AHS Asylum: Who's Crazy Now?

Episode 3 of American Horror Story: Asylum is brought to you by the words “whore” and “Satan.”

We open again with Teresa screaming her head off. Why wouldn’t we? In present day Briarcliff Manor, she watches from behind a metal door as Bloody Face brutally stabs Leo, whom she has already left bleeding and helpless (just wanted to throw that reminder out there). I imagine it’s getting harder and harder to breathe…. That metal door isn’t too helpful though as Bloody Face makes his(?) way in and attacks her quickly, and at this point we’re expecting a twist, right? Well Adam Levine still lives! He and the bloody stump that was his right arm dash in to save his lady love, knocking down Bloody Face so Teresa can stab the shit out of the killer while still screaming. She helps Leo up, dialing 911 for rescue – time for the escape! We know this isn’t over for them though. Sure enough, there’s Bloody Face. And….there’s another Bloody Face. What?!?! One Bloody Face pulls a gun and shoots Leo and Teresa dead. Again, what?!? The mystery Bloody Faces take off their masks and it appears we have two young men who I assume are some sort of Bloody Face worshipers.  Bloody Face #1 is freaking out that Bloody Face #2 killed the lovebirds. I guess they were just supposed to scare them, but it doesn’t matter – enter Bloody Face #3 (another twist!) to advance hastily down the hall toward his fans…  

Just missing?

Back to 1964, where a newly possessed Sister Mary Eunice drops off the mail to Sister Jude and alerts her to the storm a brewin’. Funny thing about the mail though – it includes a newspaper from June 28, 1949, which when Sister Jude was Slut Judy and ran over a little girl in the blue dress while driving home drunk from a club. Understandably, Sister Jude is freaking out. Dr. Thredson approaches her about the corporal punishment she administers and encourages her to use positive reinforcement and compassion instead. Where did they find this guy? Sister Jude asserts that she is a beacon of compassion, so much so that she has arranged for a movie night at Briarcliff to take the patients’ minds off the pending storm. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Psycho (1960) or Cape Fear (1962), but Sister Jude goes with The Sign of the Cross (1932). Makes sense – what better way to calm down a mob of mentally unstable individuals that to show them a film where Emperor Nero orders that Christians to be fed to the lions? The mind reels.

As Sister Jude tries to regain her composure from the newspaper delivery, Sister Mary Eunice bursts in with the communion wine, claiming it has been watered down and someone must be drinking it outside of mass. Does this mean we are going to see a church service in Briarcliff at some point? Oh, I do hope so. She encourages Sister Jude to taste the wine to confirm the theory but then notes that Sister Jude has not drank alcohol since 1949 when she renounced all worldly pleasures. Interesting. Sister Jude starts to respond, but she notices the young nun is wearing a ton of lipstick as Sister Mary Eunice proceeds to drink a generous glass of the communion wine. Sister Mary Eunice informs us the lipstick is called “ravish me red” and is a gift for Sister Jude from Dr. Arden. I am now giddy with anticipation. Shit is going to hit the fan in this episode.  

Elsewhere in the asylum Dr. Creepy is still trying to figure out what on earth is going on with the microchip looking object he pulled from Kit’s neck in Episode 1. He dismantles it, but it has a life of its own, and the pieces heal and re-form each time he breaks the chip apart. He puts Kit back on his table for examination, and the chip sprouts legs again and desperately wants to reconnect with Kit. The mad scientist asks Kit who he is working for, convinced that the chip was inserted in Kit’s neck because he was sent in to spy on Dr. Creepy’s lab listing the East German Stazi, the KGB, and Jews (all of them?) as possible suspects. As he explains this as he pokes and prods Kit’s neck again and again, finally slicing back in. Ow. 

In this episode we also meet (albeit briefly) “The Mexican.” No, not the 2001 critically slammed movie starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts….man, I wish that had been better. The Mexican in this instance is a older woman who knows immediately that Sister Mary Eunice is evil. She flees from “Satan! Satan!” in the common room, making her way back to her dark and ominous quarters to pray. Enter Sister Mary Satan to slap away her rosary beads and command her to her knees. The Mexican calls her Satan several more times, pleading for her life before the devil nun opens her neck with a pair of scissors. Worried about the body? Don’t be – the creatures outside were hungry anyway.

Just a side note before we move forward – Lily Rabe is beyond fantastic in this episode. I’m so glad her character has been expanded beyond the meek wuss we started out with. I’m incredibly impressed with her as an actress, and it’s refreshing that Jessica Lange isn’t the only scene stealer this season.  

Anyway, Sister Mary Eunice is not quite finished stirring up trouble, so she enters Dr. Creepy’s chamber and is just all kinds of nasty....dirty with several “r”s. You have some work to do now, Shelley. She offers herself to Dr. Creepy, but he calls her a “whore,” slaps her, and tells her to shut her filthy mouth. He then orders her out of his office.

As Dr. Creepy shuffles about, baffled about his encounter with Sister Mary Eunice, Sister Jude pays him a visit to give him hell about the red lipstick and newspaper. He gives her hell and explains that he had admired Sister Mary Eunice’s purity. He believes now that Shelley has corrupted her. They both kind of talk over each other – her not addressing how the nasty nun became so nasty, and he never saying anything about the newspaper. Odd scene.

Back in the common room (that always makes me think of Hogwarts) Dr. Thredson is helping to set up movie night. Stupid Lana approaches him to get a message to Wendy. He pretends to act like he would never go against Sister Jude, but he puts the note in his pocket. Stupid Lana now has escape on the mind again, as does Shelley. She approaches Grace in the bakery (it’s real!) and asks to be part of Kit’s next escape plan. Shelley tells Grace she needs to get to Paris. “Here, I’m a freak. There, I would be celebrated.” Hold that thought, kid.

The storm is beginning to rage, and Sister Jude retreats to her office to pray. The phone rings, and on the other line is the voice of the little girl she killed. “You never even bothered to get out of the car.” Sister Jude begins to crack…she cries “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” into the phone and hangs up. She looks down on her desk and sees the little girl’s cracked glasses, and it’s just too much. She reaches for the communion wine, and now we have ourselves a party.

Showtime. The patients assemble in the common room, and a drunk Sister Jude walks shakily down the aisle to “introduce the picture.” Is she ready for her close up? The thunder booms, and the audience is terrified. Sister Jude is a hot mess and calms them by saying the lyrics to “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel, a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. This song comes at the very end of the show/movie after the male lead is killed while committing a crime, leaving his daughter (a girl in a blue dress) behind. Well played, Ryan Murphy.

Stupid Lana sits next to Dr. Thredson, who doesn’t have the best news for her. He had gone to see Wendy before the storm. The door to her house was open, as was the hallway window, and he found blood but no Wendy. He thinks Wendy may have met the same demise as the other Bloody Face victims. A light bulb goes on in her head – wait, if Wendy was alive when I came here to interview Bloody Face….and Bloody Face got to Wendy….but Kit didn’t escape…oh shit. Yes, Lana. This is why you’re stupid.

At this point she, Kit, Grace and Shelley are all roaming the hallways with the same idea in mind: escape (anyone else alarmed by the lack of security in this place?). Stupid Lana is sorry – she was wrong about Kit, but someone she loves is in danger and she must get out. The plan is thwarted when Karl the orderly approaches. Shelley offers to “distract” him so the others can get away. She asks them to wait for her. Shelley takes too long, and they leave her.

Outside in the raging storm, Kit, Grace and Stupid Lana have a Shawshank Redemption moment before running through the woods to freedom. Just kidding. They find the remains of The Mexican…as well as the creatures Dr. Creepy has been hiding in the forest. I’m sure they are failed experiments, but I’m not sure why they are flesh eaters who look like Sloth from The Goonies. Back through the death chute and into Briarcliff the three patients go. Well, at least they can finish watching the movie?

Drunk Sister Jude is also wandering through the asylum looking for The Mexican. What she finds instead is A FREAKING ALIEN! WTF?!?!?! This is a face to face, up close and personal encounter. She (rightfully) passes the eff out. She awakens to the evil nun telling her three patients have escaped (The Mexican, Shelley and Pepper, who I thought had just gone to the bathroom). She shuts off the movie, telling the audience missing the ending is fine because “they all die.” Foreshadowing?

Dr. Creepy seems to have lost his marbles at this point as well. He stands in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary with the “ravish me red” lipstick, no doubt thinking of Sister Mary Eunice’s loss of purity. He puts that red lipstick all over the cheeks and, um, nipples of the statue and calls it a “whore” over and over again, eventually toppling it over. On his way back to his lair, he finds Shelley….another whore.

He takes her to his chamber to collect on her episode 2 offer to see her candied apple, and he proceeds to try to rape her. She screams, but he tells her “no one is going to hear you here.” So, I assume he did kill the prostitute from the last episode. Dr. Creepy mounts Shelley but is not able to rise to the occasion. She laughs (so do I) and he clocks her. She awakens to find that Dr. Creepy has removed her legs at the knees, making any kind of escape impossible now. We end the episode with her screams.

So at this point, we are left with a ton of questions. Was the alien really there, or was it a manifestation of someone who hasn’t had any alcohol in 15 years downing a bottle of wine? If the alien WAS there, was it trying to recover the chip from Kit’s neck? Allllllso, do we have ghosts and hauntings to look forward to in addition to demons and aliens, or are these just mind games Sister Mary Eunice is able to play given her evil powers and such? How long will she be possessed before anyone figures it out? Where the hell is Monsignor Timothy?  Time will tell.

AHS Asylum: I Need an Old Priest and a Young Priest

I’m not sure why I thought episode 2 of AHS would open with something other than a screaming Jenna Dewan-Tatum staring into Bloody Face’s…well, bloody face, but that’s exactly where we begin. When we last left her character, Teresa, she was frantically searching through present day Briarcliff for a way to get help for her new hubby Leo, who is currently bleeding out elsewhere in the asylum. Instead of help though, she encounters Bloody Face who chases her back to Leo. She tries for a hot second to pull Leo away from the approaching killer and then promptly ditches his ass to get herself behind a metal door.  Bloody Face clearly doesn’t want Leo to go through life with only one arm, so he(?) proceeds to stab Leo repeatedly.

 

Speaking of people who are only looking out for number 1, we go back to October 30, 1964 now where Wendy sits with friends feeling terrible about committing her lady love to the nuthouse. Realizing that she made a mistake, she vows to shower and get a good night’s sleep and break Lana out tomorrow. Yes Wendy – please make sure to bathe and rest up before visiting Lana in the filthy dungeon she is currently terrorized in. As she prepares to bathe, I wonder if we are going to get a repeat of the shower scene from Psycho, but alas, it seems Wendy just left all of her windows open….which is what people do when local women have been skinned alive and crazy nuns visit your house to threaten you. Regardless, Wendy just smoked her last joint and took her last shower. Bloody Face (clearly not Kit Walker) steps out from the shadows and kills her.

The following morning, the patients at Briarcliff are going through a room search. Shelley calls down the hall to Sister Jude “I have a cucumber in my room, but not because I was hungry.” Heh. I like her. Lana tries to conceal a journal she has been keeping but Sister Jude takes care of that immediately. Realizing that Lana is going to be a problem patient, Sister Jude consults Dr. Arden and the possibilities of electro shock therapy. The following scene that silences Lana is disturbing, but is performed by incredibly well by the actors. I’m interested to see what kind of impact the shocks to Lana’s brain have on her…and her memory of Briarcliff’s molasses bread.

Also in his own personal hell this morning is Kit, who is meeting the shrink of the day, Dr. Oliver Thredson (last season’s Zachary Quinto), for the first time. Kit goes into the session knowing he is screwed: if Dr. Thredson finds him fit for trial, then he will be convicted of murder…if Dr. Thredson finds him insane, then he rots at Briarcliff for the rest of his days. He proceeds to tell his story about the men from outer space taking Alma, and the body presumed to be hers is not because she is alive, you know, with the aliens. Thredson is quick to diagnose insanity.

Fresh off the fryer, Lana observes Grace and Kit trying to plan an escape from Briarcliff, and she approaches Grace later on about planning their own getaway without Kit. Grace indicates she will not be leaving Kit behind, and Lana goes on and on about being betrayed by the one person she loves most. No worries, Lana – Wendy is dead, so there’s nothing for you on the outside anyway.

Meanwhile, Sister Mary Eunice makes her first appearance of the episode as she is off once again to feed the beasts lurking in the woods. Dr. Arden sneaks up on her to check her progress but he still won’t tell her what the creatures are - my mind goes to “those who we do not speak of." Instead, he offers her a candied apple (from the bakery?), but nuns aren’t supposed to indulge in such pleasantries. He insists, practically forcing her to take a bite…and boy does she. Wonder what she would do with Shelley’s cucumber?

Inside the asylum, Dr. Thredson introduces himself to Sister Jude. He is quite appalled at the conditions and “treatment” administered at the facility, but she is having none of that.  She has to set Kit and the aliens aside for the moment because there are more important things going on….namely the exorcism of poor Jed Potter. Yup, why not follow up the anal probe in episode 1 with a demonically possessed teenager in episode 2? Jed is 17 years old and has exhibited some strange behavior on his parents’ farm. One might think he is just dealing with the struggles of becoming a man, except for the part where he speaks in tongues and gnaws through the belly of the Potters’ best cow naked. Boys will be boys.  Dr. Thredson hopes for a more therapeutic remedy, but Sister Jude knows what is needed.

 

Elsewhere, Shelley offers to let Dr. Arden see her candied apple in exchange for seeing five minutes of sunshine. She may easily be my favorite character so far, but where is young Moira when I need her? Dr. Arden is apparently not interested in her (“whores get nothing”), but Shelley maintains that she is just into pleasure….so much so that she treated herself to 2 Navy guys during fleet week. Her husband, predictably, was outraged and committed her to Briarcliff. I’m glad we got a back story on her, and for her sake, I’m glad Dr. Arden kept his cucumber in his pants….for now…

 

Dr. Creepy has summoned a prostitute, though he is disgusted by whores? He has prepared a fancy dinner and is looking to keep things elegant and romantic, but his lady friend apparently did not get the memo. Her wicked tongue gets her in trouble, and though he attempts to discuss classical music and fine wine, she offers to “shake it” for him. And now, my dear prostitute, you have surpassed Lana on the stupidity scale. He sends her to wash off her makeup and put on a nun’s outfit, making her look eerily like Sister Mary Eunice. She opens a box on the dresser to find some erotic magazines…followed by some pictures of women tied up on a bed….followed by some dead women. Uh-oh. Nice knowing you, lady. Arden finds her, tells her to lie on the bed and expose herself. He makes ready to ravage her, and she bites his arm, knees him in the cucumber, and runs for her life.

 

Getting back to Jed, Sister Jude and the Monsignor (or Father Hotness as I have decided to call him) have called in an expert, Father Malachi, to perform the exorcism. I’m assuming his wheelchair is key in helping him cast out evil. Sister Jude is initially sent to sit with Jed’s parents, but she makes her way back into the room as Thredson, Father Malachi and Father Hotness take a break from the demonic beatings they are receiving. The demon calls Sister Jude out on her scandalous past.

We flash back to a time when Sister Jude was just Judy, and she rocked a red dress and sang in a club filled with soldiers, some of whom she seemed to know quite well. That red undergarment she wears with her holy robes makes more sense now. It gets better though – as Judy drove home drunk from the club that evening, she ran over (more like ran straight through) a girl crossing the road and flees the scene. Soooooo, Sister Jude is a former harlot and accidental killer? The plot thickens.

Jed’s lifeline is fading fast with Father Hotness re-entering the room to speak all that is holy and Dr. Thredson joins in to administer medicine (Father Malachi seems to be down for the count). Sister Jude and Sister Mary Eunice stand by as the demon leaves Jed’s body, taking Jed’s life in the process…Sister Mary Eunice faints in the doorway.

The exorcism causes a power outage in Briarcliff. Escape time. Lana and Grace hurry through the death chute and Kit follows. Lana, still believing Kit is a psycho murderer, tells him he must stay behind. Bitch, if he were a psycho murderer, now would be the perfect time for him to kill you. Grace grabs Kit and vows to find another way out for the two of them. Lana now makes it to the top of my “I hope she dies next” list by blowing the whistle on Kit and Grace instead of just escaping.

Seemingly unnerved by his failed date with the prostitute (did she escape, or did he catch up to her and kill her?), Dr. Creepy visits a sleeping Sister Mary Eunice. She is exposing some skin in her slumber, and she awakens to find Arden covering her up. She then subtly flirts with him. Ew. I assume at this point she is possessed as well, and I am confident in this thought as the crucifix on the wall of her room shakes as she throws off the covers again.

In Sister Jude’s office, Stupid Lana (which is now her name) is “rewarded” for being a tattle-tale by choosing the weapon Sister Jude will cane Kit and Grace with. She really doesn’t have as tough of a time doing this as she should. Kit offers to take all of the lashes himself, and the episode ends with Stupid Lana staring at Kit’s beating while Grace glares and Stupid Lana.

Items of note – obviously with an exorcism episode there is bound to be some religious symbolism. Dr. Arden compelling Sister Mary Eunice to eat the candied apple has to be a reference to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Sister Jude assigns Kit 40 lashes…which is an interesting choice of number given the 39 lashes Christ received before his crucifixion. She then calls him “Sir Galahad” for his sacrifice, a knight known for his valor and purity in the Arthurian legends. Father Malachi’s name jumped out at me because of a character in Children of the Corn which was the first horror movie to almost literally scare the shit out of me (I was 5, but it’s still a pretty chilling movie). However, Malachi is also the name of a Jewish prophet in the Hebrew Bible. Just some food for thought.

AHS Asylum: Stairway to Heaven?

Season 2 of American Horror Story begins present day with young newlyweds approaching an ominous looking building with great excitement. Seems Adam Levine and Channing Tatum’s wife have been cast as Leo and Teresa - two lovebirds who are spending their honeymoon traveling to the most haunted places in America to, um, consummate their marriage in each. Makes sense…nothing says “happily ever after” like getting it on in a decaying former asylum where 46,000 people (so far) have died. Maybe this is why I’m still single.

Welcome to Briarcliff Manor, built in 1908 as the largest tuberculosis ward on the east coast before being converted to a sanitarium 1962 by the Catholic Church. Teresa tells us Briarcliff housed a famous serial killer known as Bloody Face. I anticipate learning more about said killer, but first, Leo discovers a rusty table with straps, so we have to take a break from fact sharing so Leo can tie Teresa down and begin his own version of shock therapy on her. Hey, I’m okay with this. A noise interrupts the table rocking, however, and the two begin to make their way out of the asylum. They stop at a door and Leo pretends to have his have his arm grabbed through the slot in the lower half of the door. Hilarious! So, we know what’s coming right? Yup – in the process of trying to use his fancy cell phone to determine what is on the other side of the door, someone/something then rips the poor dude’s arm right off. My first thought is…perhaps he should have just stuck to the payphone…

Now we move to 1964 where Kit Walker (played by last year’s “rubber man,” Evan Peters) is closing up shop at the local gas station while singing along to “There Goes My Baby.” Foreshadowing?  Some 1960s hooligans show up dropping racial slurs and teasing Kit about his “maid.” He goes home to his wife, Alma, who is indeed African-American. We’re at a point in history where this marriage is not okay, so these young lovers have to hide their union. Kit is eager to spread the news – well, Kit is eager to do a few things, and as he sits in bed in his tighty whiteys as Alma tries her hand at round 2 of making dinner, he hears a commotion outside. Is it the same ruffians who hassled him earlier? If the ruffians are coming down from the sky in a blinding light that takes away gravity, then sure. My friends, it appears this season we have aliens on American Horror Story. No sign of Alma anywhere, but something strange is definitely happening to Kit.

Meanwhile, budding journalist Lana Winters (played by last season’s Sarah Paulson) is trying to gain access to Briarcliff Manor to do a story on Briarcliff’s bakery. Wait, what? I’m confused for a few reasons: 1) Does Briarcliff have a separate on-the-side baking business? 2) Do people actually BUY goods from an asylum bakery? 3) Did Lana really think this was going to work? The answer to the latter is apparently so, because she allowed on the grounds to be greeted by Sister Mary Eunice (season 1 alum Lily Rabe) and Pepper, a curious looking patient who drowned her sister’s baby and cut his ears off.  Well okay then.

Once inside Briarcliff (I guess you have to go completely through the sanitarium to get to the bakery?), Sister Mary Eunice takes Lana up a winding staircase which has become known as the “stairway to Heaven” courtesy of Sister Jude, whose entrance I’m assuming is coming soon. This is an interesting choice of words since the song, “Stairway to Heaven” wouldn’t be released until 1971, so this stairway must be more of a reference to Jacob’s Ladder.

Anywho, Sister Mary Eunice takes Lana to JESSICA LANGE!!!...I mean, Sister Jude, who is busy shaving the head of another patient, Shelley (Big Love’s Chloe Sevigny), who is being incarcerated as a nymphomaniac.  Seriously? There are worse things. Just sayin. Sister Jude dismisses Shelley to talk to Lana about the molasses bread from the bakery. Wow. So, there’s an actual bakery. Where? In the death chute? Sister Jude apparently came up with the idea for the bakery based on the Monsignor’s mantra of productivity, prayer and purification. Lana is just about to get a tour of the bakery, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing the bakery at this point too, when Sister Mary Eunice bursts through the door to tell Sister Jude that Bloody Face has arrived. Lana completely blows it by asking to meet the killer. Duh, Lana. You should have just taken the tour.

Bloody Face, we learn, is a killer who skins and decapitates women, and he has been admitted to Briarcliff until he is fit to stand trial. Everyone stares out the doors and windows in anticipation as Kit Walker gets out the car and is escorted in the building. Wait, how is Kit also Bloody Face? Sister Jude “welcomes” him, telling him that he will repent for his crimes to the only judge that matters, and she scoffs at his story regarding little green men. Apparently Alma is among the beheaded victims. Sister Jude taunts Kit by mentioning Alma’s “dark meat,” he spits at her, and she canes his ass like her life depends on it.

An undoubtedly swollen Kit wanders miserably through the common area, meeting other patients and learning the rules of Briarcliff. After Shelley offers her…friendship…he encounters Grace, a young woman accused of chopping up her family, who claims not to be crazy, and Spivey (played by Mr. Kelly Ripa), who picks a fight with Kit immediately. Sister Jude breaks up the fight and Kit continues his tour as a human punching bag by taking a baton to the face. Have I mentioned that Sister Jude is batshit crazy?

At this point in the episode I’m thinking we are in for one hell of a ride with Jessica Lange as this season’s villain, but it would be silly to stop there. Meet Dr. Arthur Arden, who is Briarcliff’s chief physician. Played by James Cromwell, you know - the farmer from Babe, Dr. Arden seems to conduct experiments on the patients that cause their untimely demise. Sister Jude is not a fan, and this guy is beyond creepy.

Remember Lana? I barely do, but she resurfaces in the home she shares with her girlfriend Wendy. That’s right, she’s also hiding a secret. As the two prepare to have dinner (and some other things), Lana reveals her plan to get back into Briarcliff to write a ground-breaking story about Bloody Face and prove herself as a journalist and not just the girl who writes the cooking column. So, she doesn't care about that molasses bread after all.

Back at Briarcliff, Sister Jude has also prepared dinner, wearing a hot little red negligee under her nun garb. Yup, this is really starting to get weird. She dines now with Monsignor Timothy Howard, and…..helloooooo Joseph Fiennes! Oh Joseph, you were my everything for several years after Shakespeare in Love….right up until the time I thought Killing Me Softly would destroy your career forever.  Anyway, the Monsignor chats with Sister Jude about the path forward for Briarcliff. She claims Dr. Arden is not a man of God and she is immediately scolded as she is not equipped to judge a man’s Godliness. Ouch. Lucky for Sister Jude, she has a dirty mind and she can fantasize about stripping down mounting the Monsignor while he verbally puts her in her place.   

Outside the building, Sister Mary Eunice is walking around with meat looking to feed some creatures that lurk beyond the walls. What are they? More of Dr. Arden’s failed experiments? We don’t even get a glimpse because Lana pops up just then and finds her way back into Briarcliff by hustling away from the creatures with Mary Eunice. That’s twice for her now – I can’t believe how easy it is to get in this place.

We jump to the present day with poor Leo who is one limb short and bleeding all over his freak wife. Teresa runs to get help, but surpriiiiiiiiise, the door they came in is now chained and locked from the inside. She tries another direction (through the death chute?) and we fade back into 1964.….

…..The table Leo had so loving strapped Teresa to now holds Kit Walker, who is meeting Dr. Arden for the first time. Dr. Arden explains that victims of Bloody Face were found naked and the skinning occurred while they were still breathing. During this narrative, Kit has a flashback to his alien abduction, which seems to have included an anal probe. Ew. Dr. Arden then cuts open a lump on the side of Kit’s neck, and pulls out a chip of some sort…. Which then grows legs and runs away. Yes, that just happened.

Were you wondering about Lana? Oh she’s just roaming the halls of Briarcliff by herself thinking God knows what, when she opens the door slot to an unknown room and is knocked out by a mysterious arm. Dummy. I’m sorry…I’m all for journalistic freedom, but I can’t root for someone who is acting a fool. And Lana isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either. You see, Sister Jude paid a visit to Wendy and gave Wendy an ultimatum: either Wendy commits Lana to Briarcliff or Sister Jude outs them as lesbians. Point. Set. Match.

 

Back to poor Teresa running down the death chute – will she find a way out? Of course not. She runs directly into Bloody Face instead, and we’ve reached the end of episode 1.

So, there is a lot to be processed at this point. We’ve met many characters right off the bat, encountered aliens, and watched Maroon 5’s front man lose the arm he uses to select his team on The Voice. I’m not a huge fan of the extraterrestrial storyline, but as long Will Smith is not featured as a guest star this season, I’m open to space men in the asylum. One thing is certain: I cannot wait to see how the season unfolds.

American Horror Story

Last year when FX advertised a new show that promised to terrify audiences, starring Dylan McDermott, featuring a “family just moved across the country into a haunted house” format, and created by Ryan Murphy of Glee fame, my palms went to my forehead in agony. I figured the actual terror would come from this haphazard combination of elements merged into one series. By the end of the first episode of American Horror Story, however, I was obsessed and stalking AHS forums wanting spoilers, opinions, snippets of interviews with Mr. Murphy - any info I could get! I found the writing to be brilliant, the acting far surpassing my expectations (annnnnd the Emmy goes to Jessica Lange), and the “horror” elements absolutely delivered.  As each week passed, I badgered my AHS friends, wanting them to analyze the plot developments and expressing disappointment when they may have been an episode or two (in some cases several) behind. I may have overreacted a little...

When the Season 1 finale aired on December 21^st and Ryan Murphy announced that each season of AHS would tell a completely different story, I was greatly relieved as it would have been quite difficult to proceed with the initial story given 99% of those characters were dead at that point. Imagine my excitement when Mr. Murphy also announced that several actors would be returning to play all new characters in Season 2! Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy were the highlights of each episode for me, and Evan Peters and Lily Rabe grew on me as well. I can’t wait to see this new story unfold and hope this season tops the first.