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So after lingering on every excruciating moment at Briarcliff for ten episodes, this hour spans about seven months or so and basically changes everything.
In the framing story, Dylan Face gets himself a hooker to breastfeed him and listen to his bitching about his mom. Dylan Face seems like a real loser, as far as serial killers go.
Back in the Sixties, Grace explains her excellent alien adventure to Kit, specifically that the aliens implanted a giant potpourri husk into her womb and that turned out to be their baby. Only, sorry, Grace saw a dead Alma up on the mothership, so that's bad news. Also, their baby is "special" and will "change the way people think," so start imagining the worst possible people this kid could grow up to be. But before Mom and Dad can be blissful crazies for too long, Monsignor Howard and his goons come by and take the baby away, to the orphanage.
Meantime, Mother Claudia gets really gung-ho about her new assignment to get Lana set free. She hands Lana her file and ushers her right out the door. Lana promises to come back for Jude, flips Dr. Thredson the bird from her taxi, and just like that, she's out. For good. That night, she meets Ollie at home with a gun and tells him the police have the recording of his confession and are on the way. He stalls for time, fixing a drink, starting the fireplace, telling the awful story about sexing Wendy's corpse before burning her remains. He also eyes a gun that's out of Lana's sight, but just as it starts to seem like he's going to get the upper hand AGAIN, she shoots him through the head. Another one bites the dust!
Back at Briarcliff, Judy's going all McMurphy in the common room and absolutely UNLOADING on Monsignor Howard for being such a disappointing hypocrite. Howard has her sent into solitary so he can fret about all the bad publicity Briarcliff has been getting now that Lana is free and her story is getting a lot of coverage. With his name now cleared, Kit gets released, and in a rare moment of savvy, he secures Grace's release -- and the return of their son -- in exchange for keeping quiet about everything he's seen. Kit, Grace, and baby Thomas return to Kit's old house -- which is still in the state it was when he was arrested, of course -- and find a surprise visitor in the bedroom: Alma, with a baby of her own. Reality show!
Lana wants to finally get that abortion she's had her eye on, but when it comes time for the actual procedure, she freaks out. There's been too much death. So she decides to keep her fatherless baby and funnel all her efforts into getting Sister Jude freed. Only when she and the cops get a court order to see Jude, Monsignor Howard tells them she's dead. Produces a certificate and everything. Of course, Judy remains alive, hidden away in some dungeon.
Lana eventually has her baby, which she intends to give up for adoption. But the idiot nurse wakes her up to inform her that the baby is allergic to formula and needs to eat. So Lana permits the thing to suckle at her breast, because if last season's end was a bloodbath, this season seems to be drowning in milk.
(BTW, um, whither Pepper? Kit and Grace and baby got out? Is Pepper still locked up? Did the aliens take her back. Maybe that's what the final two episodes will be about.)
Want more? The full recap starts right below!You know, these present-day scenes have really taken on a gloomy pall now that we've traded in the slutty charms of Adam Levine for Dylan McDermott's sweaty, sad-sacky take on Bloody Face 2K12. Right now, he's sitting in his darkened home -- the same one his dad, the original Bloody Face, owned -- and smoking pot. While we take a tour of the art direction, scattered with totems of a sad, solitary existence (empty beer bottles, roll of paper towels on the coffee table, can of Raid on the end table), there's a knock at the door. It's a hooker, if you can believe that, and we're introduced to her at breast level. They ain't bad. Her name's Pandora and she just had a baby three weeks ago, which is important once you realize that Dylan Face picked her because he's into suckling. Yes, that's right. This oddly breastmilk-obsessed season really kicks into high gear this week as we discover that Father and Son both have the same tastes in that regard.
So after a whole lot of blah-blah from Dylan Face about whether her breasts leak when a baby cries and the importance of breast-feeding for early childhood development (parroting his father with that observation). Pandora, bless her, does her level best to make the idea of breastfeeding an adult man sound sexy. It's just a lot of cooing and promises to mother him and it's fantastically creepy. Finally -- FINALLY -- the bra comes off and he dives right in and we mercifully go to credits.
Back from the break, Kit is hauled out of solitary by Thredson and an orderly. Thredson is talking about taking Kit to see his son, but isn't buying that ol' Ollie is here for the do-goodery of it all. "What's your endgame, Thredson??" he hollers, impressing me by knowing what "endgame" means. Thredson lectures Kit about his own legendary concern for the welfare of children. Like Kit should have assumed. "You and I both would move heaven and earth for our children," he seethes, obviously kinda pissed about the whole thing where Lana tried to abort his child and is now basically holding it hostage in her womb.
Off to the common room! Where a for-no-real-reason fish-eye shot shows us Grace holding her baby surrounded by various Briarcliff crazies all clamoring to get a look at him. Pepper, that pinheaded saint, is trying to keep them all at bay. Kit is so happy to see mother and child when he shows up. Grace, who is still acting like a blissed out weirdo, though at least she's speaking in sentences now, says she's going to name the child Thomas, after her grandfather. Because we all know family is very important to parent-killing Grace. Thredson, of course, is just full of questions about Grace's lactation, because among his many faults he's got a one-track mind. Pepper is in full "I'M ON TO YOU!" mode, however, and tells him to leave Grace alone. Not bad, Pepper, but where was this can-do attitude a week ago when Thredson was basically presenting you, Grace and baby as a tableau to threaten Kit with? Thredson simply smirks and has Pepper hauled off to the hydrotherapy room. He then leaves Kit and Grace to enjoy their "precious miracle" while he takes everyone else to the cafeteria for a group therapy session, which should be scintillating, what with the presence of Head-Bashing Harry and Carl the Chronic Masturbator (perhaps not their real names).
I love a lot of things about Evan Peters, but perhaps most of all (this season at least) is that dumb, contented smile he puts on Kit's face whenever something slightly happy occurs. He's in the middle of prison basically and his life is threatened on a daily basis, but show him a cute baby and this doofus smiles like he's been resting on a mountain of cotton balls. What a dummy that Kit is. Grace is doing her fair share of misplaced blissing out, too, but I'm still chalking that up to Alien Stockholm Syndrome. She lets him hold the baby and it's sweet and affecting, but I can't even concentrate because YOU'RE IN THE LOONY BIN WITH AT LEAST ONE MASS MURDERER AND YOUR LADY IS THE UNDEAD AND YOUR BABY IS A CYLON.
Finally, Kit asks Grace the first of many obvious questions: namely "WTF?" Grace offers an explanation (to the best of her ability -- she says it's fuzzy for her too), and the show tries to clear things up visually, but I admit none of it is all that coherent. The upshot is that while in the aliens' care, Grace was implanted with what looks like a giant seed pod, like the kind you would find in a bowl of potpourri. This seed pod appears to have been inserted vaginally, which makes Grace's blissful mood even MORE suspect, if you ask me. She says time works differently up there, which is how the baby grew so fast. She seems to have a decently high opinion of the aliens; "They're not like us," she says, "they're not cruel." On the subject of Alma, however, Grace says that the aliens sometimes make mistakes. What we see appears to be Grace surfacing in a pool of water, pregnant, and looking up at the seemingly dead body of Alma, also floating in a pool of water on the ceiling. Yeah, I don't get alien home décor either. Grace passes on her condolences to Kit; she knows all his plans of having a family were supposed to be with Alma and not her. Kit doesn't understand what the aliens wanted with her, but Grace echoes Dr. Arden's thoughts from a few episodes ago: it's all about Kit. Obviously, engineering a Kit Walker offspring was important to them. "You're special," Grace theorizes. "Our baby is special. People will listen to him. He's going to change the way people think." ...Okay, so what horrible future person is this kid going to grow up to be? (By the way, this season began in the fall of 1964 and since then, we've passed Christmas and obviously New Year's Eve and thus we've entered the year 1965. Ryan Murphy was born in 1965. Sit with that for a while.) Kit's not worried about any of that -- he just wants to raise this kid right. Through tears, he says that Alma would want him to do the right thing, so he asks Grace to marry him. Always a smooth move to reference your ex in a marriage proposal.
These two idiots just start smiling at each other like everything is perfect, and of course it all comes crashing down moments later when Monsignor Howard shows up with a couple of enforcer nuns. They're here to take baby Thomas to the orphanage, because it won't do for a baby to be raised in a crazy house. That's how you get a Bane! Both Kit and Grace are forcibly pulled aside as the baby is ripped from their arms. Thredson makes sure he's there to witness the moment, then gloat to Kit about the pain of having one's only son torn away, and offer a way to help.
Lana's working her shift in the bakery when Mother Claudia approaches her. At some point in between woozy Jude begging her to help Lana get out and now, Mother Claudia's become quite the zealot to Lana's cause. She tells Lana she's helping her escape, today. Right now. Lana, understandably, is having a hard time trusting someone she doesn't know. Particularly, I would think, someone who promises to spirit her out of Briarcliff. Claudia points out Judy, mindlessly kneading some dough across the room, and explains how Jude confessed what she'd done to Lana and asked her to make it right. "You can't make it right," Lana says and rightly so, but Claudia thinks Lana might be able to by getting out and telling the world about her experiences. She hands Lana her patient file as proof. Lana's incredulous that Claudia would want to see her take Briarcliff down in such a fashion. "I want it pulled down and the earth salted," Claudia assures her. Claudia says there's a cab waiting to take Lana wherever she wants to go, but they must move quickly. Lana takes the time to first cut into a bag of flour, where she's hidden the reel of Thredson's confession. Then, she heads over to Sister Jude and whether Jude understands her or not, Lana pledges to come back for her.
Out in the foyer, Kit and Thredson are bargaining. Kit, whose goodness is his weakness, is clearly willing to give up the tape (i.e. Lana), but is reluctant because once he does, Thredson would have no motivation to help him. Ollie gives his word, though, you guys. HIS WORD! His word as a father who cares about children! While Kit allows himself to be persuaded by Thredson's promises of happy family life, Lana's trying to descend the staircase and be incognito about it. She's changed into her civvies and she's got a babushka on her head, but anyone with a functioning pair of eyes can tell it's her. Head DOWN, lady! We're seeing all this in split-screen, which, like everything else in this show, is ostentatious, unnecessary and pretty cool. Kit finally spots her over Thredson's shoulder, and he has the courtesy to try and maneuver Thredson's attention away from her as she slips by. Kind of the least he could do in the middle of totally selling her out. But out the front door she slips, unnoticed. Thredson catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he follows his hunch, Lana has already descended the font steps (SLOWLY as hell... like, GET OUTTA THERE) and gotten into the taxi. Thredson doesn't see her until she's already in the cab, pressing the telltale reel against the window, accompanied by her defiant middle finger. You lose, Ollie. You lose.
After the break, Ollie barges into his home, probably looking to grab his go-bag and hit the open road, but Lana's already there. She's doing that cool thing where you sit in an armchair in the middle of a darkened room and speak very evenly... and also you have a gun. (And once again, I think it's time to start talking about gun control in 1965, if an actual escaped mental patient can obtain a handgun on, like, three hours' notice.) She flicks on the light and informs him that the police have the recording (she keeps saying "the tape," as has everyone else for three episodes, but that doesn't seem like the correct terminology for a reel recording, does it?), so it's done. Thredson claims to be relieved, smirking that keeping secrets like that is not healthy. I can't tell if it's by design that I don't believe him or just actorly defect. Thredson heads over to the bar to make himself a drink, in defiance of Lana's orders for him to sit down. She still has the gun, still ostensibly holds the power, but I like the way the scene is slowly leeching the power from her. He goes on fixing his drink, knowing she won't risk her newfound freedom by committing murder. Also, the camera keeps cutting to these portentous shots of the ice bucket, the martini shaker, the drawer where Thredson gets the stirrer. We're being trained to look for whatever instrument Thredson will use to get the upper hand on Lana. Because we know he will. There's still three episodes to go this season and Zachary Quinto is the first-billed star. It's not if Thredson is going to turn the tables on Lana, but when.
While Lana waits to fuck it all up in 1965, present-day Dylan Face is finishing up his suckling. It's all dripping from his mouth. Hey, if I had to watch it, you have to read about it. "You'd be surprised how many men have mommy issues," Pandora observes. And if a lifetime of watching horror movies has taught me anything, it's that pointing out a depraved man's depravity to him is a great way to get yourself dead. Dylan Face does recoil at the terminology, but as he leans back with his cig, he admits he is fixated on "that cold bitch" who never loved him. Pandora tells him to tell her all about it, which seems like the worst possible idea in the universe right now, but okay.
"She didn't love my father," Dylan Face voices over as the action reverts back to 1965. "There was only one person she ever loved." Segue into Lana asking Thredson to tell her what he did with Wendy's body. She wants to make sure the love of her life gets a proper burial. Thredson flicks on the fireplace (another chip away at Lana's sense of control) and begins the tale. And oh, what a gruesome tale it is and we're lucky enough to see it represented visually. So Ollie didn't skin Wendy, which he says was a first for him. Personal growth? Well, no. He kept Wendy around first to taunt Lana with, but then to... practice on. Now that he and Lana were going to be a happy fucked-up family, he needed to be able to lie with a woman in the Biblical sense, so we see Ollie in his nightclothes making attempt after attempt to sex Wendy's corpse. He couldn't make it happen, however, because Wendy's cold, dead eyes were watching him. He considered plucking them out, because Ollie Thredson is a problem-solver, but instead he just turned her over. As my pal the Couch Baron pointed out to me, this is a hell of a way for Clea DuVall to pick up a guest-star check. Anyway, this method proved successful for him and he brags to Lana that practice with Wendy helped him get to the point where he could knock Lana up, so really, it's all one happy family act. Lana manages to not shoot his ass dead right here, which should be all the proof she needs that she can handle life outside of Briarcliff; instead she demands to know what he did with Wendy's body. Thredson dances around the issue, while staring meaningfully at the fireplace before admitting that he burned her, for the most part, and scattered what was left to the ends of New England.
Back in the present day, Dylan Face is breaking down in tears on Pandora's chest. She encourages him to get it all out, telling him there's no shame in it. Jesus, lady, we need to get you a handbook. Don't say "shame" in front of a deviant weirdo! It only reminds him of his shame! And indeed, Dylan Face leaps up and starts ranting about how his mommy makes him feel feelings and then want to do bad doings. Pandora's like, "Why don't my very literal milk jugs and I help you forget about her?" but Dylan Face just rages out and starts choking her.
Back in '65, Thredson gets up to refill his drink. More defiance of Lana. This time, we can hear the police sirens approaching. We can also see the gun that's in the drawer where Ollie got his stirrer. He's almost got her. He's like, "Now that I'm caught, there's no way you're going to keep that baby -- is there?" No chance in hell, she says, and even if she did, he'd never see the child since he's going to fry in the electric chair. "I hardly think so, Lana," Thredson smirks and sips his drink. Zachary Quinto whips out the google eyes and crazies about how he's clearly insane, so he'll likely be institutionalized and probably start a little cult of personality on the inside at a place like Briarcliff. Lana's starting to tremble ever so slightly, knowing he may well be right. "As for you," he menaces, "I have no use for you anymore." He turns back to the bar. "Best you should be known as my last victim," he says. They're his last words. Lana pulls it together and then in one sweeping gesture -- one pull of a trigger, really -- she pulls all the momentum of the scene back to her. She shoots him right through the back of the head. "Prison's too good for you," she exhales, as the sirens pull up to the house. She pulled it off.
After the break, we're several days later. Lana is free, her story is out. Wendy's ashes have been collected from Thredson's furnace and placed inside a white-marble niche at a mausoleum. Lana's paying her respects, along with her two down-low lesbian pals from the season premiere. Lois is still not successfully hiding her thing for Lana and she asks her if she's looking for a roommate to help fill that giant house of hers, because apparently in 1965, houses that belonged to institutionalized crazies and murder victims (or convicted murderers, for that matter) just stayed unoccupied indefinitely. You'd think this wasn't a show that obsessed on real estate last season. Lana says she's planning to move to New York, however, and then starts to blame herself for Wendy's demise. Her friends offer absolution and a scapegoat in "that nun," but Lana says it was the story; that story she HAD to get at any cost. The women are interrupted by the exploding flashbulbs of the paparazzi, here to get a shot of the "Sapphic Reporter." Lana gives her two pals leave to go before they get outed in public. Lois, for one, is relieved, as no one in her family suspects. Who says Ryan Murphy can't write comedy? The other one, the redhead, is a bit more sympathetic about it, rationalizing that she still has a job because her lecherous boss still thinks he "has a shot." Women in the 1960s! Sounds like a great time! So Lana exits alone, past the clamoring media all barking questions at her. She strides past and ignores them, like a good celebrity scandal case; though once she's in the car, she rolls down her window and gives her best, "All I have to say is, Read my book." Lady's a pro.
Back at Briarcliff, Sister Jude is STILL pretty out of it, but she manages to pull her wits together while in line for meds to start rousing the rabble and getting people to chuck their pills. "DON'T TAKE THESE PILLS!" she hollers to the whole common room. "THEY TURN YOUR BRAINS TO MUSH!"
Meanwhile, Monsignor Howard is reading the newspaper headlines ("HORROR AT BRIARCLIFF") and watching his dreams of the papacy go up in smoke before his eyes. His strategy with the press appears to be avoidance, and we see him confirm with an underling priest that the reporters have been pushed back past the outer gates. He hopes that after a few days of no comment, they will go away. Sounds like a solid plan! Poor Monsignor Howard. He's not evil exactly, just fundamentally weak -- both physically and, worse, morally. He's been surrounded by actual, malevolent evil, but since doing good would have been too difficult, he let evil flourish. He's my most hated character this season for a reason. In the parlance of Jules Winfield, he's not the tyranny of evil men, but he's sure as shit not the shepherd. Anyway, Underling Priest is here to report a disturbance in the common room that requires the Monsignor's attention.
That disturbance is Sister Jude herself. By now, she's got "Love Potion No. 9" blasting on the jukebox. Ryan Murphy has said that the last two episodes have contained hints at the theme/plot of Season 3 and the Internet appears to think that this song, plus last week's "I Put a Spell on You" indicates that we'll be dealing with witches. Jessica Lange, Lily Rabe, Sarah Paulson, plus how many other AHS repertory players (Frances Conroy! Kate Mara! Brooke Smith!) as witches?? Okay! Anyway, Judy is gyrating in front of the jukebox when Monsignor Howard shows up to ruin her fun. He unplugs the juke and starts condescending to her about the commotion she's causing. See what I mean about weak? Last week, he was all full of talk about making things up to Jude for what Devil Eunice had done to her. But now that Eunice is gone and the outside world is giving him too many headaches, liberating Judy from her captivity is just too much for him to deal with. So now it's a matter of pacifying her. One look at Judy's eyes tells you that she's got Timothy's number but good. She hisses at him about "that devil of [his]" and how she was right about one thing: the healing effect of the jukebox. She pokes at him about the irony of him losing his virtue to evil incarnate and whether he plans to renounce his vows now. No, of course, he's going to "stay the course." Not for himself, natch. He's simply got too much to offer the world. The hatred on Judy's face is something to see. She starts railing at Howard about how there was a time she'd have done anything for him, so much did she buy into his "fantasy of a magic carpet ride to Rome." He assures her it was no fantasy. Her hollering gets louder, about her "disillusionment, shame and disgust" now that she sees him for the craven opportunist he really is. "SHUT YOUR FILTHY MOUTH" he snaps at her, before tamping his volume down. He tries to shame her, calls her an embarrassment, but she's been "blessed with the gift of total clarity." Her words. She gets it now. She may sound mad, but she sees it all now. Unsurprisingly, he has her dragged away to solitary. "You will not prevail, Timothy," she hisses at him as she goes. "My God would never allow ittttttt." Jessica Lange, it should be mentioned yet again, has redefined flawless this season.
Speaking of solitary, that's where Kit's been for some reason. But not for long, as the orderly brings him a change of clothes and his release papers. With the truth about Ollie Thredson public knowledge, Kit's been cleared of all charges and is being granted release. The scumbag orderly gives Kit the news report about Thredson and Lana ("the lezzie blew his head off") and how reporters are all over the place, "trying to sniff out the corruption at Briarcliff." Kit looks gobsmacked and unable to process the idea of freedom. After signing his papers and looking like he's thinking REALLY hard (aw, Kit), he asks to see the Monsignor.
The visual storytelling on this show is absolutely hilarious. It's a total kitchen-sink approach -- already in this episode we've seen canted angles, fish-eye lenses, saturated art direction, bird's-eye view, extreme close-ups, POV angles and that's all I can remember off the top of my head. This scene gets all German expressionistic on our asses, filmed in Monsignor Howard's office that's lit only by a fireplace and filmed from an extreme low angle, so Howard and Kit's shadows tower above them to the ceiling. Just because they haven't tried that one yet. Oh, and if you worried that Monsignor Howard was going to take a break from being an insufferable twat just because it's after office hours, you're in luck, because he just now TOOK CREDIT for being a part of Kit's liberation. No "Sorry about all that solitary confinement and how we let a Nazi war criminal loose in these walls to experiment on you and took your baby away from you and probably scarred you for life with the abhorrent conditions here." Just a smug "You're welcome." Kit hardly thinks justice has been done, however, and he demands that his son be returned to him. Howard blithely rationalizes that with Kit just being released and "Miss Bertrand" still a patient here, that's hardly an ideal living situation. Kit says the easy solution to that is to let Grace go, too. Kit's deal is simple: release Grace and arrange for them to take their son home and Kit won't speak to the press about the horrors he's witnessed. Howard still thinks he can play the "my hands are tied" card, since he can't exactly release an axe murderess back into the community. But Kit's got him there, too, since Grace died and all. Arden filled out her death certificate and everything. So Howard can just pretend that Grace is still dead, she walks and no one's the wiser. Hey, and she won't even have to pay taxes! Win-win-win! Since this plan involves Monsignor Howard doing his very favorite thing -- nothing -- it would seem like an ideal plan.
And so, on a sunnyspring day, we see a taxicab pull up to an isolated house, and Kit, Grace and baby Thomas step out. It's Kit's old home -- because, seriously, abandoned houses just stay that way in Massachusetts. I know there are still two episodes left, but I like to think of this as a bookend for Grace, because her bangs are fully grown out and in general her hair looks dynamite. You've come a long way, baby! They walk inside and the place is still trashed from the alien invasion. You know, fine. Sure. That's absolutely realistic. Grace is mostly happy that the house isn't Briarcliff and who could blame her? They hear a noise coming from the bedroom and Kit immediately jumps into protective-father mode. He picks up a baseball bat and enters the bedroom, yelling at the person sitting on the bed. Only that person is Alma and she's holding a baby. And Kit thought having a black wife was going to cause neighborhood gossip!
Lana is meeting with an abortionist in what looks to be a motel room and it's just all wrong. They couldn't have crunched some numbers and freed up the guest-star budget to get Michael Caine to reprise his role from The Cider House Rules? Lana tells her story -- in broad strokes -- to the woman, who is appropriately horrified. Soon enough, they're ready to begin the procedure. Lana is somewhat wary about proper sterilization measures. This lady is no back-alley hack, she's boiled all the instruments thoroughly, but the reality is that hospital-grade sterilization isn't possible outside of an actual hospital. Once again folks, the 1960s! The lady begins the procedure and Lana's mind wanders to her shooting of Oliver. She yelps out in horror, either at the memory or at the sensation of what's going in below her waist. The woman tells her to please not make any more loud noises, as they cannot afford to draw attention to themselves. She asks Lana to open her legs a little wider, but the flood of horrible memories can't be stopped. The rapes and the Angel Conroy and the psychotic, suicidal truck drivers and the nipple lamps and the Bloody Face masks. It all becomes too much for her to take. She stops the abortionist's hand. "I can't," she whispers. "No more death." Certainly not an un-contrived way of ensuring that Bloody Face 2.0 lives to see the light of day, but after everything we've seen this season, I'm not about to call this moment out as unrealistic.
so Lana's book gets published, under the title "My Experiences at Briarcliff Manor: A Recollection of Events." Kind of dry, but okay. She's taken the manuscript to the cops in order to get them to do something about Briarcliff, particularly in light of all the unexplained disappearances there. (Pepper's photograph is shown amid this discussion of unexplained disappearances, but that could just refer to her abduction. Keep hope alive for Pepper!) The cops condescend to her and tell her not to upset herself in her condition. Her pregnancy is starting to show now, but she says THEY'RE the ones upsetting HER. Also, no show about the olden times would be complete without a shot of a pregnant lady smoking, and Lana's not about to make an exception. She tells the cops that if they got a court order to get her inside, Sister Jude could substantiate all of it. She tells them that Jude is being held against her will. What about Mother Claudia? The church shipped her off to Puerto Rico the second she started making noise. At this point, Lana is outright begging the cops to help her. "That's his baby, isn't it?" the younger cop asks her. "Bloody Face, he's the father?" Lana looks right back at them and says, "This baby doesn't have a father." Ice cold. The cop, impressed by her mettle, says, "You're one tough cookie." And having been served up such a softball, Lana can only do her part by crushing it: "I am tough... but I'm no cookie."
To Briarcliff! Lana storms into Monsignor Howard's office with the cops behind her, court order in hand. She demands to speak to Sister Jude, but as expected, Howard tells her that Sister Jude is dead. To her credit, Lana doesn't believe him. To her slightly less credit, she backs down once the Monsignor produces a death certificate. The show even gins up a "flashback" for us, of Howard walking in to find Judy hanging from the ceiling. As a representative of the audience, Mr. Murphy, we are not so easily fooled. Lana is incredulous that Howard had her cremated, but he gives some Catholic-sounding hoo-ha about dying outside a state of grace. Once again, his hands were tied! What could he do but abide by doctrine set out by Rome? Personally, he's devastated, but what could he do? Lana straight up accuses him of murdering Jude. "You might as well have tied the noose yourself." Howard tries to turn the tables on Lana, guilting her with the thought that if she'd showed up a week ago, she could have averted Jude from her suicidal path. This guy cannot die bad enough to satisfy me at this point.
Lana exits Briarcliff, seemingly defeated, past the crazies in the foyer. The camera then takes us on a journey, through the kitchen, past the solitary ward, down to the deepest, darkest corner of the asylum, behind what looks to be an old-school dungeon lattice. That's where Monsignor Howard has stashed Judy Martin. Out of sight, out of mind, Judy prays to the patron saint that bears her name, St. Jude, the saint of hopeless causes.
Finally, one more reminder of institutional evil before we wrap things up for the week: Lana has delivered her baby. Now, just because she wasn't willing to abort doesn't mean she's interested in raising little Ollie Thredson Junior herself. The plan is to give the baby up for adoption and her wishes were to never see the child upon delivery. Only the delivery nurse is an incompetent and she wakes Lana up because the child won't drink the formula. Or he's allergic, I guess... whatever. Apparently there were no contingencies for this in 1965 other than to wake up the recovering mother and ask her to nurse the baby she's giving up for adoption. Lana kind of can't believe she has to deal with this for one more minute, but she ultimately gives in and starts nursing, craning her neck towards the ceiling so she doesn't have to look at the child. The future Dylan Face. I guess this is where it supposedly began for him. Way to blame the ladies for the crimes of men.
Joe R can't even begin to imagine what two more episodes of this season can hold. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
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