AHS Freak Show Episode 12: Show Stoppers

Wow. Just...wow. This episode threw me for a loop (in a good way) and somewhat redeemed the "meh" second half of the season. We have only one week left until the Freak Show finale, and I've been anxiously waiting for the blood bath to continue. Episode 12 gives us revenge, brutality, and a new connection between the American Horror Story seasons. Here's where we are with "Show Stoppers."

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

Stanley shows up to the big top to join everyone for dinner and a movie. Elsa is heading to Hollywood (for the millionth time) and the freaks are sending her out in style. She raises her glass to Chester, the new owner of the Cabinet of Curiosities, and creepy ass Chester thanks her while Marjorie insults her. Okay. Enough with the damn puppet. 

Elsa asks Chester to leave her to say goodbye to her monsters (paging Lady Gaga), and once Chester exits the tent...Elsa turns her attention to Richard/Stanley. She thanks him and says they will celebrate the next chapter in their lives with a feast and a movie. "Not The Sign of the Cross again," says one of the freaks. Ha! For those of you Season 2 lovers, that movie was Sister Jude's fave as well. Elsa has a different movie in mind though. She chooses Freaks, which is an awesome film I referenced in the season premiere post. Paul and Amazon Eve tell Stanley the premise of the movie...in a traveling circus, a trapeze artist marries a midget for his inheritance while planning to poison him and take his money. She gets drunk at a very strange dinner one night and reveals her intentions. The freaks take revenge on her and her co-conspirator during a dark rainy night. If you haven't seen the movie, seriously, you should. That revenge scene was brilliant way before its time. 

Stanley decides to skip the movie though...he has talent agent stuff to do. Elsa tells Stanley they have a present for him, so he sits back down as a wrapped box is brought to the table. He opens a human head...belonging to the director of the morbidity museum. There goes your paycheck buddy. Seems Desiree and Maggie did not return from their field trip to see Ma Petite's jar empty handed. Maggie pipes up and says she already revealed his identity and before Stanley can blink, he's been tied to the wheel of terror and the knives are flying. Should he worry? I mean, Paul's "mortal" wound only lasted an episode before he was miraculously better. Elsa nails him in the leg. They cut him down and he tells everyone that Elsa killed Ethel. A light bulb briefly goes on in some of the freaks' heads... do they now realize that none of that shit about Ethel's death made sense? No matter. Elsa tells Stanley to run, and he hobbles out of the tent with the freaks close behind him. 

Surprise! It's dark and rainy just like the Freaks movie. The "family" circles up around him with their various weapons...and the opening credits roll.

Later the freaks sit around the table reminiscing about how awesome Ethel was. Wait! Stanley said Elsa killed her. Wait! Ethel wasn't the type to kill herself. Wait! NONE OF THAT SHIT MADE SENSE TO BEGIN WITH. Congrats guys, it took you wayyyy longer than it should have to realize a suicide by car/tree/chain/decapitation sounded ridiculous. They decide it's time to do something about Elsa.

Did Somebody Say Empty Handed?

Jimmy has made it back to the show grounds and he's recovering in what I'm now calling the all purpose warehouse. Elsa tells him about Dell's demise and he doesn't take it well. No kidding. He's lost both of his parents and his hands in a very brief time frame...dude is allowed to be a little emotional. Jimmy says he'll never forgive Maggie, so clearly Maggie should tend to his bandages. She tells Jimmy she loves him and she wants a clean start. "I'm gonna make things right with them and with you." He essentially calls her a delusional bitch and I'm inclined to agree. Telling Desiree about Ma Petite WELL after the murder happened doesn't make her a hero. Now Ethel is dead because of her suspicions, Dell is dead because he's a moron and killed Ma Petite instead of Stanley, and Jimmy has stubs for hands because Stanley sold them. Maggie, you're kind of an asshole. 

Enter Massimo, the doctor who gave Elsa her fancy new legs (played by last season's Axeman, Danny Huston). Elsa was able to magically track him down and he arrives in Jupiter on incredibly short notice. She introduces him to Jimmy and they tell Jimmy all about Elsa's legs and back story. Massimo and Elsa were in love back then and Massimo nursed her back to heath, taught her how to walk again, and really saved her life in more ways than one. The two parted ways when Massimo went in search of the guys who deformed Elsa, as his need for revenge drove them apart. Massimo killed all but one - a psycho and soldier known as Hans Gruber...whoa! Hans Gruber ended up as Dr. Arden in Asylum. Craziness. Hans tortured Massimo for quite some time before a higher ranking officer set him free. While he is happy to be reunited with Elsa, his time with Gruber rendered him soulless and unable to love. Bummer. 

Jimmy consults with Massimo and realizes he has a chance to have "normal" hands...or something close to it. But when his fake hands are revealed, they are exact replicas of Jimmy's lobster claws. "They're perfect" he says to Massimo. 

Wanna See A Trick?

Chester's...um...liaisons with Dot and Bette continue and Marjorie is not happy. The twins are FINALLY creeped out by Marjorie "watching" from the night stand and Chester puts the puppet on the floor. When the twins leave, Marjorie rips Chester a new one for knocking her off the night stand. She says there's no way the twins can love him with him being a murderer and all. Chester maintains that Marjorie killed his wife and her lover. "That's impossible. I'm a doll." Cut to a flashback of Chester stabbing both women to death. Marjorie says the twins have to go.

This trick is a side-splitter. 

Dandy arrives in Dot and Bette's tent with some valuable information about their de-flowerer. Dot doesn't trust Dandy at all and she tosses the detective's file aside. The girls look over the information once Dandy leaves, and Dot instantly has doubts about Chester. She tells him they no longer want to be his assistant during his magic act. Chester is disappointed, saying he plans to "saw them in half," which has never been done before with a two-headed body. Maggie volunteers instead because she wants to be part of the show and she is reallllly trying to fit in at this point. Chester goes into total crazy mode. When Maggie steps into the box to rehearse, Chester sees his wife instead. He cuffs her feet so she's unable to bring her legs to the top half of the box. Maggie yells at him "I can't pull my feet through!" And then...Chester saws her in half!!! Oh. My. God. RIP Maggie. 

It takes a second for Chester to realize what he's done. He panics, flees the stage, and races back to his tent.  He gets into some weird puppet fight with Marjorie and kills her too...or something. I mean, she's a puppet. At the same time, Paul, Desiree and Amazon Eve pop their heads out to see the two halves of Maggie. I expect them to be a little more outraged, but Desiree says she had it coming. Paul asks what they should do now. "Steal her jewelry and bury the bitch." Ha! Oh how I wish we'd had more Desiree this season. 

You're Next

Amazon Eve breaks the news to Jimmy that Maggie's dead...and I really feel for the guy. On the plus side, she kind of sucked at dealing with his bandages. Good thing the doctor is there. Amazon Eve tells Jimmy that the group will be killing Elsa that night, because why not at this point? She's got some pretty nice jewelry as well. 

The twins warn Elsa and tell her she has to leave. "Your monsters are going to kill you." Elsa straps on her wooden legs and gets the hell out of there. The freaks arrive in an empty tent and they are pisssssed. Maybe you guys should have been a little more discrete with your plotting?

Elsa meets up with Dandy and offers him the Cabinet of Curiosities for a hefty price. Sure, Chester owns the place but he's effing crazy. Dandy doesn't even have to kill him to get him out of the way - the dude brings Marjorie's "body" to the police station and confesses to murdering her. I'm hoping he gets shipped off to the asylum with Pepper. 

Stuttering Stanley!

Dandy arrives at the show grounds and announces himself as the new owner, saying Elsa has left Jupiter to follow her dreams. Dandy says his own dream is to be in show business...and with the freak show his dreams have come true as well. As he steps up to the empty stage in the empty big top to take some bows, he hears a noise behind him in a crate/cage thing. For a second I think it's Meep...but it's actually a limbless (and I'm assuming tongueless) Stanley. That. Is awesome. Granted, it's totally a rip off from the Freaks movie revenge, but it's still pretty great to see Stanley suffer. 

We have one episode remaining in season 4 of American Horror Story and I'm guessing we will lose several more characters in that final hour. I'm glad the Cabinet of Curiosities crew finally got a clue about Ethel, and I'm completely fine with Maggie's demise. She played a pretty big role in the freak show breakdown and Desiree couldn't have said it better. Dandy's death has to be coming next week though, right? Right? I've been eager for it since his first episode. Will the twins survive? Will Jimmy's new wooden lobster hands give him the confidence he needs to lead the freaks out of Dandy's control? Will the fact that he's a fugitive wanted for murder be brought up again or will we glance over it? Is Chester really gone or will he return with some other weird ass gimmick? There's a lot to consider as the season draws to a close. Here's hoping the finale is as least as good as tonight's episode.