Tonight we see (maybe) the conclusion of the Miller tale, or as I like to call it: the "how do you buy a farm house for $40k without knowing anything about it?" saga. We are also treated to the story behind the physical origin of this, um, dream home and I honestly wish that portion had lasted longer. How are we nearing the end only 5 episodes in you ask? I think Ryan Murphy is really shaking things up this season. Here's where we are after Chapter 5.
How Bout A Round Of Applause
The episode opens in the interview setting with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin narrating the history of the farm house known as the Big Shaker Mansion. Probably a better name than all of the ones I've come up with for that house. Anyway, the house was built in 1792 by Edward Philippe Mott. Wait. Mott? As in Dandy and Gloria Mott from Freak Show? Has to be a connection there, right? I was only joking last week about Twisty coming back but maybe Roanoke will throw me a bone!
Going into re-enactment mode we see Edward (welcome back Evan Peters!) at an art auction where he walks in the room and tells everyone to leave because he'll be purchasing the whole lot and will not be outbid. He's stupid rich and no one challenges him. Dude sure knows how to make an entrance. Edward is obsessed with artwork - so much so that he purchased the tainted farm land to build a house for him and his possessions far away from society. Hmmm. Dandy seriously somehow has to be related to this guy. The construction of the house is plagued with accidents and injuries though, especially the creation of the underground hideaways and corridors. Edward is concerned about the value of his artwork and wants to ensure he can whisk the pieces away unnoticed if need be.
Edward has many loyal servants but none so loyal as Guinness (great name), a handsome young man who Edward has also taken as a lover. Edward knows his other servants disapprove of their relationship. "They judge us," he tells Guinness. "The art never judges. I envy it. Frozen in two dimensions. I love them, you know...the paintings. Even more than I love you." Ouch. The next time we see Edward he is awoken by the sound of things breaking throughout his house. Yup, someone has destroyed his artwork. He screams at his servants and demands they either confess or rat out the guilty party. They instead talk about people they've been seeing in the woods and Edward flips out. At gunpoint, he orders them down in the cellar that Elias would later call home. "You will stay there until the murderer confesses his crimes." Wow. Murderer? He's a bucket full of crazy. Guinness is starting to think so too. He questions Edward and Edward threatens to throw him down there as well.
This night would be Edward's last. The blood moon is out and The Butcher has come a knockin. Her people pull Edward outside as he yells "This is my land!" Of course The Butcher corrects him...just before one of her followers puts a wooden stake through him and ushers him into a burning fire. Guinness somehow flees and lives to tell the tale...except for the part about the servants in the cellar. He forgot about that and they all died down there. No fire or Mott body was found though, so Guinness went to jail as Edward's accused killer. Back in the interview world, the historian explains that the house stayed in the Mott family for years but the family had a history of madness...with the last Mott dying in 1952 in Florida in the midst of a scandal. YES! Dandy! And suddenly seasons 4 and 6 are connected!
You Look So Dumb Right Now
The hour now shifts back to the Millers. Shelby, Matt and Flora are back where we left them - in the upstairs bedroom looking down at The Butcher and her followers outside near the fire. Matt calls 911, because that's been so helpful so far this season, and instead of staying on the phone til the police get there, he hangs up instead and goes back to the window. I don't understand how these people survived to do a documentary. Anyway, The Butcher calls out to them, saying if they surrender that she will grant a merciful death.
Matt comes up with a plan for him to go outside and distract the angry mob while Shelby runs to the truck with Flora. You clever guy. I'm sure no one has ever tried that on The Butcher before. Yup, the angry mob was ready for this and had already set fire to the vehicles outside. Duh Matt. The trio then heads to the basement where they meet Edward Mott. He introduces himself as the original owner and tells them he can get them out safely through his artwork escape route. They walk for quite some time and eventually find an exit to the woods where Edward leaves them.
Shelby, Matt and Flora go on a journey through the dark woods trying to find a road. The journey is short lived...the hillbillies have found them. Frances Conroy returns as Mama Polk and her boys are with her at the not so abandoned farmhouse nearby, apparently taking a break from jerking off while someone screws Lady Gaga. The boys have been busy though - they've been literally picking apart Elias (who is still alive) so Mama can make dinner. The poor guy is laying on a table begging for death when Mama walks in to inform her sons that Elias is bad meat. Guess dinner didn't turn out so great. One of her boys takes a hammer repeatedly to Elias' head and whoa is it graphic.
Matt leans against the wall, defeated, and offers to sign the dead to their house over to the Polk family right away. "We don't want to live there. We want to keep it empty for The Butcher. My kin made a deal with her 200 years ago...so long as she can consecrate the land with fresh blood every year, she'll leave us alone." Um, let's pause for a moment. The Butcher has been sacrificing people for 200 years and Elias only has a handful of newspaper clippings to show for it? Something is wrong with this picture.
At this point Shelby pleads for their lives, swearing that they will just go back to California and tell no one about what they've seen and learned on the land. Shelby, you're stupid. Mama JUST said she has a deal with The Butcher. The Polk family loads Matt, Shelby, and an impressively subdued Flora into their truck to take back to the angry mob. They hit a bump and Matt grabs the shotgun from one of the brothers and inadvertently blows off the head of the other brother. I wonder if he is also bad meat or if Mama can manage to make a stew of him. You'd think at this point the Millers and their niece would escape but for whatever reason they decide to hide fairly close to the truck rather than run. Mama and her remaining son find them quickly and Mama hacks Shelby's foot nearly off with a shovel to thwart any future escape plans. They all end up back in the truck and back to The Butcher.
Curtains Finally Closing
If you're like me and thinking "what the hell happened to Lee after the cops took her away?" then wonder no more. Finally as we reach the 40 minute mark of this episode, Angela Bassett shows her pretty face while being interrogated at the police station. After telling the cops for the umpteenth time that there's no chance she could have killed Mason, built the big wooden doll thing, strapped him to it, hoisted it up, then set him on fire all by herself in the amount of time they are claiming she was away from the house, the cops release her as they have reached 48 hours and do not have enough evidence to charge her.
Lee gets outside and checks her phone. Oddly, it's at 85% even though she's been there 48 hours. I need that phone in my life. She sees a bunch of text messages from Matt saying that Flora is safe and she is so relieved....for a second. Matt doesn't answer her calls and she knows something is wrong. A police officer gives Lee a ride to the house where shit is clearly starting to go down. He then drops her off and drives the hell out of there. He knows the deal.
We see Matt, Shelby and Flora near the fire. The Butcher announces that Flora will die first...and Ambrose bashes his mother on the head. "I shall not stand by and watch thou shed another drop of innocent blood!" He then grabs her and jumps into the flames holding her tight. Huh? Edward pops up and unties Matt and Shelby, telling them to escape. The piggy man, however, picks up The Butcher's cleaver from the ground and heads toward Flora. Lee plows into him in one of the cars that was on fire earlier (you read that right) and they drive away as The Butcher is climbing out of the fire to run after them. She's one resilient bitch.
Cutting back to the interview world, Matt tells us "it was a miracle." No shit. He explains that the four of them had just enough money to stay at a hotel and get take out (I guess no one was interested in going back for Elias jerky) and they waited there for Shelby's sister to wire them money so they could fly back to California. Do people still wire money? Couldn't Shelby's sister just book them a flight online herself? Also, was Shelby's foot a quick fix? We see a re-enactment of her hobbling into the hotel room on crutches that same night. No surgery needed or anything? No need to keep any of these people overnight after what they had been through? What did they tell the emergency room folks when they arrived in a crispy car with Shelby's bone protruding?
The episode ends with the four of them eating pizza in the hotel room and fighting over who showers first ...and this all just seems too easy. We've watched five hours of horror and gore on this land and at the last second, Ambrose decides that after 200 years of human sacrifices that he's done? And where was Gaga in all this? Pretty sure she was hoping to spend a lot more time boning Matt so I can't imagine she would not have interfered with his escape. Something doesn't seem right.
The previews for the next episode show what looks like a documentary within the documentary. Are the fictional show runners calling bullshit on the Millers' story? Did they dig up more dirt...maybe literally...on Lee's past, the Polk family, or Elias Cunningham? Will the documentary interview and re-enactment segment be followed by the crew visiting the haunted location? I believe we will get the answers to some of these questions when Chapter 6 shifts gears for us next week, and I am of course chomping at the bit to know what this year's Halloween episode has in store for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment