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The zombie attack cliffhanger from last week is resolved surprisingly quickly this week (a good thing, I think), as Zoe turns into a Robert Rodriguez character and takes a chainsaw to the majority of them before it stalls and she discovers she has a new power: Immobilizing voodoo zombies and the witches who made them -- with her mind. After her defeat, even Marie Laveau admits that they "have some real power in that house." I think we've found our new Supreme.
We're treated to a horrifying Madam LaLaurie flashback in which we see more of her perpetrating unspeakable cruelty to not only her slaves, but her three daughters as well. In the present, LaLaurie begs for forgiveness from one of her zombie daughters, but since the dead don't forgive, she ends up having to kill her to keep her from eating Queenie. Best friends forever, those two.
After the attack, the Council returns to investigate yet another incident going down on Fiona's watch. Fed up, Fiona enlists Queenie to help her frame Myrtle for throwing acid on Cordelia's face, and it works unbelievably well. Myrtle crumbles under the pressure of being accused of anything, and Pimbrooke and Quentin immediately sentence her to death by fire. Myrtle just… accepts this fate? That storyline was pretty incoherent, but it's all for nothing anyway, because after Myrtle is burned at the stake Misty Day stops by and brings her crispy critter witch self back to life. Not a particularly well-crafted way to bring her into Fiona's world, but I'll take Misty Day any way I can get her.
Speaking of the acid on Cordelia's face, she is not only disfigured now, she's also blind, as the acid burned through her optic nerve. Her murderous cheating husband Hank runs to her side and sincerely tells her he loves her, but when he takes her hand, she can see flashes of him having all that animalistic sex with Kaylie last week. She doesn't see him murdering her, though, which is arguably the more pertinent part of that story. Oh well.
As for Fiona, she takes about 100 pills per second this episode and is pretty much high the entire time, but she has this new plan where she is trying to convince Queenie that she is the Supreme, for reasons unknown. Queenie, the only one with a bigger bullshit detector than Fiona, just accepts this help as genuine. What is wrong with everybody this week? LaLaurie and Spalding are the only ones acting normal and they're the biggest freaks on TV.
Mindy Monez is jealous of Misty Day's boots. Please tell her where to buy them @garnisheater.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Masquerade ball at Madame LaLaurie's manse, many Halloweens ago. LaLaurie greets the Louisiana Governor and his wife, who in turn present their handsome son Jacques, basically as an offering to LaLaurie's eldest daughter Borquita, whose name I can really get behind. Borquita is charmed by Jacques, but LaLaurie decides to put him to the test by inviting him to brave her "Chamber of Horrors." Oh dear. Here we go.
Borquita is clearly horrified by that idea and tries to avoid the entire thing with a "Mother, I'm sure Jacques wouldn't be interested!" but you know LaLaurie – once she's made up her mind to do some fucked up shit, she goes right ahead and does it. She leads Jacques and Borquita into a candlelit room just drenched in red curtains and then proceeds to make Jacques touch a bunch of severed slave eyeballs and entrails and such. I think I'm going to die from this scene. The first time, Jacques pretends he thinks the eyeballs are the usual peeled grapes, but he's clearly very freaked out when he sees how real they look. But when LaLaurie shows him the entrails, he runs screaming. Atta boy. We're also treated to flashbacks of LaLaurie ripping out all these body parts herself, which, FUCK. That is some of the most disturbing footage that's ever been on this show, and that's saying something. LaLaurie has herself a belly laugh and says Jacques just wasn't man enough for her Borquita. That was fun!
Borquita is beyond annoyed. She gathers her sisters and complains that she'll never get a husband if Mother keeps making all her prospective suitors dip their hands in slave guts on their first date. She reckons they'd better just kill her and the other two agree it must be done. Just then, LaLaurie bursts into the room and calls them back to the party. Sure hope she wasn't listening at the door or anything! Also, isn't there supposed to be an "ugly one," according to LaLaurie in the first episode? If there is I can't identify her. Make your picks in the comments!
On her way back to the party LaLaurie crosses paths with her husband, who tries to exchange pleasantries with her, but she's having none of it. She is on a tear, and she wants "Bastian" and two strong slaves, stat. Maybe she just wants help getting the party started?
But alas, in the dead of night, two strong slaves grab Borquita out of bed and drag her kicking and screaming down to LaLaurie's torture chamber where all her mutilated slaves are imprisoned. One of her daughters is in a cage, and another is tied to a ceiling beam by her wrists, and as Borquita continues to struggle against being put in a cage, LaLaurie tells the slave to "break her leg if you have to!" and that he does. Yikes. Upon seeing this, the one tied to the ceiling tries to save their asses, saying it was just talk, and that they never actually planned on killing her. LaLaurie is unmoved. She begins to take on a cruel glee in taunting them, explaining to them that if they're good, she'll let them out in a year! Obviously, they're not thrilled with that timeline, but at least they're not Borquita – on Christmas morning, LaLauria is going to "stuff [her] conniving mouth full of shit." She's not like a regular mom, she's a cool mom!
So, you can see why the presence of her undead daughters on her doorstep could take on an added layer of horror for Madame LaLaurie. Back in the present, she slams the door in her zombie daughters' faces, overcome with what looks like more sadness than fear. She backs up to Zoe, Nan and hot neighbor boy in the foyer and plainly states that hell has opened up on their doorstep. I'll say. Queenie has noticed the doorstep hell as well, and runs downstairs to see what's up. What's up is an army of zombies carrying assorted cutlery invading your front lawn. It's not great.
Back at the bar, Cordelia has run screaming out of the bathroom with a face full of acid. Fiona runs to her (in slow-mo!) and panicked, demands to see her face. When she pulls her hands away it… kind of doesn't look that bad, actually! Her eyes and forehead areas are rather sizzle-y, but her mouth parts look ok! Could be worse. Fiona also sees the hooded perpetrator slip out the back door, but she decides to stay with Cordelia instead of chasing said person down.
Fiona sits in the dingiest hospital waiting room in the world, losing her fucking mind. I must say, for Halloween night in a big city this hospital is rather quiet, but Fiona is sitting across from a drunk Dracula, so that's something. She pops a handful of pills just as the doctor shows up to fill her on in Fiona's condition, so this is going to be a fun night. He has bad news – Fiona was attacked with what appears to be sulfuric acid, and her optic nerve was burned through. She is blind. True to form, Fiona calls the doctor a piece of shit and starts punching him, but when an orderly steps in and asks the doctor if he should call the cops, doc mistakes Fiona for a harmless old lady suffering from bad news and says no. He doesn't know her like we do. Needless to say, Fiona is heartbroken over this news.
Back at the house, the zombie army is just swaying in place on the front lawn, but Nan knows they're dead because she can't hear them. Hot neighbor boy takes zero note of that statement, by the way. Zoe takes charge of the situation in Fiona's absence and begins closing the curtains, killing the lights (Queenie's hilariously like, "Umm, I think they know we're home?") and looking for a place to hide everybody. Hunky neighbor is still a resident of normaltown, so he tries to tell them that is obviously just a prank. Madame LaLaurie, on the other hand, parks herself on the couch and waits for the attack to come. Ugh, that's totally what I would do. First one to be eaten, right here!
Queenie is already winded and the attack hasn't even started yet, a sign at least partially attributed to her being in recovery from a Minotaur attack. Zoe considers calling the police, but Queenie is more afraid of what Fiona would do if they involved them than she is of any zombie army. I'm not sure that's the right call, but OK. Hunky neighbor decides enough is enough and marches outside to deal with the "neighborhood kids" outside. RIP hunky neighbor!
Meanwhile, Marie is levitating in her salon's back room. Probably not a great sign. Hunky neighbor starts yelling at the zombies to leave, and even pushes a few of them around. They all stay in place, seemingly oblivious to him. Suddenly, a couple of teenagers come running up to the lawn, loving the zombie makeup. Hunky neighbor starts to get nervous just a little too late, as Marie's eyes, stark white, open mid-levitation and she commands "Begin!" Hee! That was a fun little moment.
The zombies simultaneously come to life and start attacking everything with a pulse. They hack up and tear the teens to shreds, while a rather large zombie with a pick-axe starts working on hot neighbor boy. Nan watches from the window and screams out for her crush.
Zoe gets serious about finding cover now and calls for Spalding, who obviously isn't going to let them stay in his attic where Madison's half-naked corpse is rotting. She is sidetracked momentarily when Madame LaLaurie tries to open the front door, because, as she weeps, "My daughters are out there!" Zoe gives her some tough love ("They're dead! You wanna be dead too?") collects her and brings her and Queenie to Spalding, who is going to find a room for them to hide in. Can someone tell the girls LaLaurie is immortal already? With those kids taken care of, Zoe now has to contend with Nan, who has run outside to hot neighbor boy's aid. Oh, Nan.
Nan is attempting to carry Luke (I'm just going to call him by his name from now on) to a car in the front yard, but he's telling her to leave him and save herself because he's the ultimate Eagle Scout saint. Boy crazy Nan is not about to do that, and she actually manages to get them inside the car, just as a group of zombies surround the car. What is a group of zombies called? A zimbie? A zazzle? Let's go with zazzle. It's only for one episode.
Cordelia's hospital bed. Fiona is by her side, watching over her and popping pills. After the pills set in, Fiona wanders down some empty, filthy, dark hallways, lights flickering everywhere. It basically looks like Bioshock. Either we're seeing this hospital through Fiona's booze and pill-induced perception, or this hospital's not quite up to code.
Fiona uses her magic to key into a supply closet (with her long thumb nail, which is fabulous) and immediately starts rifling through bottles and guzzling a king's ransom of pills, washed down with whatever spirits are in her flask, of course. She stumbles back out into the hallway – which I think has actually gotten even darker – and finds patients shuffling along the hallway edges on their own, the cloaked figure who maimed Cordelia passing through, and a middle-aged man with mouth sores and a diaper who grabs her and tells her "You didn't throw that acid, but you might as well have." So, I think it's probably safe to say we're seeing this through Fiona's eyes.
Fiona's deeply disturbed by the man's accusation, but she's distracted by a screaming woman in another room. The woman has just given birth to a stillborn baby, and the doctors have cruelly left it alone in the room with her as she grieves. Fiona picks up the baby's body and brings her over to the woman, who screams in protest, not wanting to hold the baby she can't have. Fiona goes completely mad and forces the woman to not only hold her dead baby, but to tell her she loves her and that she'll never leave her. She makes her repeat all these things several times until she's satisfied, then Fiona puts her hands over the baby and it suddenly takes a breath, alive and well. The mother rejoices, and Fiona slips out the door.
Alright, let's talk about that scene, because it feels more important than anything else that has happened with Fiona this season so far. Fiona has some regrets as a mother, and this scene combined with Madame LaLaurie's story in this episode adds up to some intense mommy-daughter relationship themes this week. I get it. But making the mother "earn" Fiona's help by satisfying what she deemed sufficient motherly love is a pretty fucked up proxy for all the guilt Fiona's feeling for not being there for Cordelia her entire life, let alone in the bathroom where someone threw acid on her face. If you want to feel better about yourself by holding strangers to your own arbitrary moral standards you should just watch reality shows, Fiona, and leave the grieving mothers of dead babies alone. I think this scene, more than anything that happens with Myrtle later, cements Fiona as this season's villain.
As the zombies break through the car windows to eat Nan and Luke, Zoe runs outside banging some pots and pans to get their attention. It works! They leave Nan and Luke and chase Zoe into a garden shed, where she looks pretty cornered and screwed for the moment.
Upstairs, Spalding secures the windows while LaLaurie secures Queenie, suddenly quite the mother hen when it comes to her new best friend. LaLaurie leaves Spalding in charge and runs downstairs to get Queenie some ice (Queenie, ever pushing it: "And get me a Coke!"), but as she's packing it up, she hears a zombie outside the kitchen window. She grabs a giant kitchen knife to defend herself, but it's Borquita at the window, and LaLaurie is immediately reduced to "My daughter! My child!" whimpers. I know it's partially the writing, but I am really enjoying the community theater camp Kathy Bates is choosing to bring to this season.
She opens the door for Borquita, who just kind of stands in the doorway hearing her out instead of eating her face. LaLaurie tries to find some Borquita in the zombie, pleading that if she comes back to her she'll make amends for everything, and it's completely sincere, but unfortunately Borquita is the evil dead, so she doesn't forgive her mother. She reaches out and grabs her throat instead. It's a big moment to see LaLaurie taking responsibility for her horrendous past, especially since she's immortal and wasn't really in any physical danger here.
The other zombies are banging down the garden shed, so Zoe looks around for a weapon. Looks like she finds one, but before we see what it is, we cut back to Queenie and Spalding. Queenie seems genuinely worried that LaLaurie is not back yet, so she asks Spalding to go see what's keeping her. Spalding gives her a hysterical death glare and shuffles out, but the second he does we hear a yelp and a thud, and know he's entered the zombie zone.
Queenie gets up to see what's happened, and finds Spalding crawling away from Borquita, who has wacked him on the forehead with a candlestick and is now lurching towards him. These zombies really pick and choose how fast they're going to be from one moment to the , don't they?
Borquita chases Queenie back into the bedroom and quickly knocks down the door. Queenie smartly starts stabbing and slicing at herself to transfer the injuries to Borquita, but of course none of that works on a zombie. They don't get AMC at Miss Robichaux's, apparently. Just when Queenie looks done for, a curtain rod is rammed through Borquita's heart from behind, and we see that LaLaurie has killed her own zombie daughter to save Queenie. LaLurie, devastated, admits Borquita had a "monster for a mother" and has a good cry on Queenie's shoulder. Aww! These two!
In the car, Luke tells Nan he thinks he's bleeding out, and she decides to try to drag him to the house. This gets the zombies back on their tail, leaving Zoe's shed free and clear. Obviously, Nan can't carry a whole hunk on her own, so they just kind of collapse in front of the porch, zombie dinner on a platter, when Zoe shows up to save them with a fucking chainsaw and goes totally Evil Dead on all of them! No matter where you end up on the zombies-are-awesome/zombies-suck spectrum, Zoe hacking them to bits with a chainsaw in this episode is pretty undeniably spectacular.
She gets through all of them (literally) except one final one, which is of course when the chainsaw stalls. She can't start it up again, and falls to the ground, terrified and ready to be eaten, when suddenly she reaches her hand out and says some kind of spell, seemingly subconsciously. The zombie falls to the ground dead, and Marie falls out of her levitation trance, completely confused. "I don't know what that was, but they've got some real power in that witch house now." Well for god's sake don't tell Fiona that. She'll have Zoe's head within the hour.
Cordelia's hospital room. Her husband arrives and Fiona throws him some "about time!" shade, and they exchange some fighting words. Things get rather soapy fast. He calls her a drunk, she calls him a loser, he calls her out for abandoning her daughter, she thanks god he was unable to knock up her daughter. It's all very melodramatic. A nurse comes in to tell them one of them has to leave the room because of all the shouting (yeah, fix your flickering hospital lights and I'll listen, lady!), though I don't know who they're disturbing considering the only other people there are a passed out Dracula and a series of pharma-induced hallucinations, but OK. Fiona gives him 15 minutes alone with Cordelia. He sits by her side and tells her he loves her so much, but when he touches her hand, she sees sits straight up and sees flashes of him having violent sex with Kaylie. Doesn't see him kill her, though! Some second sight power that is. Way to bury the lede, new power.
Back at the house, Fiona is supervising as the girls burn the zombie bodies. The fire smells pretty bad (Nan: "This! Is nasty!") but they're enduring. Nan exposits that Luke is still alive and asleep in her bed, which Zoe sees as a pretty big problem. Fiona, on the other hand, wants to keep him there until he's well so his "holy roller mother" doesn't call the cops. And she's not going to call the cops when her son is missing for days? Nan is giddy that Fiona is letting her keep her pet, and runs off to cover him in kisses. Then, Fiona switches up and praises Zoe: "I like a witch who knows how to fight. You've done this coven a great service." Zoe looks like she's won the compliment lottery and skips off back to the house too.
LaLaurie joins Fiona at the pyre, lamenting the death of her daughters. She tries to bond with Fiona about how when your babies are born, you're filled with hopes and dreams for them, but then you turn out to be a shitty mother and it doesn't quite work out. Fiona: "I know the feeling." HA! LaLaurie offers that maybe their tragedies can bring them closer together, and Fiona is like ew, no way, you're the maid. LaLaurie's face when she says that is incredible. It's the perfect mix of mean girl rejection pain and fuck off.
They are interrupted by the Council, which has returned to charge Fiona with a whole bunch of neglect and malfeasance crimes for allowing a zombie attack (plus Madison's disappearance and Cordelia's acid face) to happen on her watch. I don't know what kind of managerial style can prevent a zombie attack, but that's why I'm not in a coven, I guess. They demand she abdicate, effective immediately, and that they (well, Myrtle) take over until the new Supreme shows herself. Fiona will let Myrtle take control of her coven over her dead body, of course. Myrtle literally stands up to Fiona, and Fiona demonstrates her power by using it to force Myrtle's ass back into her chair, seriously freaking her out. Quentin, as usual, seems vaguely amused, which, considering a light gust of wind sucked him out of a window to his death in the Will & Grace finale, I think he should be a little more concerned.
Fiona then goes for the jugular. She accuses Myrtle of being the one who attacked Cordelia, and she can even prove it! Myrtle is beyond insulted, saying she was more of a mother to Cordelia than Fiona ever was. Fiona says she just latched onto Cordelia because she could never have children herself. Jeez, Fiona. That's cold. Myrtle begins to panic a little, and unfortunately decides to deflect by joking, "Oh, she'll accuse me of murdering Madison Montgomery!" Big mistake. Fiona doesn't go into a scapegoating sesh without a plan. She paints this elaborate picture of Myrtle being in New Orleans during the time of Madison's disappearance, living under an alias from an old Veronica Lake movie Quentin loves. This part all seems to be true (correct me if you disagree), and Myrtle becomes increasingly agitated as Fiona flashbacks to scenes of Spalding spying on Myrtle coming and going from a motel room, and Fiona breaking in to find what basically amounts to a burn book collage of defaced Fiona pictures with big red exes all over her face. What an adolescent revenge board, Myrtle. There aren't even any step-by-step plans to ruin Fiona's credit score laid out or anything.
Myrtle doesn't outright deny anything, which seems unwise, especially when Fiona grabs her wrist and pulls off her glove, revealing an acid-burned hand. Yes, Myrtle is caught "red-handed." Oy. Pimbrooke is horrified but very brass tacks about the whole thing. She asks Myrtle if she has anything to say for herself, and for some reason she doesn't, so Pimbrooke just lays down the law: "Burn the witch." Quentin seconds, and Myrtle's fate is sealed. Fiona is smug as hell about it, which is very Fiona, but rather unnecessary. Sometimes petty is hot, and sometimes it's egregious. Learn the difference, lady.
The weird thing is Myrtle really embraces the verdict, giving some nonsense about how she's always been an outcast, and being burned alive is super non-conformist, so she's into it. What the fuck was that? This person has made it her life's mission to fight Fiona, up until a couple minutes ago, and now she's just lying down and dying at her will? This scene sure was thrown together like crap. And it makes even less sense at the end of the episode when we all find out she was (spoiler!) framed for the acid crime. Of all the ways to bring Misty Day to Fiona's door, this is the one they went with. Huh.
Time for a burnin'! They all go out to the country, Myrtle dressed in white and the coven and Council dressed in black, trailed by some bonus albino black security guards as accessories as the soundtrack pumps Chris Barber's "Right Place, Wrong Time." Because if you're going to take your music cues from another show, that show should be Scandal.
Myrtle climbs up to her stake and the albino gentlemen secure her to it, then douse her in gasoline. Fiona makes the indelicate choice to start the fire by flicking her cigarette on it, a final fuck you to her old enemy. Myrtle warns them all that they are mere frogs in Fiona's boiling pot, but it falls on deaf ears. As the flames engulf her Myrtle screams in pain, but only for a few a seconds, followed by a kind of boom and then she's gone. So, witches don't burn like people. That's nice for them! Everyone else is chillingly stone-faced about watching a fellow witch die, but Zoe is appropriately horrified. At least there's Zoe.
Back at the house, Fiona takes 100 more pills and has a visit from Queenie. You see, Queenie helped Fiona frame Myrtle for the acid (we flashback to Fiona's accusations and see Queenie put her own hand in acid on the other side of the wall, throwing the injury to Myrtle), and she'd like to know if she helped frame a guilty woman or an innocent one. Fiona's answer is "None of us innocent." Great. Very comforting. Queenie is wracked with guilt, saying she thought they were just kicking Myrtle out, not putting her to death, and now she can't stop smelling barbecued Frances Conroy everywhere she goes. Queenie says she can't live with what they've done, and as Fiona approaches her, I honestly seized up with dread that Fiona was about to kill off Queenie, and I can't really live without Queenie at this point because this season is kind of a mess otherwise.
Fortunately, Fiona has other plans for Queenie. She cups her face and begins telling her that she believes she's the Supreme (she wipes her hands after, a nice, awful touch), and Queenie buys it, either under a Fiona spell or just looking to feel special. Queenie agrees to follow Fiona's instructions on the path to Supremehood and then Fiona kicks her out. I'm assuming Fiona's picked Queenie because Nan's kind of a hard sell, and Zoe actually is the Supreme, but to what end? Is her plan just to present Zoe with a different Supreme and hope she doesn't notice any of her new powers? If that's the case it's a pretty weak diversion.
Oh lord, Spalding's doll attic. He's prancing around in a pretty mint green chiffon housecoat and a bonnet, spraying air freshener everywhere. He removes a bunch of stuffed animals from the lid of a trunk and opens it to reveal Madison inside, stinking and rotting in a very demure pose. He reacts to the smell but quickly gets over it. He grabs her wrist and tries to pull her out, but after one tug her arm snaps off. Haha! Oh Spalding, you klutz.
Back at Myrtle's stake-burning scene, some wolves are helping themselves to a crispy witch snack, when MISTY FUCKING DAY saunters up in some perfectly slouchy vintage boots that have been haunting me all week. She kneels down to Myrtle's body and puts her hands on her face, closes her eyes and – OMG – brings her back to life. The makeup is fantastic – Myrtle is all red and black, the whites of her eyes a striking contrast. And I'm sure Fiona will agree with me week. Fuck yes! Misty Day vs. Fiona! Now we're getting somewhere.
week: Marie hires a witch hunter! Cordelia buys a cane! The girls find a Ouija board! And there better be some more goddamn Misty Day, goddammit!
Mindy Monez is jealous of Misty Day's boots. Please tell her where to buy them @garnisheater.