AHS: Freak Show

If any television show is meant to have a Halloween special, it’s undeniably American Horror Story. Just about every week serves as a tribute to the macabre holiday, but late October begs for an opportunity to up the ante, and this season’s installment wastes no time in doing just that.

The episode opens far from under the now-familiar freak show tent, at the American Morbidity Museum, where a tour guide leads a group through an exhibit dedicated to relics of human mutants.

Here, a so-called scientist (Denis O’Hare) and his assistant (Emma Roberts) arrive but are promptly revealed to be con artists, specifically con artists who have tried to fool the museum into buying a makeshift mutant fetus. While the museum’s higher-ups dismiss them, the tour guide takes them aside and admits the museum needs something new in their exhibit, and would accept an authentic artifact from them, no questions asked. And with that, the fate of our freaks is suddenly less certain.

We return to Florida, suburban West Palm Beach on Halloween, where the killer clown lurks silently behind bushes. It’s near certain he’s scouting a new victim, but one child’s claim of seeing a scary clown is swiftly dismissed by her negligent chaperoning mother.

In Jupiter, bearded lady Ethel learns she has cirrhosis of the liver and only six months to a year to live, a secret she shares in a rare moment of camaraderie with ex-lover Toledo, who is down and out himself as a result of a fight with wife Desiree.

Ethel drinks, despite her doctor’s warning, and tells the troupe a scary story about Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley), a man with two faces driven crazy by the alter ego he shared a head with. After escaping asylum, he joined a freak show and eventually snapped, killing everyone in the show and then hanging himself. Ethel explains they do not perform on Halloween for fear of summoning his spirit.

At the Mott Mansion, Gloria decorates lavishly, insisting they will celebrate a hearty Halloween at home this year, because of the town curfew. Dandy, disappointed when his mother presents him with a Howdy Doody costume, throws a tantrum. He cuts the costume up into a makeshift clown outfit, not unlike our killer’s, mask included.

Dandy meets kitchen maid Nora (Patti LaBelle) in the dining room, wearing his new ensemble and brandishing a knife. She tells him she isn’t afraid of him, but asks if he is somehow involved in the rash of murders in town. Yet, upon his advances, she remains steadfast, even egging him on.

“You couldn’t possibly have killed those people, you don’t have the guy,” she taunts, daring him to stab her.

But she is right: he seems unable to follow through on his threat. “I hate you, I hate you,” he chants maniacally, frustrated, before taking off in a rage.

Bette and Dot, meanwhile, awake from a shared dream of a surgeon splitting them, killing Bette in the process. Bette cries, sayings she wouldn’t want to separate and would miss Dot, but Dot maintains that she wishes for the surgery so that one of them can be happy. By the end of the season could there be just one Tattler twin? Only time will tell.

Roberts’ con woman turns up claiming to be Maggie Esmerelda, a fortuneteller. She quickly wins Elsa’s approval, fabricating a future in which Elsa becomes a star, and joins the freak show. Her arrival is met with some distance from Dot, who has struck up a flirtation with Jimmy and obviously fears Maggie may win his affection.

Maggie, on the other hand, is overwhelmed by her new environment. From a nearby payphone she calls her partner in crime, Stanley, insisting she doesn’t want to kill any freaks to obtain what they need, but he offers little consolation, hanging up to do “his business,” which involves another naked man wearing a Viking helmet.

Back in West Palm Beach that night, the inattentive suburban mothers drink cocktails and gossip in the living room, the trick-or-treater from earlier in her bedroom, bullied by her older brother. No one notices the clown emerge in the hallway and sneak up on him from behind. Finally, a scream wins the adults’ attention, though too late: the little girl tells them the clown took him, pointing to her open window.

At the freak show, Dot insists she and Bette rehearse, regardless of superstition. Elsa insists she sing first, forcing other freaks to accompany her in a rendition of Lana Del Rey’s “Gods and Monsters,” which ultimately summons Mordrake, green smoke billowing behind him, the first element of supernatural menace so far this season.

Mordrake visits Ethel in her trailer, explaining his evil second face forces him find the one in their numbers he will take with him. She tells him of her young life in vaudeville: how Toledo had been her manager, how she had failed to perform anything of real merit, how, in her poverty, she even publicly gave birth to Jimmy before a paying audience. Ethel breaks down, deciding she is ready to go, but he reveals she is “not the one” he has come for and disappears.

At the killer clown’s headquarters, Dandy arrives and taunts his captors with a relentless chanting of “trick or treat.” He stabs at their cage but again cannot bring himself to hurt them. The real clown arrives with the unconscious body of the stolen suburban brother with him, to which Dandy reacts gleefully. “More fun,” he grins.

We’re left with a “To Be Continued,” not very sure of what is to be continued at all. For the third week in a row, the episode bordered on 90 minutes. It would be exciting if the content warranted it; instead, the entire plot feels a bit dragged out and a waste of viewers’ time. Still, the episode did a good job of raising the stakes with Maggie Esmerelda and Edward Mordrake’s arrivals, as well as Dandy’s descent into lunacy.

Tidbits:

– If Ethel is not the one Mordrake has come for, who is? What is the likelihood we will really lose a major character this early in the season?

– What’s with the anachronistic song choices? Each episode has featured one performance, and while the show is set in 1952, not one song seems apropos.