American Horror Story
Despite being the second half of a two-part Halloween special, we get no extensive “previously on” recap before jumping into the episode. Instead, we pick up right where we left off, as if only a commercial break separates the two episodes, rather than a week. In keeping with the episode, I’ll neglect to include one here, too.
The ghost of Edward Mordrake continues making his rounds through the freak show, choosing one who he will take with him to the other side.
“Before the night is through I’ll find my grail,” he threatens the performers. “Make me weep tears of sorrow for you!”
The ensemble cast members each get their moment to shine as they recount their characters’ dark pasts. Yet, Mordrake’s second face maintains that none of them are “the one.”
Finally, he pays Elsa a visit in her tent. She initially becomes offended by Mordrake’s appearance, claiming she is no freak, but he and his second face are aware of the secret she hides underneath her long dresses. He tells her she “pretends to be the benevolent zookeeper,” which is worse. Cornered, she reveals her own origin story.
In 1932 Germany, she worked as a sadistic dominatrix (dragging men on leashes, digging stiletto heels into backs, even making one man sit on a toilet seat of nails – all of the sexual perversion we’ve come to expect from American Horror Story by now). Elsa never let her clients touch her… until one night when a group of men drugged her and took a chainsaw to her legs for a snuff film. She knew she was among the lucky, having survived, but the movie made its way through Europe, ruining her reputation.
“I was a star,” she cries. She succumbs to Mordrake, begging him to take her, but he is distracted instead by music. She, too, escapes the clutch of his undead clan.
Meanwhile, Jimmy’s motorcycle runs out of gas as he and Maggie make their way back to camp from their payphone excursion. The two attempt to take a shortcut home through the woods, much to Maggie’s displeasure, where they happen upon the killer clown chasing his escaped female prisoner. Before they can react, Dandy appears behind them, still dressed in his copycat clown garb, knocking them both out with one calculated swing.
Dandy decides to perform a magic show in a clearing in the woods for the killer clown and his hostages — a magic show in which he will saw Maggie in half. Jimmy comes to, intervening just in time. He clocks Dandy in the face, temporarily crippling him, and takes off into the woods with Maggie and the clown’s hostages in tow.
Dandy soon follows in pursuit, but cannot find them. He trips and falls, eventually crying with frustration.
“You ruined my Halloween,” he wails into the void. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…” he chants incessantly.
The killer clown, on the other hand, does not leave the clearing, finding himself face to face with Mordrake. He removes his mask, revealing his deformed, Joker-esque mouth voluntarily this time. Surprisingly, he speaks.
He tells Mordrake of his own sorry past: he had been a bona fide circus clown loved by children until a band of freaks, threatened by him, fabricated a story that he had been inappropriate with kids. With his clowning career ruined, he tried to make children toys from repurposed junk, but was turned away by the toy store’s judging owner. He eventually tried to kill himself but failed, the gun in his mouth only blowing apart the bottom half of his face, explaining his deformity.
He had set out on a new mission: to entertain children again, but this time he would take them away from all of the bad. He had gotten rid of parents and chores, he laments. He put on funny shows for them! He was, in fact, saving the kids that he stole!
“You have caused the demon to weep,” Mordrake announces. At last, he has found “the one.” He takes a swift stab at the clown’s chest and finally frees him from his miserable existence. The clown joins Mordrake’s ghost clan — in death, his face whole again.
Dandy, still wandering in the wood, finds the clown’s dead body on the ground, but becomes surprisingly calm. He snatches the mask, puts it on himself and breathes a satisfied sigh. He hears police sirens in the distance and disappears back into the darkness.
The police eventually turn up, and Jimmy and Maggie recount the night’s events. Despite usual discrimination against freaks, one officer acknowledges Jimmy’s heroism. Early the next morning, a huge crowd of townspeople shows up at the freak show camp. They, too, come to thank Jimmy for saving the town. One man even shakes Jimmy’s hand, unfazed by his lobster hands.
Now having won the favor of the townspeople, the freaks prepare for their first sold-out show in recent memory. Elsa decides she will headline once more, offending the Tattler twins, who have been mysteriously absent all episode. But, before the twins can say anything, Stanley, Maggie’s con-in-crime, arrives under the guise of a talent scout named Richard Spencer, and quickly wins Elsa’s attention.
Dandy returns home to his mother’s mansion, confronting kitchen maid Nora with a knife yet again.
“Halloween is over,” she tells him, disgruntled. “I’m not afraid of you.”
But unlike last time, Dandy follows through on his violent threat, slitting her throat. Looking down at her dead body on the dining room floor and realizing what he has done, Dandy giggles uncontrollably.
Unlike the last three episodes, this one gave us more answers than questions — and was only about an hour long, too. Though sad to say goodbye to the creepy clown who has been the only source of scares all season, Dandy seems more than capable of taking up the villain’s reigns. The episode was fast-paced and it feels like the plot is actually moving, and in the right direction. For the first time this season, next week’s episode might actually be worth looking forward to.
Tidbits
- This is the first episode of the season without musical numbers — maybe Ryan Murphy remembered this is not Glee, at long last.
- The special effects (Mordrake’s second face, the clown’s deformed mouth, the Tattler twins’ conjoined body) are pretty bad. Like, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone bad.
