AHS
American Horror Story is an interesting phenomenon. It’s anthology series format means every season features new storylines and characters entirely separate from one another. As a result, each can be judged independently as a hit or a miss: and last season’s Coven was an unquestionable miss (its downfall attributed primarily to too many characters and too little plot). So why tune in this season, then, only to face a very likely possibility of disappointment again?
“I knew I was about to enter the gates of hell, but like the inescapable pull of gravity there was nothing I could do about it,” the episode begins, with a voiceover from a yet-to-be-identified character. The line echoes our resistance to tuning in to a show that’s let us down in the past: we’re doubtful yet here again, glued to the television screen despite ourselves.
The place is Jupiter, Florida and the time is early September, 1952. A milkman approaches the front porch of a quiet home to deliver fresh milk but finds last week’s delivery still sitting near the door untouched. Intrigued, he enters, only to find its elderly resident, Mrs. Tattler, dead on the kitchen floor. He screams, glass bottles of milk crash to the floor and a cuckoo clock promptly, well, cuckoos.
But this is a horror story, and surely this scene alone isn’t enough scary or suspenseful. No, the milkman then roams the upstairs hallway – cautious and armed with a rolling pin, of all things. He hears a noise behind a door, thrusts it open and screams the same, horrified scream again. At what? We can’t be sure just yet, as the scene swiftly cuts to a frantic surgery room at a presumably nearby hospital. A doctor describes an impossible patient: one bladder, three kidneys, four lungs, two hearts but a single circulatory system. Conjoined twins, it happens, were the source of the milkman’s scare: conjoined twins who have apparently been kept secretly in the home all of these years by their now-dead mother.
The Tattler twins repulse the doctors, but Elsa Mars, a former German cabaret singer and now ringleader of a nearby freak show, is only fascinated. Cue Jessica Lange’s long-awaited entrance: a flashy fur coat enveloping her, a smoking cigarette in hand. After a quick-change with a candy striper, Elsa sneaks into the twins’ hospital room, where she is greeted by the seemingly perfect new headliner(s) for her suffering circus. There’s just one small problem: the twins, both played by AHS alum Sarah Paulson, are in disagreement. Bette, sweet and naïve, is quickly taken by Elsa’s proposal… but Dot, embittered by their upbringing in hiding, is angry and skeptical. It’s clear this isn’t the first time the two have been in conflict with each other, and it likely won’t be the last. Elsa leaves unsatisfied, but certainly not defeated.
And again we cut to a drastically different scene: this time it is a young couple picnicking at a lake on the outskirts of town. In another moment of horror movie cliché, the young man leaves the woman alone to get something from his parked car. A beaten-down clown emerges from the nearby woods, with whom the woman engages in surprisingly kind, albeit uncomfortable, conversation. The clown is silent but for his rattled breathing, the lower half of his face obstructed by a mask that feigns a permanent smile. It’s plenty off-putting already by the time he suddenly clocks both the two lovers, proceeds to violently stab the boyfriend to death and then takes the young woman captive. The audience is privy to a montage of clown killings that ensue, though they remain an unsolved mystery and a source of terror for the folks of Jupiter.
The clown keeps the young woman from the picnic and a little boy, snatched from his bed during one of his murderous ventures, hostage in a dilapidated trailer, broken-down in an abandoned field. He is, at first, innocent and childlike with them. He plays a music box and attempts to make a balloon animal, but a popped balloon quickly sets him off into a frenzied rage, rattling the cages that hold our fearful and pleading captives.
In the meantime, we return to Elsa, dejected, at her home among pitched circus tents and parked trailers for its stars. Without the twins, her show’s future is doubtful. Long-time freak show act Jimmy Darling, played by returning cast member Evan Peters, already plans to embark on a new career (one that involves using his deformed, lobster-like hands to pleasure the sexually unsatisfied women of Jupiter, it happens).
The Tattler twins flee the hospital but Elsa quickly confronts them at their home, where they pack a suitcase of belongings. She’s gathered their mother’s murder was not at the hands of Jupiter’s serial killing clown, as initially thought, but shockingly Bette’s. With their darkest secret as blackmail, Elsa gets the Tattler twins to finally concede to her request and 45 minutes into the episode we get a peek inside the freak show at last.
There is an undeniable tension between the freaks and the outside world, and none are more stirred by it than Jimmy, to whom the words “freak” or “monster” invoke a violent fury. When a detective, now caught up with Elsa’s revelation, arrives to arrest Bette and Dot, Jimmy defends them. Mocked by the man for his deformity, Jimmy stabs him in the neck, almost instinctively, killing him instantly.
But there is no time to worry about a dead body backstage because the freak show is about to begin. Though just two seats are occupied – a mother and her grown son – Elsa takes center stage in what feels like a ruse to showcase her singing talent (or lack thereof) rather than the freaks. The two lone spectators are enamored with the Tattlers, offering thousands to buy them from the circus, and angered when refused by Elsa, as well as Dot and Bette themselves.
The freaks congregate post-show, collectively taking to the detective’s dead body with knives in some sort of ritualistic celebration of their abnormalities. None seem to notice the masked clown is watching them from the wooded outskirts… Is this perhaps the inspiration for his own violent acts? We get no answers yet.
Elsa does not partake. Instead, she retires to her tent backstage, weeping. She confides in Kathy Bates’ bearded lady that she brought the twins to the freak show selfishly, so people would come to see her and she would become a star. Following her admission, in solitude at last, Elsa puts on an old record and, in the biggest surprise of the episode, reaches under her skirt to take off her prosthetic legs. Surprise – Elsa is not so much a martyr on behalf of the freaks, but a freak herself!
The super-sized fourth season premiere is already scarier and more coherent than last season, and one can only hope it will continue on the same path. A killer clown is a tired idea, but, in the context of the episode, proves to be both genius and a likely source of nightmares to hold us over until next week, at least.
Tidbits:
- The theme song, which is always chilling, gets a new facelift that makes it even better, if possible. The addition of music box music adds to the creepy factor. Plus, the stop motion miniatures remind me of a page from I Spy (not unlike the puzzle books, the theme sequence is sure to hold some clues as to what’s to come this season).
- Though not mentioned within the context of the episode, second season fan favorite character Pepper makes an appearance in the freak show, alongside a partner (am I too hopeful in assuming their name is Salt?) Executive producer Ryan Murphy alluded to the possibility of the character’s pre-Asylum origin story surfacing later this season: could it mean all of the different AHS seasons actually exist in the same universe?
