AHS Apocalypse: The Morning After

For the folks tuning into Episode 2 of American Horror Story: Apocalypse thinking this would be the week of an explosive Coven/Murder House crossover...sad to say tonight is not the night. BUT we do kinda, sorta see another familiar face in this hour as the inhabitants of Outpost 3 find out a little more about Wilhemina and Matrix Miriam's motives and meet creepy ass Michael Langdon for the first time. Do they all survive this second week of the series? Do they once again become purple people eaters? Here's where we are after "The Morning After."

Dreams That Had Never Come True

We begin the hour with Emily in her underwear preparing for bed. This nightly routine is ruined by the appearance of snakes in her closet. Yes, snakes in a secure underground bunker. They must have traveled a long way...with creepy ass Michael Langdon perhaps? No matter. Matrix Miriam rushes in and announces the group now has some fresh protein as if this snake invasion is an okay thing that's happening. "This looks like some good eatin'!" When the group assembles for their next protein meal, the snakes are still alive slither out of the bowls. Really. WTF is going on in this place?

Team Purple then meets their creepy new guest and he introduces himself simply as Langdon from The Cooperative. He explains that the other outposts have been overrun and he is there to select people to transfer with him to a totally impenetrable sanctuary. Why the outposts weren't totally impenetrable is beyond me, but here we are. Langdon also mentions that those who are left behind will receive a suicide pill for their trouble, and he delivers these details like an evil Willy Wonka. 

"The suspense is terrible...
I hope it'll last."

Gallant volunteers as tribute, offering to be interviewed first, and before they even begin, Langdon says: "I'm not going to tell you what criteria I'm using to grade you. Things you may feel are helpful may be hurtful. Things you may feel will compel rejection may be exactly what I'm looking for. If you hedge, I will know. If you lie, I will know. And if you try to trick me, I will know and this interview will be over and you will die here. Painfully." He asks about Gallant's sexual orientation and Gallant is quick to confirm he is gay. He is also quick to confirm he hates his grandmother's guts. Weird that he went home during the missile threat to pick her up and bring her to safety. Gallant tells Langdon that Evie essentially wanted him to be more of a Queer Eye For the Straight Guy gay than the person he actually was. Instead he would rebel, showing up to fancy dinners in leather vests, blasting club music and such. "So, you like leather?" Langdon asks. HA! I have to wonder what kind of effort it took to get Evan Peters in the rubber suit in Murder House. Looked very uncomfortable. Gallant is looking to break the "no sex" rule right then and there, but Langdon abruptly ends the interview. 

Do The Things You Want To Do

As I sit here wondering what the hell any of this has to do with a promised Season 1 and Season 3 mashup, Gallant receives a visitor. It's the Rubber Man! I guess Langdon took a few things from the Murder House with him before the apocalypse. Good for him. Even though Langdon knows the no copulation rule is bogus, Gallant doesn't, and yet he is bent over and moans super loud anyway. So loud, in fact, that Evie pops her head in the door to see what all the commotion is about. If she wasn't pleased with Gallant's representation of the gay community before, she sure as hell can't be happy about the rubber being pounding her grandson with reckless abandon. Just sayin. Evie goes running off to tell Matrix Miriam about what she just witnessed, hoping that Gallant will be executed and give her better odds of making the cut to the sanctuary. 

Meanwhile, Langdon pays Wilhemina a visit and it's time for her interview. He immediately calls her  out on her fake rules and mind games but she's not intimidated. Wilhemina goes all "men have ruined the earth" on him (I guess she doesn't sense the evil Willy Wonka thing the way I do), but her balls of steel disappear when Langdon asks her to unzip her dress...revealing a spinal mess that causes her to use a cane...that I assumed was a just prop to make her look more badass. Bummer. Wilhemina is hoping this intimate discussion will get her into the supposed sanctuary, but Langdon tells her she has not made the cut just as Matrix Miriam bursts in to tell the boss lady there's been some unauthorized banging in the outpost. 

Speaking of unauthorized banging, Timothy and Emily use Langdon's late night visits to sneak into his room to look for clues as to who he really is. His laptop is half closed and they are able to...check his email? How is that even possible? There's wireless internet in the bunker? He has a mobile hotspot in the rubber suit? There's a technology center next to the decontamination room? Anywho, Langdon's emails reveal that Wilhemina is making shit up and her rules do not coincide with The Cooperative's instructions. They leave the room before Langdon returns (not really searching anywhere else for anything else) and as they are getting ready to depart, we see the Rubber Man just sort of chillin' on the ceiling. So wait, if the Rubber Man is, uh, stuck to the ceiling, and Langdon left the room looking like Langdon before these two arrived, who is in the suit?

I feel like Timothy and Emily have several options now that they know they are stuck in an outpost with a shady leader and an evil Willy Wonka that somehow sends and receives emails. Several options. But their first action item is to get it on since, you know, technically they are allowed to. And they aren't even that discreet about it. Matrix Miriam finds them in post coital snooze and drags them to Wilhemina because this bitch is still in charge and her rules stand. The youngins could have used this opportunity to tell the ladies what they found, but nah... better to whine about the punishment. 

Just To Spend Time With You

There's plenty of punishment to go around tonight as Wilhemina has Gallant chained up and tortured for information. She believes Gallant and Langdon knew each other before the apocalypse and are somehow out to get her. Gallant doesn't have anything to say to his captors and when they leave, Langdon enters. Gallant assumes his knight in rubber onesie is there to save him, but much to Gallant's disappointment, Langdon claims he was not his late night visitor. "I wouldn't fuck you if you were the last man on earth. And you almost are." Before he leaves the room, Langdon also informs Gallant that his grandmother is the one who turned him in. Ouch. And here I thought Gallant and Langdon were about to get creative with the torture instruments.... 

Gallant is released from the torture room and he ponders the state of things in the library. The Rubber Man appears and slowwwwwwly leads him to a bedroom. Gallant pushes the Rubber Man down on the bed (I didn't think the Rubber Man was the submissive type) and climbs on top of him. He then reaches for scissors that are for some reason right nearby, and he begins to slash the Rubber Man's abdomen while screaming "NOT IF I WERE THE LAST MAN ON EARTH?!" When the stabbing stops, Langdon peers in from the doorway. Gallant sees him and now realizes he hasn't murdered the man who rejected him. He looks back at the bed and realizes he has slaughtered his grandmother instead. RIP Evie. 

The violence is not quite over. It's time for Timothy and Emily to pay the price for boning even though there isn't supposed to be a boning ban. The duo is taken to the decontamination/execution room and before the young lovers meet their doom, Timothy grabs a gun from one of Matrix Miriam's henchmen and starts shooting. He hits Matrix Miriam and she stumbles into the next room to assess the damage. Funny thing though - Miriam puts her hand over the wound expecting blood and flesh (pretty sure we are all expecting that), but instead there's just a hole with some kind of non-blood fluid leaking out. She's a....robot? An alien? A Westworld host? A mannequin on the move? This shit is getting really weird. 

The episode ends there and I already miss Joan Collins. But if Langdon isn't in the rubber suit...is ghost Tate somehow in Outpost 3? Is the Rubber Man someone Langdon can just conjure because he's an evil Willy Wonka? Is he really there to take people to a more safe "safe zone" or is he there to manipulate the group into killing one another? We didn't see snakes until Langdon arrived. We didn't see the Rubber Man until Langdon arrived. No one hallucinated and killed their kin until Langdon arrived. If I wasn't promised a legit CROSSOVER, I would assume we were entering an And Then There Were None scenario. (Side note: Evie even refers to the rest of the purple people as the "Ten Little Indians" which is one of the book names And Then There Were None was based on. Neat!). But on the other hand, Kathy Bates' gooey non-blood wound is a curveball I was absolutely not expecting tonight. The Cooperative seems to have a whole lot of stuff going on...employing the anti-Christ, building a race of robots to enforce made up rules, shopping for the most fabulous purple clothes ever...they are busy bees. One thing's for sure though - if Miriam truly is a Westworld host on loan to Ryan Murphy, I'm not sure how productive my blog will be. Season 2 of that show was a total mind-fuck that I have not yet recovered from.  

AHS Apocalypse: The End

Welcome back! The new season of American Horror Story has arrived and Ryan Murphy has promised us a crossover with Murder House and Coven. When this hour is over, you may be wondering where the hell the crossover is, but if you watch and listen closely, we have a glimpse. Here's where we are after Apocalypse Episode 1: "The End."

Let's Keep On Looking For The Light

The season begins with aspiring Instagram influencer Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt (Leslie Grossman) getting her hair did. Evan Peters plays Mr. Gallant and the duo are in the midst of making Coco fabulous when Coco's rich daddy Facetimes her. Nuclear warfare is afoot and the world is about to be wiped out. The people in the hair salon assume these reports are a hoax like the nonsense that happened in Hawaii last year, but this is the real deal. Coco's dad says it's too late for him and her mom in their current location but informs Coco that their family has paid for 4 spots in a guaranteed safe place. Just before the call cuts off, he tells Coco to get her ass to the Santa Monica airport. 

Coco calls her partner, Brock (Billy Eichner...these two are just as compatible as their Cult Meadow and Harrison characters) to tell him they have a ticket to safety, but Brock is way the hell on the other side of town so Coco ditches him and takes her personal assistant Mallory (yay Billie Lourd!), Gallant, and his grandmother Evie to fill the 4 spots in whatever safe salvation lies ahead. Evie, by the way, is played by Joan Collins, who could easily just be playing herself in this show. Anyway, somewhere in the mass hysteria growing around them, the foursome boards a private jet that they discover mid-flight is piloted by no one, and they off they go to the unknown safe zone. 

In another part of the city, not long before the missile alert, high school senior Timothy learns that he has just been accepted to UCLA. Woohoo! Dreams come true! He would soon be embarking on a great academic adventure if wasn't for the whole world coming to an end thing. Bummer. As his family hears the missile alert on TV and realizes shit is about to get real, the Men In Black employees of "The Cooperative" show up in an armored vehicle and take Timothy away from his family. Seems he has some sort of special genetic something that makes him valuable in the apocalypse. He is removed from his house by force as his family and the rest of the world are soon completely wiped out in a blaze comparable to most disaster movie blazes. 

If We Can Hold On Through The Night

Timothy is locked up with a girl named Emily, who also has a special genetic something. They are ushered past a man and woman on their knees, apologizing profusely before being shot to death (neat), and they go through some sort of decontamination chamber with the hazmat guys from E.T. before entering their new home. Sarah Paulson emerges from the shadows as Wilhemina Venable...not Cordelia Goode or Billie Dean Howard...and Wilhemina is in charge of this underground safe zone called Outpost 3. It looks like some sort of mansion but Wilhemina says it's a former boys school. Interesting. She references "The Cooperative" as the powers that be, and I'm thinking this has to be the Coven, but I get no confirmation on that tonight. She explains that Timothy and Emily will be in the purple group, the elite color level you want to be in apparently, and others will be in the gray group. They are the servants. I'm sensing some sort of Divergent thing here, but Wilhemina's rules continue on. Everyone dresses up for dinner, no one leaves the building, and no sex allowed without authorization. Apparently the two people who were shot outside had boned and had to be put down. Oh lordy. 

Timothy and Emily dress for dinner and meet the other purple inhabitants of Outpost 3 - The Coco foursome we were introduced to earlier (though Mallory is wearing gray), a TV personality named Dinah Stevens (Adina Porter), and two dudes named Stu and Andre, who I assume are dating. Each night the group listens to The Carpenters' "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" on repeat in the music room until they are called to the dinner table, and they complain about this as if beggars can be choosers when ballistic missiles have depleted the earth. Just sayin.' Finally this fabulous looking crew of ingrates begin to eat, and they complain about the lack of food and variety. Groan. We are then introduced to Miriam Mead and my first observation is: Kathy Bates...The Matrix has you. Miriam is carrying some sort of contraption that's telling her one of the purple people is contaminated. She grabs Gallant and Stu and puts them through a contamination chamber test, so Stu's boyfriend must be pisssssssed, and she discovers Stu is the contaminated party. Instead of cleansing him, she shoots him in the head. Holy shit! He must have had a paid spot ($100M a pop apparently) in the bunker and not the special genetic something. 

Dinner the following evening is surprisingly more robust and plentiful. The elite is eating stew and they are thrilled momentarily. Where did the chefs find the meat you ask? Yep. They served Team Purple a Stu stew. What's an apocalypse without a little cannibalism anyway, right? Though Wilhemina denies they are eating human flesh for dinner, Evie could care less. She thinks her meal is divine and full of fiber. I kind of love her. 

It's Not Too Late

As the purple party reassembles in the music room to discuss whether or not their leaders have served them Stu stew, the Carpenters song has now become "The Morning After" by Maureen McGovern. Sure, it's a hopeful tune...but it was made famous in The Poseidon Adventure, which is a movie about a cruise ship that flips upside down and less than a dozen people survive. Gallant believes this is a message that help is coming and they won't be in this situation forever, but then we cut to 18 months later where the same song is playing, the food rations are minimal, and these folks are beyond miserable. Well, everyone but Timothy and Emily who have a secret, mostly chaste romance.  

Behind closed doors we find out that Matrix Miriam (that's what I'm calling her) and Wilhemina are totally fucking with the inhabitants of Outpost 3. There was no contamination - these bitches killed Stu and fed him to the purples for the hell of it. They also play dress up in purple clothes and play cards when no one is watching. The Collective has no idea of these incidents and made up rules, but whoever they are, I'm sensing swift punishment for these sinister ladies if they find out. 

Almost on cue, "The End" closes with a stranger approaching the gates. He himself is cloaked and he arrives through the fog in a carriage drawn by dark horses. He is from The Cooperative, his name is Michael Langdon, and he is creepy. He tells the workers outside of the gates to tend to his animals, and he makes his way inside to meet with Wilhemina. Michael Langdon, you'll recall, is the name of the evil Antichrist child Jessica Lange's character, Constance Langdon, was raising at the end of Murder House...the child Vivien Harmon bore with ghost Tate Langdon...wearing the rubber suit. It was all very complicated. Anywho, Michael informs Wilhemina that other outposts are being overrun and he is there to determine which Outpost 3 inhabitants will be relocated to an impenetrable sanctuary. "I can take all of you, or none of you. Those who make it, live. Those who don't, end up like my horses." We then see Michael's horses shot and killed by the workers outside the gate. We also see their bodies dragged away into the trees by...something.  

The episode ends there...you read that right. If you're like me, you stared at the closing credits with a WTF?!? look on your face. You were looking for the ghosts of Murder House or the witches of Coven in this hour (at least Stevie Nicks for god's sake!), but instead got brand new characters and an appropriately eerie Michael Langdon instead. Sooo we're left wondering how this crossover will happen. If the ghosts of Murder House are tied to the house, is this outpost under what was the house? Will we only see them on Halloween? Could the outpost be under Ms. Robichaux's Academy from Coven? One can imagine the Supreme would have an end of the world survival plan in place, right? The way Michael Langdon rolled in, it made me think he was one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Perhaps Pestilence or Death? Could Wilhemina be Famine?  Is it possible The Collective is behind the nuclear missiles? Maybe I am way, way off. Time will tell...but the actors playing multiple characters thing is sure going to get interesting as the story rolls on. They all really do look pretty in purple though.