AHS Freak Show Season Finale: Curtain Call

Well American Horror Story fans, we've reached the end of Freak Show, the fourth and perhaps most frustrating puzzling season so far. The final episode is, well, it's something I guess. Here's how it all went down...

There's No Business Like Show Business

Guess what? Not only is Dandy the new owner of the Cabinet of Curiosities, but he's also the new headliner...cuz...he knows show tunes. The remaining freak show family is not happy about the new management. In fact, they're completely creeped out by him. But alas, they've decided there's nowhere else they can go, so it has to be acceptable to be part of a show that passes from one murderous owner to the next. 

Anyway, Dandy is an asshole. He thinks the show isn't selling tickets because the freaks are too boring and we all know how Dandy feels about boring. He says a lot of dickish things to Paul, Penny, Amazon Eve and Ima, and they take it for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly (no seriously - they JUST got back from talking about how there's nowhere to go), they decide they can't work for Dandy. Eve punches Dandy in the face...and Paul tells him "you'll never be one of us." Now, why they just leave him on the floor and not kill him is beyond me. Instead they just head off to their tents and trailers to pack their things. 

Anything Goes

Dandy cleans himself up and begins calmly strutting through the camp grounds. Paul approaches him about their last week's pay and Dandy promptly shoots him in the head. Unlike the "mortal" knife wound he suffered earlier in the season, this shot kills him immediately. Penny is next, followed by, well, everyone who isn't a major name in the series. The only one who has a chance to put up a fight is Amazon Eve and for a second, I think she's got his ass...but then he kills her too. We're 19 minutes into the episode and I just want to turn it off and call it a night. How effing ridiculous to have a season of "freaks" struggling to live normal lives only to have an obnoxious, bratty, jackass do a mass shooting and blow 95% of them away. 

Desiree manages to escape (because she's Angela Bassett and the other famous people are pretty much gone) and Dot and Bette are still alive as well (because I DARE Ryan Murphy to actually kill off a Sarah Paulson character). Dandy has kept them tied up all this time because he wants them all to himself. 

Jimmy, forever being screwed, makes his way from the all purpose warehouse to the camp grounds. In my mind he's thinking: Hey, where is everybody? I know my mom, dad, and girlfriend are all dead, and my two friends Meep and Ma Petite were murdered too...and somehow Pepper is gone along with my hands...but where's everyone else? He calls for Elsa (man, he is way behind) and looks for her under the big top. Instead, he finds the dead bodies of Dandy's massacre. He drops to his knees and sobs. Desiree pops out from the shadows and comforts him, crying just as hard. 

Marry Me A Little 

When we next see Dot and Bette, they are walking down the aisle toward Dandy and a priest. Bette is super happy and Dot has an "I wish we'd had the surgery" look on her face. They marry and Dandy immediately starts talking about the wedding night. "A stallion deserves respect from all his mares." Oh good lord. Bette interrupts and tells Dandy she's planned a special wedding feast. She even has a french cook preparing all of Dandy's favorites. Since when does Bette know French cooks? Dandy says he's the luckiest man alive...Bette says she's the luckiest woman...and I'm hoping Dot will barf so I don't have to. No dice. 

Dandy and his brides sit on opposite sides of the dining room table and wait for their fancy meals to arrive. He sips champagne and talks about taking a safari honeymoon where they can make freak babies and skin cats. Yup. He doesn't realize the maid pouring is champagne has three breasts. He's too distracted to see that Desiree dropped a little something extra in his drink. He's completely shocked to realize he's been had! The twins didn't marry him willingly. "Did you honestly think we'd ever lay in your bed after you massacred our entire family?!?!" Dandy is confused. He believed every word Bette said about their love and life together. Dot replies "My sister is a truly a great actress. Bette Davis couldn't have given a more convincing performance." Well, tell that to the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Golden Globes who decided to nominate Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates only this season. 

Anyway, Bette pulls our Dandy's gun and shoots him in the arm so he stays in his seat. Jimmy arrives as the butler and tells Dandy that he's finally about to be part of a show....just as he passes out.  He wakes up in a glass case (ala Houdini's great water escape) and pleads to be let go. Dandy, who somehow doesn't seem  to have a bullet wound in his arm now, maintains that he's doing God's work and the freak show folks had to die. He also claims he's immortal. Heh. We'll see. Desiree tells Dandy about the morbidity museum and how several of their friends (or friend's body parts) ended up in glass jars there. Just before she unleashes the hose and fills the tank, Desiree says: "You might look like a motion picture dreamboat, but you are the biggest freak of them all." Despite Dandy's best efforts, he does not break the glass and drowns as Dot, Bette, Jimmy and Desiree watch the show with popcorn. THANK YOU. 

Hey Mr. Producer! 

Elsa has made it to Hollywood unscathed and she's trying like hell to get in to see the president of the World Broadcasting Network. The receptionist keeps brushing her off, but Elsa says she'll wait in the lobby for as long as it takes. When the day ends and the office is closing, Elsa is pissed. She never saw the president walk out and the receptionist says he left out the back door to avoid her. They exchange words, Elsa attacks her, and Michael Beck (the Junior VP of Casting) comes running out to see what the commotion is all about. Elsa is crying at this point and he extends his hand to her and shows her the first kindness she's seen since arriving in California. 

We fast forward to the future a bit where we see a news reel of Elsa receiving her star on the Walk of Fame. She's a three time Emmy winner now for her Friday night "Elsa Mars Variety Hour" and she's also a successful recording artist. She married Michael Beck, made him her manager, and became even more of a diva than she was at the freak show. Turns out Elsa wears the pants in the family and Michael even submits to her dominatrix routine. Neat. They also cheat on each other and have an overall miserable marriage. 

Elsa hasn't forgotten about Massimo though (I pretty much had). He pays her a visit and says he's been spending his time with the army in Nevada, building villages for them to blow up with atomic bombs. Side note - there are many viewers who believe season 5 will be in an area dealing with post-nuclear testing fallout and contamination. I think that's an awesome idea. Back to Massimo... he says Elsa has gotten everything she's ever wanted. But you know what? Elsa is bored. Those are her exact words. She's also lonely. "Eight years ago my best friend made me a birthday cake. That night when she and I sat over my candle, my birthday wish was plain and simple. I just wanted to be loved." Massimo says he loves her, Elsa suggests they run away together, and he says goodbye to her instead. Massimo reveals he has a disease in his lungs that has spread to his bones and he has one month to live. Wow. Really? That's how we're tying up his storyline?

Michael returns home with the head of the network, who has somehow gotten a hold of some 8MM films Elsa shot back in Germany. I'll bet the one where she gets her legs cut off is a real hoot. She denies being in any videos but The Los Angeles Times is ready to run a story which will also include her time as the head of a freak show. Luckily, he tells her, those people are all dead so there's less of a story to tell on that front. Elsa is shocked to hear this...and I have to hit the pause button. Shocked? She sold the show to a maniac before selling it to another maniac and she's surprised they didn't live happily ever after? Elsa is pretty much fired but is able to perform one last show...on Halloween. 

The Big Finish

As Elsa's Halloween special airs on TV, we see Desiree and Angus pass by a department store with a television in the window. They seem to be doing well and have some kids, so Desiree became a mother after all. Jimmy and the twins watch the show at home because they also got married and are about to have a baby. I guess that whole "I'm in love with someone else" thing flies out the door when that someone is literally sawed in half by a psychopath. Good for them.

The Halloween performance summons Edward Mordrake and his gang (including a mask-less Twisty) and he comes for Elsa. She welcomes him, all the while the camera is rolling, and Edward raises his knife. Twisty says "it hurts, but only for a moment." Edward stabs her in the heart and the audience sees Elsa fall...as she loses consciousness though, Edward tells her "your place is not with us." She ends up in some sort of alternate reality/nether world freak show where her departed family is going on about their business as normal. Canadian Dr. Evil  Ethel explains that Elsa doesn't have to pay for her sins...that she's been reunited with her loved ones and they play to a full house every night. They've been in desperate need of a headliner though, so Elsa reprises the role she started the season with and closes the show as a star.

That's a wrap folks. While I greatly enjoyed the return of characters like Twisty, Edward, and Ethel (even with that unforgivable accent), I spent most of the episode in WTF land. That's really how I spent the entire second half of the season. In summary...we had 13 episodes where we rooted for freaks to be understood, except for the ones we didn't. We had characters who sometimes sang modern day songs, and we had many "gotcha!" scenes that could have been used to tie up some plot lines or helped some of the ridiculous tangents make sense. We had guest stars that served little to no purpose (MVP award goes to NPH for his magic trick), and in the end....the majority of the freaks who felt they had nowhere else to go were massacred only to be joined my the "mother" who left them behind in the afterlife. Oh, and when did Edward Mordrake gain the ability to send people to places other than Hell? You can add that to the rest of this list of items that still has me scratching my head: 

-- The freaks had no problem ripping apart the body of the detective who called them freaks at the beginning of the season, or turning Stanley into a bird for what he did, OR using tar and feathers on Penny's dad, but Dandy gets a punch in the nose and a "where's my paycheck?" 

-- Stanley approaches Dell and says "you have to kill a freak or I'll share your secret," so Dell kills a freak instead of the guy who knows his secret.

--Nora spoke to her daughter on the phone at least once a week, but she had been gone several weeks before Precious Regina showed up, and many days before threatening to contact the police after showing up. AND she only contacted the police because Dandy admitting to killing her mother. 

-- Elsa loved Pepper deeply but felt the need to send her to live with the sister who had already abandoned her.  

-- I had thought Twisty had one of the most interesting background stories that was barely explored...but he was joined in the last couple of episodes by Massimo, who had a pretty badass revenge story that included Nazi officers and the future Dr. Arden, but it was glanced over. Let's just have Edward take Twisty right when his character could have had more depth, and Massimo? Eh, we'll just give him cancer because we're at episode 13 and he can't end up with Elsa.

-- A "talent agent" came to the freak show so early on in the season, but the delay in going to Hollywood didn't raise any eyebrows...nor did his explanation of Ethel's "suicidal" decapitation car crash. 

There's no official word yet on who will come back for season 5 or if Jessica Lange is really done with the show, but regardless of my feelings about Freak Show, Jessica Lange was amazing as Elsa Mars. The show could survive without her for a little while if Ryan Murphy retains actresses like Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates...but it just won't be the same without that special kind of crazy Ms. Lange brings with her each year. Though Freak Show is my least favorite of the 4 seasons, I absolutely still remain a huge AHS fan and will eagerly await the arrival of September when we'll meet up with some of these actors again. Will season 5 somehow tie into Murder House or Coven? Will favorites like Lily Rabe and Zachary Quinto return? Will there be an Area 51 type theme? I'm sure casting news and plot tidbits will trickle their way out soon. Til then, I will look forward to the return of The Walking Dead in a few short weeks.