All That Jazz (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Dead"
Episode Grade: B+

Tonight's edition of American Horror Story features Zoe having a threesome with the dead guy she resurrected and stitched together out of the body parts of her fraternity brothers and the dead actress Lily Rabe resurrected last week.

So, yeah, "The Dead" is kind of about sex.

More precisely, it's about sex, connection and feeling, and the way those things are all tied together. It's about a desperate longing for some sort of companionship at difficult times in our lives. This being American Horror Story, those difficult times include trying to find one's bearings after being resurrected from the dead.

Fiona isn't dead, of course, but chemotherapy's a bitch, even when it works. Her hair's falling out, and for a woman who has largely defined herself by her beauty (as dictated in large part by the society around her), this is a particularly devastating moment.

So along comes The Axeman, and damn, is Danny Huston enjoying this role. What he's offering, and what Fiona accepts in spite of her obvious reluctance and better judgement, is not just great sex, it's that sense of connection, that feeling of being desired that she so strongly values.

She values it so highly, in fact, that she ignores the dead body in the bathtub of Axeman's apartment. She values it so highly that she spends the night after first trying to leave. And she values it so highly that she shows up once more at the end of the episode, even after he tells her that he had spent decades watching her in the coven's house (he was trapped there, you'll recall).

I'll admit, there were no moments during this whole elaborate seduction routine that made me wary. At one point I even wrote in my notes, "Why can't she 'smell the bullshit' on this guy?" But by the end of "The Dead" I had fallen on the thumbs-up side for this particular storyline. Part of that is just the fun of seeing Lange and Huston go round-and-round in a small room.

But in a larger sense, examining Fiona's vulnerabilities and the understandable resulting weaknesses makes for more compelling television. It is, of course, tremendously gratifying to see Lange glide through rooms insulting people, and I certainly don't want to see that element of the show disappear. But a strong character is a character with some weakness, and I enjoy seeing Lange act the hell out of Fiona's desperate longing for some sort of bond at this late point in her life.

That search for a connection is Madama LaLaurie's downfall in this episode. Her plot takes on a different form than Fiona's and Zoe's, of course, but everything is tied together with the same thematic threads. For LaLaurie, her connection with Queenie is her lifeline in an unfamiliar age. But more importantly, it's her shot at redemption for the blood in her past, a way of re-connecting with some basic level of humanity.

Queenie's sudden decision that she's isolated from the other witches is...well, just that: sudden. She thinks it's because of her size, while LaLaurie (not unkindly) attributes it to her race. Introducing that particular dynamic now is a little convenient, and doesn't jive with what we've seen so far; the witches in this coven are fucked up, but there's no hint of racism in them. Hell, Fiona even got a big speech proclaiming her hatred for racists.

All of this is basically an excuse to drive Queenie to Marie Laveau, and, as expected, Angela Bassett is compelling and persuasive. She plays on Queenie's (new-found) sense of isolation and offers her a home where she can experience a true connection with those around her, and all for the low, low price of one Kathy Bates.

It's a price Queenie decides to pay once Bates admits a particularly grievous sin (killing the bastard child of her slave and her husband and using the child's blood for a beauty product). The episode ends with Queenie leading LaLaurie to Laveau, exploiting the former's hunger for friendship in order to deliver her into the hands of her greatest enemy.

As for Madison, FrankenKyle and Zoe...well, this plotline is a wee bit less subtle. The resurrected Madison just wants to feel something, anything, even if it's pain. And as much as Zoe might try to help Kyle recover some humanity, she's not having much success.

Of course, Zoe's not exactly covering herself in glory this season. This week, she leaves Kyle alone with Madison, only to return to find them having sex. Some credit to FrankenKyle, who managed to recover his fine motor skills awfully fast once sex with Emma Roberts was on the table.

I actually don't hate this. Based on what little we see in this episode, the connection Madison is trying to forge with FrankenKyle seems real, and it's about as reasonable a development as we can hope in a story that involves two resurrected dead people having sex. Roberts does solid work here conveying the quiet misery of her new existence, and in an odd, fucked up kind of way it's actually sort of touching watching these two confused, miserable creatures find each other.

Bringing Zoe into it for a threesome...that's less touching (or more, I guess, depending on one's usage of "touching"). Still, the thematic logic to that particular development is sound: Zoe has her own issues with connection, what with the whole "killer vagina" handicap. Finding two people who aren't in danger from simply being with her is meaningful for Zoe.

What I like even more about this episode is how it seems to instigate what one suspects will be the central plot going forward: the splintering of the coven. Queenie has defected to Laveau (though previews indicate she might have seconds thought already). Cordelia discovers tonight that her mother killed Madison, and she ropes Zoe into a conspiracy against Fiona.

We've sort of worked around the edges of that so far this season, but for the first time it's possible to see the outline of a larger arc. A battle between mother and daughter for the future of the coven, a reluctant potential supreme forced to fight for survival, all while a powerful and immortal voodoo priestess plots their destruction.

Oh, and dead people having sex.

Notes

• Zoe kills Spalding tonight. Normally I'd advise you to say goodbye to Denis O'Hare, but Lily Rabe's character is still hanging around, so hold off on that for a bit.
• Fiona tells Axeman that "I don't believe in ghosts," which seems to be one of the most hilariously on-point examples of arbitrary skepticism that I can recall. 
• Speaking of on-point, American Horror Story would like you to know there are similarities between playing music and having sex. You're welcome for the insight. 
• Madison is given a cringe-worthy voiceover at the start of the episode, comparing her inability to feel anything (what with being a walking corpse) with her generation's supposed similar handicap. This section of AHS brought to you by David Brooks. 
• I actually really like the cold open, which features Kyle in better days hanging around with his frat brother in a tattoo parlor. The line "I only have one life" is rather on-the-nose, but showing his friends' tattoos, then cutting to the present day and revealing that he has those body parts...creepy and effective. 

Consequences and Repercussions (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Axeman Cometh"
Episode Grade: B-

Let's start with the truth: I'm not entirely sure what to say about "The Axeman Cometh," aside from the fact that I hate that title. It's more a collection of moments than a coherent whole. Or, perhaps put more accurately, the moments don't really cohere for me. A couple of moments are compelling, a couple of them are confusing.

But none of them are awful, and to the extent they promise some fun in the future, I'm willing to cut them some slack.

Before getting to that, however, I want to do a little touchdown dance, because I so rarely get to say:

Last week, I expressed some concern about the way the show was using Misty Day, the resurrectionist witch played by Lily Rabe. Giving a character the power to raise the dead is dangerous, insofar as she's a deus ex machina waiting to happen in just about every episode. When the witches burned Myrtle Snow last week, only to have Day resurrect her at the end of the episode, the effect of the proceeding plotline was significantly blunted.

Unfortunately, American Horror Story went back to that well this week. Yep, Emma Roberts is back, courtesy of Ms. Day. At least she got to play a corpse for a couple of weeks.

This is all sparked by yet another thoroughly unwise Zoe decision. Having come across a "spirit board" (which is clearly just a Ouija board someone with the show bought from a local Target), Zoe decides to use it to track down Madison. She doesn't get Madison, but she does get the spirit of a famous New Orleans serial killer, The Axeman.

Danny Huston, who plays Axeman, is one of the highlights of this episode, and I look forward to seeing him over the next couple weeks. Back in 1919, he sneaked into the coven's house with the intent of killing a few women (they refused to play jazz, as he demanded), only to be killed himself. 

This being a horror story (see the show's title if you doubt me), the Axeman's spirit is trapped in the house, and he wants release. Zoe, being pretty stupid, doesn't listen when Queenie urges her to leave well enough alone, and makes a deal with Axeman's spirit: the location of Madison's body in exchange for his release.

To Zoe's credit, she's lying at the time, so she's not completely stupid. Just a little stupid. And petty. 

Fast forward a bit through an overly long scene of Zoe searching through Spalding's room and finding Madison's body, then a torture scene that seems to involve a spatula and a hot plate, FrankenKyle showing up at Misty's house, and bam, we have a resurrected niece of Julia Roberts.

It might be harsh for me to claim that Misty represents some sort of existential threat to the show. But at the moment, it seems hard to overstate exactly how troublesome I find this character. So long as Misty Day is hanging around, there are no consequences. Death isn't permanent, but even worse, it's not particularly dramatic. 

The other major development this week is the revelation that Cordelia's husband Hank is actually a witch-hunter hired by Marie Laveau to track down and kill all the "descendants of Salem." That's the explanation for his little murder tryst with Kaylee, the adorable redhead played by Alexandra Breckenridge. She was a developing witch as well, a fact he discovered thanks to his marriage to Cordelia.

The end of "Axeman Cometh" is a little confusing. Laveau's pretty pissed that the witches still exist, and demand that Hank get his ass in gear and start killing them. Meanwhile, a blinded Cordelia, gifted with second sight thanks to the acid attack, is confronted by the Axeman's spirit: he was killed in her room, so he's trapped there.

Despite being a spirit, Axeman can still swing a mean axe, and threatens Cordelia, while mumbling something about a contract (was he also a witch-hunter?).The witches cast a spell...and then Axeman leaves and runs into Fiona at a bar.

The causality here is confusing. Is there a link between Hank and the Axeman? What was the point of the spell if the spirit can just leave anyway? Is it as simple as the girls opening the door and Axeman just invisibly sliding out? 

More importantly, you can see the thematic links between Axeman and Hank, who both represent forms of male brutality against women. The witches taking a stand against Axeman back in 1919 is a reflection of their newfound power; his escape in 2013 is, equally, a reflection of the Coven's diminished strength. AHS is concerned this season with the ways in which women are oppressed and the ways in which they strike back against their oppressors. 

Anyway, I don't know. But we get a new character played by an actor who clearly enjoys the role, so I'm OK for now. 

Notes

• Not much Jessica Lange bitchiness this week, unfortunately.
• "When I plant a fat-ass cracker bitch in the ground, I expect her to stay planted!" Angela Bassett, on the other hand, does get a moment.
• Yet another cold open this week with some remarkably lame dialogue. "If we embody our feminine might..."
• Grace Gummer is the speaker of that particular line. You'll remember her as Hallie from The Newsroom.
• Misty's initially reluctant to revive Madison, pointing out, "She's missing an arm." But Zoe's got that covered: "I have it!"

Mothers and Daughters (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Burn, Witch. Burn!"
Episode Grade: B+

Up until the last minute or so of "Burn, Witch. Burn!," I was very much on board with this episode. And even with that minute, it still represents this season's best episode. However, that last minute is groan-worthy enough to drop this episode a notch or two in my estimation, and it can be read as a dangerous sign for the show going forward.

Lily Rabe's Misty Day is, at this point, more of a get-out-of-jail-free card for the writers than an actual character. Giving her the ability to raise the dead means that no character is truly out of the show. She's a human reset button.

You can have a character like that hanging around, but you need to use her carefully, with a measure of discipline. "Discipline" has never been a strength of Ryan Murphy's, however, and using Misty to wipe away the crucial result of your episode's most essential plotline is disappointing.

And it was such an awesome plotline! Jessica Lange got to sneer and shout and then burn a witch. It was awesome!

The fallout from last week's acid attack on Cordelia is tonight's primary concern, which is nice because it gives us a lot of Lange in self-loathing mode. There are long, lingering, creepy shots in the hospital where Cordelia was taken, and they're masterpieces of composition and camera work. There's a vague haze over the lens as Lange wonders through the corridors of the hospital, and the viewers are made to share Lange's disorientation.

We see these scenes from a new perspective later in the episode. Lange, hauled before the witches' council to answer for all the nonsense that's gone on at the coven, pulls her trump card: it was Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy, you'll remember) who threw acid in Cordelia's face, and Lange has proof.

How did she know? She (and we) dimly saw a hooded figure pacing through the hospital, which is fair enough and appropriately creepy: of course Lange would see her daughter's attacker at the moment.

What we don't see until Lange tells the council, however, is that she followed the hooded figure into the elevator and caught a glimpse of Snow in the mirror. She then tracked Snow down to a hotel, found her little stash of defaced Fiona pictures and, whammo, proof.

If we're being honest, this is all kind of bullshit. As I wrote, we don't actually see any of this when it happens. The hotel investigation can be forgiven (it happened at some indeterminate time, and it's OK for things to happen off-screen), but we were with Lange in the hospital throughout. When did she tail Snow in the hospital? When did she have that opportunity? Cutting out that particular moment without letting us know you're doing is, again, bullshit.

But...ah, screw it, this is all too much fun. Lange is exceptional throughout all of this, running the gamut from self-loathing in the hospital corridors to righteous fury in the scenes where she confronts Myrtle Snow. And when Snow is taken to the stake to be burned alive for her crimes, Lange's seething contempt is perfectly expressed when she sparks the fire with a lit cigarette.

And then Misty Day comes along and revives Myrtle's corpse, and one wonders what the point is.

Look, this can work out. As we learn more about Misty Day and we discover what her agenda is (making everyone listen to Fleetwood Mac, perhaps), this might turn out to be an interesting development. And maybe we'll learn some of the rules that govern Misty's powers, bringing some limitations to the god-like being. At the moment, however, it's hard to see beyond Misty's status as Plot Eraser.

But this little twist doesn't erase the fun that came before, and for now I'll grudgingly accept it.

If there's a theme to "Burn...," it's the regrets of motherhood. Marie Laveau's zombie attack ultimately peters out without killing anyone, though we do get the admittedly awesome sight of Taissa Farmiga wiping out a horde of zombies with a chainsaw, which marks the first interesting thing Zoe has done in this season. However, this does give Kathy Bates a chance to re-connect with her daughters.

(Full disclosure: after posting last week's review, which made no mention of the presence of Bates' daughters among the zombie horde, I discovered that a bunch of viewers...OK, every viewer, had noticed them where I hadn't. My apologies.)

The episode began with a flashback to 1830's New Orleans, and it turns out Bates was a monster to her daughters as well as her slave, condemning them to spend a year in her horror attic after overhearing them plotting against her. Seeing them return as part of a zombie attack is, as comeuppances go, pretty effective.

A century and a half in a coffin will mellow anyone out, however, and Bates sells her evolution. A lesser actress probably wouldn't be as convincing here, but Bates' regret and horror at the realization of her own cruelty is effective and compelling.

"Burn..." is a little too overt about the parallels between Bates' and Lange's characters, but it earns some credit for pointing that out and having Lange shoot it down immediately:

Bates: Perhaps this shared tragedy will bring us closer together.
Lange: I doubt it. After all, you're the maid.

These regrets and resentments and disappointments drive "Burn...,"which asks a question that has obsessed artists for centuries: how much is a mother to blame when her daughters come back as murderous undead slaves of a voodoo priestess?

Notes:

• So, Zoe has a new power: she stops the zombie attack with a command. Yes, she's probably the next supreme.
• Awesome Jessica Lange Manipulation, Part One: Fiona proves Myrtle threw acid in Cordelia's face by showing the burns on Snow's hand. We find out later that, just off-screen, Gabourey Sidibe was dunking her hand in acid.
• Awesome Jessica Lange Manipulation, Part Two: This troubles Sidibe's conscience, but Lange talks her down with some expert manipulation in a great scene where she dangles the possibility that Sidibe might be the supreme.
• Cordelia's husband shows up at the hospital and seems to genuinely care about her (remember last week: cheated on her, shot the lady he slept with). But when he takes the hand of a permanently blinded Cordelia, she gets a sudden mental vision of his affair.

War of the Witches (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Fearful Pranks Ensue"
Episode Grade: B

I wasn't terribly thrilled with last week's episode of American Horror Story, which I felt relied far too much on blatant, out-of-character stupidity. Objectively, however, a lot of stuff happened, most notably Fiona slashing Madison's throat in an effort to stave off her inevitable death and replacement as Supreme.

"Fearful Pranks Ensue," by contrast, is concerned more with reacting to last week's events, setting up future craziness and letting Jessica Lange chew some scenery. There's not a ton of plot advancement, though there is the usual amount of creepiness.

But it's a fun, tense episode, and damn, do I enjoy watching Jessica Lange do her thing.

As indicated in the second paragraph, "Fearful Pranks Ensue" spends much of its running time dealing with the fallout from Fiona's...pointed disciplinary style. This doesn't really go anywhere, in terms of plot advancement or repercussions; Fiona gets away with her murder.

But it does expose us to part of the larger witch universe, which is something I've been looking forward to since the season premier. The Witches' Council dispatches three representatives to investigate Madison's death, a group headed by one Myrtle Snow, who has a long-lasting feud with Fiona. She also understands quite well what Fiona has done, both to Madison and to the previous Supreme (throat-slashing, in case you forgot).

This particular plot is mainly just a chance to get Frances Conroy (playing Myrtle) and Fiona in a room together and let Conroy's righteous rage bounce off Lange's stony contempt. And it is utterly successful in that goal; there's something undeniably enjoyable about watching Conroy desperately interrogating Lange and coming up short again and again.

The investigation ultimately turns on the butler, Spalding, a greasy-haired chap we've only seen in the background before this episode. He saw Fiona kill the original supreme, then witnessed the aftermath of her murder of Madison. He lost his tongue shortly after Fiona's original murder, and there's every reason to think that Fiona was responsible for this. Myrtle Snow certainly thinks so, as he lost his tongue shortly after Myrtle placed a spell on him requiring him to tell the truth (it's a show with witches, they all went to school together, just go with it).

The reveal that Spalding actually took his own tongue, presumably aware of Myrtle's spell and unwilling to rat on Fiona (he loves her), is deftly handled, and speaks to one of AHS' themes: the depth and desperation of obsession, and the ways in which love and passion can twist into something horrific.

It's a theme that synchronizes well with Conroy's character and her reaction to Spalding's refusal to give up Fiona even when he has the chance: it's a hysterical, over-the-top explosion, the reaction of someone who has been driven for years by a seething desire for vengeance.

In the case of the Coven season, this is a desperation primarily aimed toward some form of preservation. This has taken the form of Fiona's obsession with immortality and Cordelia's quest for a child, not to mention Kathy Bates' unwilling immortality. The characters on this show want to be preserved for the future, whether literally (in Fiona's case) or in a more traditional sense, through the birth of children.

And then there's Spalding, who takes the preservation theme to a new level. Turns out, the butler is holding onto Madison's corpse and turning it into a human doll so she can join the tea party he's been holding with his more traditional dolls.

The other significant plot in "Fearful Pranks Ensue" is also about an explosion of rage, this time from Angela Bassett's Marie Laveau. It turns out, Jessica Lange isn't particularly scared of minotaurs, and after coming across Gabourey Sidibe recovering from her sexual encounter with said minotaur, she dispatches the creature (off-screen, unfortunately) and sends its head to Bassett.

Bassett responds in the only reasonable way: by summoning an army of zombies.

Yes, American Horror Story is engaging in the zombie craze. The context makes this reasonable enough, and the episode ends in nicely creepy fashion, with Laveau's undead host knocking on the witches' door (loudly, but not un-politely). And, hey, zombies are their own form of preservation.

THEMES!

"Fearful Pranks" is fun. That's the takeaway. And after last week's catastrophe, "fun" is a pleasant development. It gives Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy room to work, and it sets the stage for storylines that might actually be worth pursuing.

Notes

• Cordelia's husband, Luke, is cheating on her, which is awful and...oh, wait, he just shot and killed the woman he slept with. OK?
• The episode ends with a black-hooded figure throwing acid in Cordelia's face in a women's room. It's obviously a major development, but I'll be damned if I have coherent thoughts on it right now. One supposes it'll play into Fiona's obsession with eternal beauty in some way.
• FrankenKyle repeatedly slams his head on a toilet, then flees (with impressive stealth) when Zoe leaves to make him lunch. Again, Zoe: not too bright.
• "I've always enjoyed our little talks together, [Spalding]. Especially since you lost your tongue."
• "If [Madison]'s dead, it's probably because she got wasted and offered the Grim Reaper a hand job or something."

A Replacement-Level Episode (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Replacements"
Episode Grade: D+

How much stupidity are we supposed to accept in American Horror Story?

There were a number of moments during tonight's episode that could have prompted that question. It might have been the moment when Gabourey Sidibe masturbated in an effort to seduce a minotaur. It might have been the moment when Zoe dropped off the confused, utterly silent, stitched-together remnants of Kyle at his mother's house, rang the doorbell, then ran away. Or it might have been the moment when Madison allowed Fiona to slash her throat because she had absolutely no sense that the evil, scheming supreme witch obsessed with protecting her power and youth hadn't suddenly become friendly and mentoring.

It was moment two, in case you're curious.

The question that starts this review isn't rhetorical. One comes into an AHS season expecting a healthy amount of crazy, and that's fair enough. But there's a difference between "crazy" and "stupid." Odd as it might sound, characters can behave rationally in a show luxuriating in craziness. And crazy can be fun.

Stupidity, however, which is what "The Replacements" luxuriates in, is not rational or fun. It's just a plot bouncing from random bit of creepiness to random bit of creepiness, pointing at the weirdness and saying, "Hey, this is some crazy shit, right?"

There's the glimmer of some interesting themes in "The Replacements," which is a rather on-the-nose title. The A-plot here is Fiona's realization that Madison is going to become the new supreme, as evidenced by her sudden ability to set things on fire with her mind. The supreme succession works by draining the current supreme's power and giving it to the up-and-comer (a fact that is revealed in a painfully written, cringe-worthy flashback at the beginning of the episode), which explains the decline of Fiona's health.

The saving graces of "Boy Parts" were the scenes where Jessica Lange interacted with Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett. This week, she spends most of her time with Emma Roberts, which is...less compelling.

That Madison isn't particularly bright is believable, though the show goes entirely too far in making her out to be a bitch. It's less believable that she would wholeheartedly embrace Fiona's sudden interest in her new powers. Madison doesn't like anybody, and she sees nothing suspicious in this horrible woman's new-found friendship?

This all ends in a fairly predictable fashion, as Fiona betrays Madison in the same way she betrayed her own mentor, the previous supreme: with the aforementioned throat slash. Death in this series seems a somewhat temporary phenomenon, what with the presence of Lily Rabe's resurrection ability and a voodoo priestess with the ability to create zombies living right down the street, so we'll see if Madison returns at some point.

Again, you can see a reluctant idea peeking its tiny little head around the corner through all this nonsense. Fiona's position as supreme is tied tightly to her power and to her beauty; the fear of replacement is very much the fear of death, and this gets to larger questions as to how society so readily disposes of women once they pass their physical primes.

Our B-plot this week is once again FrankenKyle (yes, I know "Frankenstein" was the name of the doctor, I've played Trivial Pursuit too), and it's notable for two things: first, actually making me exclaim, "Jesus Christ" in reaction to Zoe's abject stupidity, and, second, incest.

After Zoe retrieves Kyle from a delightfully creepy Lily Rabe (who still loves her Fleetwood Mac), she makes the baffling decision to bring him back to his mother, who she met earlier in the day. She does this, as I mentioned earlier, by leaving Kyle at the doorstep and running away after ringing the doorbell.

When you're delivering a dead boy to his mother, it's best not to take the flaming bag of poo approach to the handover.

Kyle's mom oscillates between baffling obliviousness (it takes her quite a while to ask Kyle why he won't talk) and suspicion (she can tell his body isn't his body because...well, she's been having sex with him for a loooong time). It's hard to see what exactly the incest revelation adds to this particular story, aside from allowing us to say, "Yeah, I get it" when Kyle responds to his mother's last advance by bashing her head in with a trophy.

Three data points does not make a trend, a fact that I learned in grad school and which directly contradicted what I learned in journalism school. So it's probably premature to start complaining about the apparent rapid decline in quality of this season's episodes.

Still, we've gone from a solid premiere to a flawed second episode to a thoroughly asinine third offering. That's discouraging, if nothing else. And if Coven can't stumble onto the distinction between stupid and crazy, it's going to be a long season.

Notes

• Another reason I'm suspicious of Madison's death: IMDB says Emma Roberts is around for 13 episodes. 
• Oh, right the minotaur. It comes hunting for Kathy Bates, and Sidibe draws it away with a bit of Bates' blood. She leads it to a secluded spot, and for some ungodly reason starts trying to seduce it (something about both being called beasts, which is unfair to Sidibe's character, but, you know, does seem like a fair label for the half-bull, half-man creature). And, yes, this includes masturbation. This apparently works, but the scene ends with Bull Man grabbing Sidibe's neck. Based on the previews for next week's episode, that ends poorly, though I wonder how Sidibe's "human voodoo doll" powers play into the equation.
• Sarah Paulson rounds out the plot happenings by visiting Angela Bassett, whose screen time is depressingly short. Paulson wants a fertility rite, Bassett won't give it to her, and that's that.
• Bassett's raw contempt for Paulson is pretty awesome, at least.
• Not much work for Bates either, unfortunately. She does get a funny reaction to seeing Barack Obama on TV for the first time. Obvious and predictable, but funny.
• Fiona "hates a racist," which is an oddly noble character trait for someone of her ruthlessness and brutality. She also voted for Obama twice, which you can probably expect to see mentioned on the Republican National Committee's Twitter feed at some point.
• "I've led a disreputable life, but I did it in style."
• Rabe keeps going on about Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks to FrankenKyle, who is utterly dead-eyed in response. I'm with you, buddy. 

The Stitched-Together Life (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Boy Parts"
Episode Grade: C+

It's rather banal to say that the theme of a given piece of art is "life." All art is about life, in one way or another. Arguing that a piece of fiction is about "life" is pretty much a waste of bandwidth.

That said, "Boy Parts" is very much about life.

This particular episode of AHS, however, is concerned with the literal fact of life and its creation. "Boy Parts" doesn't do much more than hit the expected early notes of that particular song, but between Kathy Bates' immortality, Lily Rabe's ability to return dead things (including herself) to life, a resurrected college kid stitched together from the body parts of his friends and a conception ceremony that involves Sarah Paulson having sex with her husband in a ring of fire surrounded by snakes, there's every indication that this is going to be a consistent element of the season.

AHS is hardly the first horror story to concern itself with this theme, and in fact it's impossible not to think of Frankenstein's monster when watching Emma Roberts and Taissa Farmiga attempt to resurrect the frat brother Roberts killed last week with her telepathic abilities.

This is the weakest plotline of the episode, and for a couple of reasons. First, Farmiga and Roberts are currently the least impressive actors on the show. Roberts can do spoiled and petulant, but not much else. Unfortunately, those are two more emotions than Farmiga has been able to display so far, acknowledging that it's still early in the season.

As a result, scenes focusing on these two tend to devolve pretty quickly into a series of bitchy comments from Roberts and vaguely pained reactions from Farmiga. It's a pattern that grows old quickly.

Second, it's hard to care overmuch about Kyle's resurrection because it's hard to care overmuch about Kyle. We were given only brief glimpses of the kid last week, and while he looked like a shining star in comparison with his gang-raping frat brothers there was little enough to justify Farmiga's longing.

That she feels guilty about his death is reasonable. That she silently agrees to go along with Roberts' plan to sneak into a morgue and stitch the severed body parts of Kyle's friends onto his head is not, and yes, I realize the silliness of going on about "reasonable" when the sentence includes some of the words this one does. 

This little scheme goes as you'd expect, which is another flaw. Resurrection spell apparently fails? Check. Kyle comes back to life at awkward moment by slowly raising his head and upper body from the table? Check. Kyle beats an innocent person to death in rage and confusion? Check. Kyle continues to display rage and confusion at his new state of being? Check.

It's easy to see some of the potential directions the show's writers can take this plot. Kyle's left in the care of Misty Day, the resurrectionist witch played by Lily Rabe we saw get burned alive last week. It's possible they just go the full-on Frankenstein route and make Kyle a groaning, moaning, murdering monster. There's also the chance Kyle will slowly re-gain his humanity and the associated faculties, only to realize the horror of his situation and act as a commentary on the relentless pursuit of eternal life.

Of course, it seems we're going to get a lot of those commentaries this season. The whole idea that immortality is far more a curse than a blessing is fairly tiresome by this point. But to the extent that these plots let us watch Jessica Lange act the bad-ass around fantastic actresses like Bates and Angela Bassett, well, they're fine by me.

The strongest moments in "Boy Parts" come from the interactions between Lange and the other two women. This is in spite of the fact that the dialogue here is nothing to be proud of; it's ponderous and severe, without much in the way of wit or cleverness to recommend it. But these three women make it work.

Bates is particularly good in this episode, as she succeeds in finding a slight measure of sympathy in the utterly horrific character she's playing. There's a wonderful moment where Bates defends herself by saying, "I was a woman of my time," only to have Lange utterly reject the rationalization with, "That's a crock of shit." You don't want to try and humanize Bates too much, for fear of ignoring her crimes, but it's not impossible to acknowledge the severity of both her sins and her punishment.

And Bates, who is, of course, a wonderful actress, manages to convey the horror of her situation with her tone of voice and facial expressions. Marie Laveau (Bassett) displayed the corpses of Bates' family before throwing her in the coffin, and Bates loved her girls very much, "even the ugly one." When Bates talks of Hell as an eternity of seeing the dead faces of your children in front of your eyes, well, it resonates.

We also get to see the first of what we can hope are many conversations between Lange and Bassett. The dynamic between the two is fascinating; Lange, the elitist witch with no small amount of racism tingeing her contempt, and Bassett, the the centuries-old holder of great power resentful of the magic stolen by Lange's little tribe.

The back-and-forth they have in Laveau's salon (of course the centuries-old holder of great power runs a hair salon, because how else would we know she was black) is a delight, if, again, the dialogue is rather on-the-nose. The dynamic here that I find so intriguing is that Lange needs Bassett, who possesses the secret to immortality. And because Lange's character hasn't seen any of the movies that deal with this and doesn't know how immortality stories end, that's a secret she very much wants.

"Boy Parts" is something of a step back from last week's premiere, though not a significant one. It places us at the intersection of a bunch of roads, and asks us to imagine which ones we'll take. Thing is, we have a pretty decent sense of where most of them end. Finding a path that doesn't merely shroud a cliche in various shades of crazy seems to be the challenge of this season.

Notes

• We get another flashback to Bates and Bassett, this time the moment when the latter imprisons the former in a coffin. And I have to ask: was it really possible for a huge mob of torch-wielding slaves to gather in 1840's New Orleans?
• I briefly mentioned Sarah Paulson's plot early in the review. It's fairly basic right now: she's infertile, her husband (who knows she's a witch) suggests magic, she's reluctant and then immediately gives in. Followed by ring of fire snake sex. 
• "She's sober." "Except vodka."
• "I'm sorry I killed your boy candy, OK?"
• "Did we just marry the devil? 'Cuz I'm not sure I'm down with that."
• Misty is really, really fond of Fleetwood Mac. Farmiga's one really good moment in this episode is her creeped out reaction to Misty's rambling speech about the beauty of "Dreams." I make that exact same face when other people go on about music.
• Is the New Orleans morgue really just completely deserted for long stretches of time? Like, long enough to collect a bunch of body parts, stitch them together and perform a Satanic rite?
• Bull Man lives!

Oh, Oh, Witchy Woman...(Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Bitchcraft"
Episode Grade: B

"Bitchcraft" is a season premier that begins with Kathy Bates ripping out the tongue of a slave who had sex with her daughter and placing a bull's head on him so that he can be her personal minotaur and ends with Jessica Lange removing her from the coffin in which she had been buried alive for approximately 170 years. In between, Julia Roberts' niece uses her mind to crash a bus carrying the frat boys who raped her, Gabourey Sidibe stabs herself with a fork in order to hurt Roberts and Taissa Farmiga sexes two guys to death.

So, you know, there's that.

It's impossible to go into a season of American Horror Story without hearing stories from those who are loyal viewers. Created by Ryan Murphy, the mind behind Nip/Tuck and Glee, American Horror Story is, if nothing else a thoroughly unique concept. A horror anthology that deals with a standalone story every season, AHS has a reputation as one of the weirdest, most spectacular shows on TV.

As there's precious little batshit crazy in my life not provided by the House Republican Caucus, it seemed like it could be fun jump to into the third season of AHS' run. And based on "Bitchcraft," well, it seems like that was a reasonable bet.

The premiere doesn't really rise to the level of insanity one often hears ascribed to AHS, and considering what I described in the opening paragraph that says something. There are some elements here that will make your eyes roll, and some moments that are surprisingly boring. But considering that this is part season premiere, part pilot, and considering the...let's call it "convoluted" subject matter, "Bitchcraft" is also a thoroughly intriguing introduction to the universe.

Let's start with the negatives and the elements that would seem to augur poorly for the future of the season. This starts with Farmiga, who plays "Zoe," the closest thing to a protagonist we have so far. Zoe is introduced accidentally killing her boyfriend during their first sexual encounter. It's a horrifying scene, surprisingly gory (Zoe's boyfriend puffs up and bleeds out quite grotesquely), and Farmiga doesn't convey the awfulness of the moment.

She is, in fact, largely inert throughout the episode. That works at certain moments, such as a scene toward the end of the episode in which she coldly, deliberately has sex with a comatose frat boy in order to kill him, but mostly it just makes scenes in which she's featured slowly wither and die. And this is a problem, as Zoe promises to be the focus of a lot of scenes this season.

Now, what works in "Bitchcraft?" This starts with the dynamic between Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson. Paulson is the head mistress of the Robichaux Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, the school for witches where Zoe is sent after her little episode. Lange is her mother and the existing "supreme," which makes her sort of the Mike Trout of witches: well-rounded and skilled in all the black arts. And Mom wants to help with the grooming of Paulson's charges.

And the two hate each other. The tension in their scenes together is noticeable and venomous. Paulson and Lange are both skilled, veteran actresses, and the edge to their interactions is one of the best elements here. Paulson puts a nice capper on things with, "When are you gonna die and stop ruining my life?"

But what truly marks "Bitchcraft" is the atmosphere that's nurtured throughout. This is sometimes achieved through setting and action; the attic torture chamber where Kathy Bates (who's is given the not-at-all-annoying-to-type name of "Delphine LaLaurie") keeps her mutilated slaves is particularly gruesome.

But there's also a lot that's achieved here just through camera work and lighting. When Emma Roberts, playing a movie star named Madison Montgomery, drags Zoe to a frat party, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon makes a (rather massive and well-adorned) frat house look creepy and horrifying through the use of long, high shots and camera angles that make distort the setting.

The setting is paid off with a fairly predictable set of developments: Madison acts snooty and insulting, a jackass frat boy drugs her drink and he and a bunch of his brothers rape her and film the act. Then, as they flee the scene in their party bus, Madison concentrates and flips their bus end-over-end, killing seven of the nine brothers on-board. Which is less predictable.

Gomez-Rejon uses similar camera tricks to create a slightly different effect when Zoe visits the hospital in search of the (not nearly as rapey) frat brother she met at the party. The fish-eye lenses and wide, high angles don't so much make the hospital a haunted house as they frame Zoe's distance and alienation from everyone around her. She seems far away from people she's standing next to, almost as if she's a visitor to a distant world.

"Bitchcraft" is mainly table-setting, which is a reasonable enough ambition for a season premier. Exactly what's on the table is still far from clear. But that's very much to American Horror Story's advantage. Better to tease the crazy than to unveil it, shrieking and gibbering, too early.

Notes

• Kathy Bates is undone when Angela Bassett, playing the lover of the en-bulled slave, gives her an "eternal youth" potion that's apparently poison. Then Jessica Lange digs up her coffin and lets her out 170 years later, no worse for wear.
• Bates' slave attic includes a man with no face and a man whose eyes and mouth have been sewn shut.
• Lange (her character is named Fiona) is apparently obsessed with eternal youth and beauty herself. We'll see where that goes, but this is a fairly cliched plot, and it feels like we've seen all possible permutations of it.
• I hope Zoe's voiceovers aren't a continuing element this season. They're not of much use, though I'll admit I laughed when Farmiga matter-of-factly states, "So apparently I'm a witch," as if she just remembered where she lost her pen.
• Sidibe, who doesn't get much screen time, is a "human voodoo doll" who can hurt other people by hurting herself (she feels no pain). That seems like a useful, if limited, power.