Need to get caught up? Check out my review of the first three episodes of this season.
Episode twelve of AHS 13 was, and I don’t think I’m being dramatic here, the worst episode of the season. It might have been bad enough that it ruined one of the things I’ve always loved most about American Horror Story.
We’ll discuss that more, don’t worry.
Spoiler warning: There is no way I can talk about this episode without spoiling some things. There’s just only so much dancing around a topic and saying things without really saying them that one creepy critic can do. You’ve been dutifully warned.
(Quick housekeeping note. Sorry for the delay in this post, Killer Queens. Things have been extra crazy this week. But you can expect two posts today.)
This episode starts with Myrtle and Fiona having a heart-to-heart. It turns out that Ben didn’t just bring Myrtle back from the dead. He spilled some family secrets, too. See, we already knew that Ben and Constance were sired by the Devil. But it turns out that Fiona is Constance’s twin sister.
Oh, and Sister Jude is their mom.
Cordelia is struggling with this new revelation. But she doesn’t have time to process the fact that her grandpa is the literal devil. She’s working with Marie Laveau and her uncle Ben to take Mr. Nas down. They craft a spell to take Mr. Nas’s years away and reduce him to an eternal baby. The pre-spell work done, Ben, Cordelia, and Queenie head to New York.
Side note. Do you remember Scooby Doo? You probably do; he’s one of the most well-known cartoon characters in America.
In episodes of the original show, you’ll notice a pattern. If the characters explain how their strange Rube Goldberg machine is going to work to catch the ‘monster’, it won’t work. If they don’t explain the trap, it works like a charm. It’s probably important to keep that in mind when you watch the end of this episode.
Alright, so let’s break down this episode. And I’d like to start my long complaint critique by talking about the pacing.
Because it was really, really bad. Things were either happening too fast or too slow the entire time.
The worst offender was the very first scene, in which Myrtle and Fiona talk about her parentage. We just dove right in there, with Myrtle blurting out this massive secret without even explaining how or why she knows this. The episode continues with awkward flashbacks and a lot of scenes where the characters stand around and talk about things. Like, a lot. From the viewers’ perspective, it feels like we’re either experiencing whiplash or being drowned in exposition.
Now, let’s talk about the writing. Because it is bad. I feel like maybe a couple pages of the script got dropped by accident. Or, more likely, the writer is running towards a conclusion and not giving satisfactory resolutions for things.
Like including Papa Legba, who is supposed to be helping them, to just nod at Ben and say he won’t stop him from plucking whoever he wants out of Hell. It’s so confusing. Isn’t Papa supposed to be part of the team? Was there a falling out? What happened? What did I miss?
Then, there’s the fact that two important characters die in this episode. But again, it is not impressive to kill off characters you’ve already brought back from the dead this season!
Listen, you all know I’m a writer myself. And I don’t kill off a lot of my characters, because I feel like it should be earned. You should care about a character enough that it hurts when they’re gone. Or, as a horror fan, the death should feel satisfying because that person was just such an asshole. A death should be shocking, have impact, have an emotional reaction, cause problems, cause heartache. It should cause something! But when we violently murder someone just to have them pop back up no worse for wear an episode later, the death does nothing. And we all know the characters who died are going to be right back in the finale.
Do better.
Finally, I’ve got to talk about this revelation that Constance and Fiona are not just twin sisters, but the daughter of Sister Jude. I hate this.
American Horror Story has always fascinated me by using the same actors to play different characters. Sometimes there are tantalizing echoes between them. Constance and Tate are beautiful and tragic as mother and son in Murder House. So when we see different people with the same faces finding each other in Coven, it’s sweet and subtle. Like soulmates reaching out across worlds. I even mentioned this earlier this season, when both Constance and Fiona talked about penance.
But now, there’s some clunky soap opera-like ‘explanation ’. It ruins one of the best things about American Horror Story, strips away their best parlour trick, and leaves long-time fans feeling cheated.
At least, I feel cheated.
There’s just one episode left in the season. I don’t know whether to be relieved or angry. Maybe they’ll fix all the issues from the last two episodes and get back to the excitement of the first part of the season. Or maybe I’ll be back here Friday, complaining about what a rip-off this season ended up being.
Only time will tell. See you then.
My book, Station 86 Volume One, is available now on Amazon! It’s got two dark sci-fi stories about murder and mayhem on the station of First Contact.
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