owns a salon nearby. Fiona shows up to get her hair did and the two engage in perhaps my favorite discussion in all three AHS seasons. Fiona claims the white witches are superior. Marie claims those witches learned everything from the Voodoo witches…with Tituba starting everything with her power of necromancy. Fiona is offended. Marie continues to do Fiona’s hair and they go back and forth oh so cordially as if they were simply discussing competing fast food chains (shout out to Precious Queenie). The high point for me is when Jessica Lane interjects “no more spray” then continues on without missing a beat. Amazing.

 

Neither woman wins the argument, but Fiona does threaten to set the place on fire before she leaves. Marie knows Fiona has the upper hand and a battle is coming…or so she tells…the MINOTAUR!!! Whoa! He’s still around too?! I have to hand it to Angela Bassett – Tina Turner has nothing on her.

 

The episode ends there and I’m pretty satisfied. We now have some longevity for Lily Rabe and Evan Peters, we know Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett have been around a long time and have quite the score to settle, and we have Jessica Lange just being fantastic. I’m not sure that I care at all about Cordelia’s storyline just yet, but I imagine as her demon baby (seems we need one of those every season) takes shape, she’ll get more interesting. For now though I just giggle in anticipation of the Bates/Lange/Bassett grouping and can’t wait for next week.

AHS Coven: Hell Hath No Fury

We start the Season 3 journey at Kathy Bates’ house in 1834. The newest member to the AHS family plays  Madame LaLaurie (who actually existed), and as the show opens she is throwing some sort of party at her New Orleans plantation. She introduces the gentlemen callers to her three daughters, the youngest of which speaks of her talents in the boudoir…so we already know this girl is a slut. Momma’s not happy.

Cut to Madame LaLaurie getting ready for bed and putting on a little foundation before sleep. Oh no wait. That’s blood. Whatever floats your boat, lady. Her face-painting is interrupted by news that her youngest has been cavorting with the help - seems they were caught having a romp after the party. Momma has gone from not happy to furious and proceeds to beat the shit out of her kid. The horny slave takes quite a beating too. Madame LaLaurie orders the slave to be chained up in her attic, where she apparently makes a habit of torturing slaves. Everyone has their hobbies I guess. Inspired by the Greek mythology stories her father read to her growing up, Momma puts a bull’s head on the horny slave and her version of a minotaur is born.

 

After we see the opening credits (which are gross by the way) we jump to present day. Season 1 vet Taissa Farminga introduces us to her character, Zoe. So Zoe is not quite a slut…but she does bring her boyfriend Charlie home with her in an effort to lose her virginity. Somehow during the act though Charlie has a nosebleed…which then turns into blood pouring from several areas, convulsions, then death. The coroner’s report stated Charlie died of a brain aneurysm, but Zoe finds out later that she’s a witch and caused the death herself. That news has to be met with mixed emotions…

 

“Honey, you’re a witch.”

“Woohoo!”

“But you have a toxic vagina.”

“Damn it.”

After the Men in Black and Frances Conroy/old Moira/the Angel of death (no idea what her character's name is yet)  come to Zoe’s house to take her away, she journeys to New Orleans to a school “for people like her.” Giving us a history lesson, she notes that after the Salem witch trials many witches fled south ending up in Louisiana. When she arrives at Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, we know we are in for one hell of a ride. This friendly looking place was established as a finishing school in 1790. During the Civil War it was converted into a hospital before finally being transformed to a safe haven for young witches.

 

Zoe explores the long white corridors as she searches for signs of life in this place. She hears people running around…playing tricks on her. At first I think it’s the guys from Eyes Wide Shut but to my relief they are students themselves:

·         Madison (Emma Roberts) is a young actress with a temper. She’s telekinetic and can make things explode when she’s pissed off. 

·         Queenie (I’m going to have a hard time not calling her “Precious”) is essentially a human voodoo doll. She herself doesn’t feel the pain, but her targets better watch out.

·         Nan (played by Season 1’s Jamie Brewer) is the resident sweetheart and a clairvoyant.

This season Stupid Lana plays Cordelia Foxx, the headmistress of the Academy. She escorts Zoe throughout the house and the camera angle on the staircase in this place is pretty awesome…it’s a long staircase, like the stairway to heaven in Asylum, but it splits off in two directions. Perhaps representing good magic vs. bad magic? Or maybe the regular witches vs. the “supremes?” Cordelia explains to us that supremes are witches with countless gifts. To my disappointment Diana Ross is not making an appearance this season.

 

Elsewhere Jessica Lange watches monkey research hoping to find the secret to eternal life.  She plays Fiona, a witch looking to maintain her youth at any cost. Fiona tries to coerce the monkey research doctor into giving her an experimental drug he’s been working on, but no dice.

How does one deal with this disappointment? Well with cocaine, cigarettes and dancing alone near the windows of her house of course! She turns on the news to see Lily Rabe...who this season plays Misty Day (totally a porn name), a witch with the power of resurgence. The news channel reports that Misty was burned at the stake and Fiona is pisssssed. So am I. I love Lily Rabe. Ryan Murphy giveth and Ryan Murphy taketh away….bummer. Fiona’s rage is interrupted by the monkey doctor at her door. She asks him once again for the youth drug. He says no, she starts some witchy shit, and he’s donezo. Fiona kisses him and literally sucks the life out of him. I’ll never look at the phrase “sucking face” the same way again.

When we next see Cordelia, she is hard at work with has her own version of Breaking Bad. I'm not sure what she's cooking up in her lab but something tells me she has quite a few tricks up her sleeve. Fiona shows up and we learn that they are mother and daughter. Fiona is a supreme, by the way, and she’s none too pleased that Cordelia isn’t the witch she could have been. Okay so Cordelia has mommy issues.

Meanwhile Madison and Zoe head out to a fraternity party because they are young girls and should completely ignore their deadly powers for the night and drink some really cheap beer. Zoe meets Kyle, played by AHS vet Evan Peters, and Kyle is a responsible member of a rival fraternity. It’s love at first sight, but Zoe knows if she bangs him, he’s done for.

Madison, on the other hand, meets one of Kyle’s douchebag fraternity brothers. She tells him he can be her slave and commands him to get her another drink. When this horny slave asked what he’ll get in return, Madison responds: “slaves get nothing.” Well that’s not really true, is it? The horny slave slips something in her drink and Madison is pretty much gang raped with Kyle’s other douchebag brothers taking videos. Kyle tries to stop them but they flee to their bus, knocking out Kyle as he enters the vehicle to attack them. Madison walks out to the street calmly and blows up the bus as it drives away. Problem solved? Nope. While Kyle died in the crash, the head rapist douchebag survived. Zoe visits him in the in the hospital and gives him and aneurysm  via a hand job and some sex. Now that’s what I call teamwork.

Fiona finds out about these shenanigans and scolds the girls the next morning, throwing Madison against the wall when she starts to get mouthy. She then takes the girls on a field trip to Madame LaLaurie’s house, which is now a historical site with tours. The guide tells them that the house is famous for 179 years worth of hauntings. She also says Nicolas Cage is a previous owner….so chances are it’s the angry spirits of his dead career haunting the house and not Kathy Bates. The guide also explains that Madame LaLaurie met her demise when a voodoo-y Angela Bassett poisoned her ass with a “fidelity potion.” Apparently the horny slave had been Angela Bassett’s lover and she wanted revenge. Wow. He got around. We find out that Madame LaLaurie’s body was never found…but Nan knew immediately that she had been buried in an unmarked grave across the street. Fiona and some unidentified friends dig up Madame LaLaurie and man she looks good for a dead woman. That blood mask she put on every night must have had some serious anti-aging powers.   “Come on, Mary Todd Lincoln” beckons Fiona. “I’ll buy you a drink.” Fantastic.

 

This ends the first episode of Coven.  We’ve been provided with quite a setup for the season, and I’m beyond thrilled to see what’s coming next. Is Misty Day really gone? Will we see Kyle again? What role will the minotaur play? What’s the deal with Angela Bassett? I assume she’s still around too? The rivalry between these women as already pretty amazing, and I hope it only gets better from here.

 

American Horror Story: Coven

I have to say…it’s been a long 8 months without American Horror Story. I’ve been reading blogs, scouring through YouTube and other sites for trailers and interviews, and really just yearning for the return of AHS. Season 1 was amazing. Season 2 took a bit of a downward turn only because there was a ton of content, but the storylines weren’t always consistent…and wrapping them up (the ones that were wrapped up) seemed to happen in a flash. The performances is Season 2, however, far surpass the first season. As Coven approaches, I hope that we have the best of both worlds. If we could revert back to one overall theme, but include spellbinding characters (see what I did there?), I would be so grateful. With a witchy premise, a cast that includes Jessica Lange duking it out with Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates…Kathy freakin’ Bates…I think to myself: “How could this go wrong?” I’m sticking to that frame of mind for the time being. Can’t WAIT for this to start.