Episode Title: “Fearful Pranks Ensue”
Writers: Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Jennifer Salt
Director: Michael Uppendahl
Previously on “American Horror Story”:
Episode 3.03: “The Replacements”
Beware full spoilers below!
October is the perfect time for a show like “American Horror Story,” and, even though each season feels like one long Halloween episode, they do in fact have special Halloween-themed episodes featuring especially spooky/supernatural events. “Fearful Pranks Ensue” delivers in that respect with not one, but two voodoo zombie uprisings and a heapin’ helpin’ of self mutilation.
“Who’s the baddest witch in town?” As always, the answer to that question is undoubtedly Fiona Goode. In “American Horror Story: Coven’s” last episode, she defended her position of supremacy by killing off the girls she assumed to be the next supreme, Madison, just like when she killed the reigning Supreme in 1971 so that she could take the position. But will she have to answer for these crimes?
Nope, because she’s the mother freakin’ Supreme and has enough cleverness to keep everyone else running in circles while she’s sitting pretty. To investigate the disappearance of Madison, the witch’s council rides in on their broomsticks and questions each member of the school. I think Queenie’s response best explains what could have potentially happened to Madison: “If she’s dead, it’s probably because she got wasted and offered the Grim Reaper a hand job or something.” A touching eulogy for a touching girl.
Alas, there isn’t any evidence pointing to Fiona, even though wild-haired Myrtle Snow tries her hardest to find it, and throws quite a hilarious hissy fit when she realizes she won’t be able to do anything to Fiona. As it turns out, these two dueling witches have a rivalry dating back to the ‘70s. Myrtle knows Fiona killed the then-reigning Supreme and has been trying to exact justice since then, but Fiona is just too darn good. This sequence isn’t the most exciting nor is it spooky, but there are a couple of big reveals to come out of it, one of which being that the mute butler, Spaulding, cut out his own tongue so that he couldn’t testify against Fiona during the previous Supreme’s murder investigation.
Later, Cordelia and Fiona hit the bar for a mother-daughter drunken bender, during which Cordelia gets some acid thrown in her face courtesy of a stranger. Before she gets the Two-Face treatment, however, she reveals to Fiona that Madison couldn’t have been the next supreme because of her heart murmur. Jessica Lange’s expression tells us exactly what she’s thinking: “I’m a little sorry that I killed the wrong witch, but I’m more worried about the fact that I didn’t kill the right witch.” So who’s the real Supreme!?! Misty Day? Queenie? Or Zoe, who has been laying low for the last couple of episodes while she takes care of her zombified loverboy.
Speaking of Zoe, her only contribution to this episode is her contemplating poisoning Kyle and then losing him in a sea of Trick-or-Treaters. She’s as good of a babysitter as a horse watching a dog.
When the hell are they going to do something with Kathy Bates? At this point, her talents feel wasted because, outside of the first episode, she hasn’t been given anything to do other than sneer and throw out racial slurs. The next few episodes should give us a bit more Bates, though, since this one ends with her zombie daughters showing up at the school’s door, courtesy of Marie Laveau. The good madame’s got a bit of experience summoning voodoo armies, as a flashback to the ‘60s shows her raising up some zombies to drop a load of vengeance on the racist bastards who killed a young boy.
Last episode ended on a cliffhanger with Queenie’s encounter with the minotaur… a cliffhanger which gets resolved a little too easily this episode. Queenie got stabbed through the belly and dies for just a second before Fiona uses her hot breath to revive her and dismember the minotaur off-camera. She sends his head to Marie Laveau as the witch equivalent of going “neener neener neener!” I know “AHS” has a lot of story it wants to cover, but building up the minotaur as this awesome, weird monster and then flicking him away like an errant booger makes us feel like we wasted our time.
“American Horror Story” has a fantastic way of ending each episode with some kind of cliffhanger, or, at the very least, some good ol’ heebie jeebies. This week’s installment closes out with Spalding in his tea party room, filled with creepy dolls, stuffed animals, and a very dead, but very dressed up, Madison. Gotta meet that necrophilia quota for season three, eh, “AHS”? Regardless, this weird little moment serves as a great hook for next episode.
This week’s Halloween episode felt a little lackluster compared to some of the strong Hallow’s Eve showings in the past, but we did get a few more critical pieces of backstory, more glorious Jessica Lange time, and a couple of weird scenes with Cordelia’s husband who seems to be possessed, given that he banged another chick and then shot her in the friggin’ head.
