Welcome to the Season 2 finale of American Horror Story. I’ll be honest and say that it took me over
a week to post this blog entry because I didn’t really want the season to be
over…and I’ve also been processing this final episode in my brain since it aired.
There were a lot of loose ends to tie up going into this hour, and for the most
part, we get the answers we’ve been looking for…
The episode opens (as did the first episode – nice touch) with
Leo and Teresa making their way into Briarcliff to explore the asylum as part
of their haunted honeymoon. What they don’t know is Johnny Morgan, our Modern
Day Bloody Face, is doing his own sightseeing there as well. We know now that it
was Johnny who cut off Leo’s arm in episode 1, and unfortunately for the
lovebirds as well as the Bloody Face teenage fans, they were just in the wrong
place at the wrong time.
The rest of the finale is told through a present-day
interview with Stupid Lana. Yes, I’m still pissed at her. Seems she will be receiving
an award at the Kennedy Center Honors and the Kennedy Center crew is putting
together a video package for the ceremony. Stupid Lana has found fame and
fortune at this point and even love….her partner is an opera singer and they
have a lavish home together in New York.
During the interview we learn that Stupid Lana did go back
to Briarcliff several years after she and Kit met for coffee and he told her
she sucked. Arriving through the death chute (which should just be marked as
the main entrance at this point), Stupid Lana took a cameraman into the asylum
so she could document her great act of liberating the inmates and revealing the
deteriorating conditions in Briarcliff. The inhabitants were indeed living in
fifth, malnourished and covered in feces. This exposé set Stupid Lana up for
her future career of investigative journalism and revealing the truth behind
the world’s shadiest of characters.
The first shady character on her list was Cardinal Timothy
Howard. She confronted him that year, on camera of course, as he was on his way
to Easter mass. She informed him that the world now knew about his dealings with
Dr. Arden due to documentation found in the asylum...including the human experiments
conducted under the former Monsignor’s reign. This confrontation caused him to slit his
wrists in a bathtub shortly thereafter.
Stupid Lana had hoped to free Sister Jude as part of this
documentary as well, but the former nun was nowhere to be found. She did find paperwork
on Betty Drake, the alias given to Jude by Monsignor Timothy before he left
Briarcliff, and she discovered that Betty Drake had been released to Kit Walker
just after they had spoken. So off she went to Kit’s house, camera crew in tow,
to try to catch a reunion on film. Kit, however, wanted no part of the
documentary, but he did agree to tell Lana what happened to the Jude.
After discovering Jude was still alive, Kit had started
visiting Jude at Briarcliff. He eventually brought her home to live with him
and help raise his children. He explained to Lana: “I didn’t do it for her. I
didn’t really do it for me. I did it for the kids. I needed to be there for
them, and the only way I could leave Briarcliff behind once and for all was to
find some way to forgive. Someone to forgive.”
Jude had her ups and downs at Kit’s house in the beginning.
She first had to go through a detox from all of the asylum’s happy pills. Then
there were also times she believed she was still the head of Briarcliff (there
is a hilarious scene where she chases little Thomas around with a broom while
she threatens to kick his ass). But one day Thomas and Julia took her by the
hand and led her out into the woods behind the house. They must have done some
weird alien healing stuff to her (Pepper comes to mind here), because when she
returned to the house she was good to go. Jude spent her final 6 months or so
loving life at the Walker house, teaching Kit and the kids to swing dance and
becoming a mother/grandmother figure to the family.
Jude’s health finally started to wear down, and she talked
with the kids while she was on her death bed. She told Julia to never let a man
tell her who she is or make her feel like she is less than he is. Her words of
wisdom to Thomas were to never take a job just for the money – to do something
important that he would love instead. The children referred to her as “Nana”
when Kit shooed them away in Jude’s final moments. He promised not to leave her
alone, but she was already prepared for The Angel of Death who lurked in the
corner.
“Jude, we’ve been doing this dance for so many years. Are
you sure you’re ready this time?”
“I’m sure. I’m ready now. Kiss me.”
And yes, this entire portion of Jude’s story got to me and made me very emotional. I’m
so glad that she was able to find happiness in the end and make a difference in
the lives of children. Jude had spent so many years wracked with guilt thinking
she had accidentally killed a child, and to have Julia call her “Nana” was beyond
touching. I’m entirely satisfied with how her story ended, and I'll never be able to say enough about Jessica Lange's performance this season.
Present day Lana takes an interview break at this point and a man
posing as a Kennedy Center crew member brings her a sparkling water. It seems Johnny
has chosen this day to confront his mother, and he glares at her when he
delivers her beverage. The interview continues...
Coincidentally (or not) Lana chooses to reveal a big secret
during the second half of her interview. She explains that Thredson’s
baby, who she claimed in her book had died shortly after birth, is alive. He
sure is. She tells a story about having guilt over giving him up for adoption
and checking up on him at a school playground in the 1970s. A young boy at the
time, Johnny was bullied much like his father was growing up. Lana stuck up for
him, helping him off the ground and putting his glasses back on him…reminding
her for sure of Thredson. She put her hand on his cheek and then he left. This
was the only time she saw him. “But I thought about him so often, wondering
where he was, how he turned out.”
This encounter led her back to Kit Walker and his family,
and Lana tells her interviewer that she became close with Kit’s kids which
helped her fill the void left by not raising any children of her own. We also learn that Kit married a girl named
Allison and they all became one big happy family with Lana as the children’s godmother.
Thomas grew up to become a law professor at Harvard and Julia became a
neurosurgeon at John’s Hopkins.
And now we reach the end of Kit’s story. At around the age
of 40 he developed pancreatic cancer. His fight was brief and he spent his last
couple of months under a nurse’s care in his home. Lana mentions that the kids offered to
take care of him but he did not want to burden them. I’m not sure where Allison
was during all of this. One day, however, Kit just disappeared. We as viewers
see him rolling his wheelchair down the hallway and the bright alien invasion
lights take over the screen. We can assume that they took him, cured him, and
hopefully refrained for probing him anymore. His kids must have been clued in
to his abduction because they insisted a funeral was not necessary…that there
was no reason to mourn. There is no mention at all of Allison. What was the
point in having her around at all?
Now I will say that the way Kit’s story ends is very
disappointing to me. This was as rushed as Grace and Alma’s deaths to me and
Kit deserved far more than that. What we got was 3 minutes of “Kit got married
to someone who seems meaningless to the plot, then he got cancer, then the
aliens came for him. But it’s okay. Mourning wasn’t necessary.” These 3 minutes
also bring us to the end of the alien storyline, so we never quite figure out
why the hell they were obsessed with him to begin with. If he was so amazing, shouldn’t Allison have
had alien spawn with him too? I guess we’ll never know. Moving on (unhappily).
The interview comes to an end and everyone leaves.
Lana starts to pour herself a drink…and reaches for two glasses. Wait. What? “Can I
pour you a drink? Why don’t you come out now? No need to hide,” she says. “Not
anymore.” Johnny enters the room. She knew who he was all along. Detectives had
paid her a visit with photos of Johnny after he became a suspect in several
murders, including the deaths of the elderly couple who was living in Oliver
Thredson’s old house. Would she have told her interviewer the story of guilt
she felt for her long lost son if he hadn’t been in her house? Probably not.
Mother and son chat over a drink. She tells him he looks
like his father. He tells her that he knew he was her son when she helped him
that day on the playground – that he felt something. He would see her on TV and
tell people she was his mother and they would laugh at him. Johnny had hopes
that she would come back for him or reach out to find him when he got older.
After he bought Thredson’s confession tape on eBay (yup, shout out to eBay), he
decided he hated her. Thredson had pled with Lana to keep the baby and she told
him over and over again on tape that she didn’t want his baby.
Johnny sits on the coffee table in front of Lana and face to
face they size each other up. He is eager to finish his daddy's work. She keeps her cool until he pulls a gun on her holds it against her head....then she starts to sweat a little and needs to do some quick thinking. Time to regroup. Johnny explains that he just wants to make his father proud, but he just can't seem to measure up. She tells him his father was a monster.
She calls him “baby” and starts to play the mom role just as she had done with
Thredson. She puts her hand to his cheek once more. “You could never be like him. Not that sweet little boy I saw on the
playground. Even then I knew you were a better man that he was. It’s not just
him that’s in you. I’m a part of you too.” With these soothing words, Lana is able to lower Johnny’s gun. He
sobs and tells her that he's hurt people. Mother tells him “It’s not your fault,
baby. It’s mine.” Then she puts a bullet in his head.
The screen flashes back to 1964 and I start to freak out
because I think there’s a twist coming. No twist though. Just Lana and Jude’s
first meeting at Briarcliff - the journalist hungry for a story and the nun who
dismisses her as “Lana banana.” Jude gives her unsolicited advice and and
cautions Lana on her ambitious nature. “Just remember…if you look in the face of evil,
evil’s going to look right back at you.” Lana heads out the doors of Briarcliff
and we can hear Kit being escorted in from outside. Jude turns back toward the
stairway to Heaven, glances at the statue of the Virgin Mary, then makes her
way outside to meet the newest asylum resident.
And that’s that. All in all, there were not many surprises
in this finale. The fact that Lana knew who Johnny was from the moment she saw
him was clever, but we all knew there would be a showdown between the two. And because
Lana has been Ryan Murphy’s favorite character all season, I’m not shocked that
she is the last one standing. It’s no secret that I was not a Lana fan. I think
Jude had moments of redemption and Kit served his role as a Christ figure well.
But Lana? I never found myself rooting for her….not even when her son had a gun
to her head. All of her "moments" this season were shrouded in her selfish tendencies. But even though she was Stupid Lana to me, Sarah Paulson did an amazing job portraying her.
Also, If the season was going to end up being all about Lana’s struggle,
then perhaps we didn’t need multitude of other subplots. In 13 episodes we had
demon possessions, The Angel of Death, Nazi hunters, human experiments, flesh-eating
mutants, alien abductions, suicidal drifters, molested axed-murderers, bloodthirsty Santas,
homicidal children, Anne Frank (but not really), and more breastfeeding than I ever
cared to see. Here’s hoping Season 3 is simpler…
With that in mind, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson
and Lily Rabe have all signed on for another season, and Season 1's Taissa Farmiga (Violet) is rumored to be the lead character. Ryan Murphy promises us
glamor which means my earlier Salem witch trials theory is probably wrong, but
maybe we’ll get some sort of modern day witchcraft anyway. We have a long time
to wait, but I will absolutely be chomping at the bit until the series returns.
In the meantime, I'll be on the lookout for other shows to add to this blog.
Stay tuned…
