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Let's start with the fun stuff before the sad stuff. Myrtle went full-on maniac and gouged Pembroke and Quentin's eyes out with a melon baller, stuffed them in Cordelia's head, and restored her sight. Her literal sight, that is. The procedure robbed her of her second sight. Just when they need it, too.
Nan confronted Patti LuPone at Luke's hospital bed with some rough details telepathically communicated to her by a comatose Luke. Patti murdered his father with a swarm of KILLER BEES after he tried to leave her for another woman, and when Luke wakes up, he confronts her too. So, she smothers him with a pillow. Bye, Luke! I hope you donated your abs to science! They should be studied.
Hank's backstory comes into focus, and it's a doozy. His father is the head of a witch hunting corporation. (I am not shitting you. That really is his backstory.) The corporation was behind the acid attack on Cordelia, a failed attempt to make her more reliant on Hank so he could remain the inside man at Miss Robichaux's. His father disapproves of Hank's performance, his love for Delia, his alliance with Marie Laveau, and probably even his boy band haircut. To make it up to him, Hank moves Marie to the top of his hit list and barges into her salon to kill everyone inside. He shoots Queenie in the stomach, a potentially survivable wound. But when he aims his sights on a cornered Marie, Queenie grabs a discarded handgun and blows her brains out, transferring the injury to Hank. RIP Queenie. We all loved you and will pour out some Frostop shake in your honor tonight.
Before Queenie died, she did make Delphine's severed head sit through the entire Roots miniseries, and brought her to genuine tears of compassion over some old Civil Rights Movement footage. The greatest tragedy here is that Queenie passed (I think – I suppose her powers could make her head close back up on its own like Wolverine. Or Misty could fix her) before they could enjoy the American film classic B.A.P.S. together.
The episode ends with a royally pissed off Marie making a late night visit to Miss Robichaux's, Marie likely ready to take up an alliance offer made by Fiona before the attack. Getting it together!
Mindy Monez will never look at a melon baller the same way again. You can tweet with her @garnisheater.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Myrtle came back from the dead, Misty was tentatively crowned the Supreme, and Marie chopped Delphine's head off and left it on Fiona's doorstep, just as chatty as she ever was.
Flashback to a young Hank on a quaint little father-son hunting trip. They are enjoying the pastoral 1991 setting of the Chattahoochee National Forest and all the rites of passage that come along with such bonding exercises. His father gives him his very first thermos of coffee! They share a laugh over how soon enough Hank will be adding bourbon to his coffee like the rest of us drunks! Hank the Tank, and all that. They plot to stalk and murder a witch together! Ahh, fathers and sons.
This is baby Hank's first kill, and he's very nervous, but his father reassures him it's just like practicing at the range (yeah, right), and besides, every witch hunter is nervous the first time out. The only cure for stage fright is cold-blooded murder, you know. Hank's father hands him a massive silver bullet, and baby Hank loads up his rifle.
They track their prey through the woods as silently as they can manage, but it appears their witch is on to them – they see her scurrying behind them in the brush, no doubt trying to escape. Hank's father leaves him alone to go scare her out of hiding, and for a second I actually thought this would be a teachable moment where Hank gets spooked and shoots his father accidentally, but unfortunately that doesn't happen.
What does happen is that Hank's father chases the witch into a clearing in Hank's path. She is crying and begging for her life, and Hank, being a somewhat innocent child at this point, hesitates. It looks like he can't do it. His father is screaming like a maniac behind him at this point to "PUT HER DOWN! PUT! HER! DOWN!" but Hank lowers his rifle. She seizes the opportunity and throws some pyrokinesis at him. His father leaps in front of the flames and pushes Hank to safety, but burns his arm for the trouble. Still on fire, he grabs his rifle and shoots her in the head, then puts himself out. I mean, I'm sorry, but that is badass. Annoyed at his boy's weakness, he scolds Hank that they can never show any mercy with witches. They can never forget what they are. I bet he just loves Hank's schoolboy crush on Cordelia these days.
Marie's salon is bustling midday when Fiona walks in with The Box. It's been neatly closed back up, so no need to make a scene with the decapitated talking white lady head inside – unless Marie would like to force her to make one by refusing to speak with her in private. Queenie's working the reception desk, by the way. A new coven and a cushy part-time job? Not a bad deal!
Marie takes Fiona and The Box to the back room, where Delphine's headless body is still standing upright in her cage, lazily swatting flies away from her gaping neck gore. Ha! Fiona's pretty grossed out, but she's all business today. Marie obviously doesn't want the head back. Fiona has no use for her anymore now that she can't cook or clean for her. Meanwhile, Kathy Bates's muffled cries of "What'd she say? I can't hear!" ring out from inside the box. Reminds me of my mother-in-law's annoying (and racist, actually!) parrot that screams bloody murder if you don't "include" it in your conversations by addressing it personally – with eye contact -- every few sentences. Parrots suck. Don't ever get one.
Fiona slaps the box and orders Delphine to shut-up. She's here to "talk terms," which rightly earns an uproarious laugh from Marie. She cannot, in fact, undo centuries of racial tension by walking up one day and suggesting they be friends. But Fiona isn't talking about reviving the truce, she's talking about partnering to fight the witch hunters. Who are men. That's not a minor detail. Delphine freaks: "You can't make a deal with a darkie!" Delphine, the last time you called someone a darkie you got your damn hand chopped off. When will your stupid old racist ass learn? Fiona knows Delphine is ruining her pitch, so she opens the box and stuffs a wad of newspaper in her mouth. Because sure, that'll work. As if that shit hasn't been top of Marie's mind for the past forevers.
Fiona calls her spat with Marie "petty quarrelling," which is pretty absurdly tone deaf to what Marie has gone through as a black woman in the South, but such is a certain corner of white privilege, I guess. Why can't black people just get over it! Their favorite thing to say.
Fiona shows Marie the silver bullet remnant, but being as she was the one who sent it, Marie plays it off as Fiona's problem, which she really has no reason to believe it isn't. Marie guts Fiona with a comment about how she knows she's wearing a wig, and, say, what kind of cancer does she have, anyway? Must be serious if she's so weak she needs Marie to protect her Coven for her. Fiona recovers and promises that once the witch hunters are done with Miss Robichaux's, they'll be gunning for Marie. Marie says she'll first pop the champagne, then she'll worry about that. And see, this is why Coen Brothers movies should be required viewing for all television characters. Never trust a gun for hire. They change their minds more often than you think!
Marie calls Queenie in and tells her to take Delphine's head out back and burn it with the rest of the trash. Delphine sings the praises of the sweet release of death as Fiona, defeated, saunters out of the salon. So fire can kill immortal things? Or Delphine just assumes so? I guess if her head completely melted she wouldn't exist anymore, but the rules of engagement on this show are all over the place.
Delia is fumbling around the kitchen making a valiant effort at cooking eggs. She gets pretty far, but the eggs end up on the floor, leaving her frustrated. Myrtle rushes to her aid, but Delia wants to do it all herself. Myrtle chooses right now to make sure Delia doesn't think she actually blinded her. We see a flashback to Myrtle taking Delia in when Fiona abandoned her as a teenager, and the beginnings of their mother-daughter bond forming. She implores Delia to use her power of sight to see the truth once and for all, but Delia doesn't need to. "I know you would never hurt me. I never doubted you for a second." Myrtle says that if she could pluck her own eyes out of her head and give them to Delia, she would. Or, you know, someone else's. Whichever works!
In Atlanta, Hank is taking a meeting at a place called Delphi Trust (established 1826, says so right on the door) in a classic shadowy corporate office. As the meeting unfolds it becomes clear that Delphi Trust is a well-funded front for a witch hunting organization, so here we go again with the True Blood territory. His father runs the place, but Hank is not second in command, he's much further down on the totem pole as a lowly field agent, which clearly hurts his feelings a whole lot. Poor, sad Hank, I'm sure.
His father is unhappy with Hank's lack of progress in New Orleans. He's no longer living at Miss Robichaux's, so he's no good as a mole anymore. He stupidly used a credit card at the hotel where he killed Kaylie, and they had murder an innocent desk clerk and maid to clean up his mess. He went rogue and aligned with Marie Laveau, and teaming up with witches is a big no-no if you're a corporate witch hunter. Goes against company policy! "Liberals in Washington" want to sic the FEC on Delphi and this is also somehow Hank's fault, which just seems like scapegoating at this point. His father still wears the burn scars from Hank's hesitation as a boy, and as his father dresses him down it serves as a nagging reminder of what a disappointment he's always been to him. Not that I feel sorry for Hank. Let's not get it twisted.
Hank brings up the weird acid attack on Cordelia, and it turns out his father ordered it to make her more dependent on Hank. Well, now she won't even speak to him, so way to fail, dad! A devastated Hank: "You disfigured my wife?" His dad does not take kindly to Hank's tone of affection for Delia and makes him profess this lengthy oath about his duty to stamp out witchery on the North American continent and whatnot. He reminds Hank that he should work on detaching from Delia, because he's going to have to kill her in, like, five minutes. But… but her hair's so pretty! We all have a crush on Cordelia, sir. It's no one's fault.
Myrtle has invited Pembroke and Quentin over for a refreshing lunch soiree of lobster and freshly balled honeydew melon. They both regret so much that whole burning-her-at-the-stake business, and may they add, she looks younger and more vibrant than ever! They must meet this Misty Day and the cosmetic wonders of her swamp mud. They're positively falling all over themselves apologizing and complimenting, and Myrtle is basking in vindication.
Pembroke raises a toast to Myrtle but finds herself unable to speak halfway through. She and Quentin have been frozen solid, paralyzed by the monkswood Myrtle slipped into their drinks. It causes temporary paralysis, but temporary is all Myrtle needs. She first takes her revenge verbally: "Quentin! You're a fatuous fool and a drunk!" "Pemby, you're even worse. You're weak-willed, boring, and your fashion faux pas give me nightmares!" Haha! As usual, Frances Conroy. Amazing. Oh, how I treasure an actress who understands camp.
Then, she takes her physical revenge. To help the Coven, and to help her beloved Cordelia (she tells herself), she snatches the melon baller out of the serving dish and carefully scoops Pembroke's eye out of its socket while she sits paralyzed and helpless. Then, she does the same to Quentin. Aah! See, this is why horror is the greatest genre. Where else are you going to find fun like melon baller eye-gouging? They don't do that shit on The Carrie Diaries.
we see Cordelia waking up in bed, Myrtle standing over her. When she opens her eyes, we see Myrtle has managed to transfer her trophies to Delia's head somehow, which enables her to see, even if her eyes are mismatched. (I'd love to have seen that horror show of a procedure, but I guess there was too much to do this week.) Hey, Myrtle had a cat like that! Also, David Bowie has two different-colored eyes and he's an androgynous sex god. Don't feel bad, Delia.
Fiona arrives home to find Delia and Myrtle in the parlor arguing over Myrtle apparently not getting Delia's consent before shoving new eyes in her face. Fiona: "Who let this charcoal briquette in here?" Ha! Even when I find this show weak in the overall execution as I do this season, I can always rely on the dialogue writing to be on point and for its actors to relish their one-liners.
Fiona is thrilled that Myrtle, a usually quite incompetent witch, managed to pull off such a feat, even if the eyes are mismatched. We see a flash to Myrtle chopping up Pembroke and Quentin's bodies and tossing them in a drum of acid, Walter White-style, playing with the limbs like a pile of tinker toys along the way. Hey, crazy!
Fiona and Myrtle's feud remains alive and well as they retread old grievances. Fiona accuses Myrtle of blinding Delia again, Myrtle reminds Fiona that she murdered Madison, they go around and around as they do. Fiona even threatens to call The Council (good luck with that!) to banish Myrtle to Paramus, New Jersey, and let me tell you, Paramus is a hell hole of merciless traffic jams and bad chain restaurants and I don't even like to JOKE about going anywhere near there. Say, now that Myrtle is back from the dead and more powerful than ever, is she still hell-bent on destroying Fiona? She clearly finds her annoying, of course, but her motivation seems to have changed, hasn't it? It's strange that she found such satisfying revenge in murdering Pembroke and Quentin but seems to be almost giving Fiona a pass for framing her in the first place.
Delia breaks up the fight and tells them to get over themselves. The real danger is witch hunters, and they need to form a united front if they're going to survive the impending attacks. Myrtle hugs Delia and Delia discovers that her visions have gone with her blindness, a side effect Myrtle hadn't anticipated. Ahh man, she'll never get to see the awesome melon baller scene!
Zoe and Madison are strutting down the halls of the hospital dressed in goth Amish couture and goth Russian mafia hooker couture, respectively. It's a hot look for the most unglamorous place in all of New Orleans. They find Nan waiting outside Luke's hospital room, where she's been sitting since last night. Patti LuPone won't let her in to see him. Madison thinks that's bullshit, so they barge on in. Luke's in a coma, by the way. Patti starts railing on them, threatening to call security, calling them friends of demons, blaming Nan for Luke's condition (that last one's kind of true), the whole shebang. Nan hears Luke's thoughts begging Patti to calm down, and tells her so. Naturally, she calls her a liar. Madison: "No, bitch, she's clairvoyant." Patti's got a Bible verse comeback for basically everything, so Nan switches tacks. She tells her Luke wants to hear the song she used to sing to him as a child, which means PATTI LUPONE FINALLY SINGS. About goddamn time.
Patti is touched and begins singing some religious song through tears. It's no "Ladies Who Lunch," but I'll take it. Haha, how hot would it be if she just busted out "What's New, Buenos Aires?" for no reason in this scene. I would DIE. She approaches Luke with the tenderness of a woman who has never even forced a tube of bleach up her kid's butt. What a transformation! She reaches out for Nan and they embrace, unlikely new best friends.
Speaking of unlikely best friends, Queenie has decided to stash Delphine's head in her room instead of burning it, of course. Delphine claims to be hungry, but Queenie points out that she no longer has a stomach. "What are you going to do? Shit it out of your neck?" Guys, I'm gonna be honest -- that line made me laugh so hard, I'm not kidding. And Kathy Bates's reaction face looks like she's really thinking hard about shitting a burger out of her neck. It's so perfect.
Queenie has a better agenda for the day than neck shits. It's movie night for Delphine! She needs some sensitivity training, so Queenie has propped her head in front of the TV and is going to force her to watch Roots (all eight hours of it), Roots: The Generation, Mandingo, The Color Purple, and even B.A.P.S.! Delphine begs for death, but Queenie refuses to let her leave this earth an ignorant racist. Seems like a lot to rehabilitate a horrible racist just to throw them in the fire pit at the end, but ok. Also, isn't Queenie a MILLENIAL? How the hell does she know about any of those movies? At any rate, Queenie leaves Delphine to enjoy the film festival. Delphine defiantly shuts her eyes and starts singing some old timey racist song at the top of her lungs.
Hank is enjoying some Chinese takeout in his dingy motel room, when suddenly his arm is pinned back and a sizeable wound is opened up on his wrist, the product of an invisible stabbing instrument. He's flung on the floor, where he is repeatedly slammed against the ground and then stabbed in the leg by the same invisible force. We see it's Marie behind the attack, playing with a voodoo doll Hank in her back room. A man forces his way into the room: "Marie Laveau sends her regards." She stabs him again, and then calls him to tell him she wants everyone in Miss Robichaux's dead tonight, or the needle goes through his heart. Hank has a decision to make.
Misty (who has recovered quite nicely from passing out after reviving Patti LuPone last week) and Delia are making a rejuvenating, protective mud together (to the tunes of Stevie, natch), which they use to revive… a dead plant. OK. Misty's brought multiple dead humans back from the dead, but now they're bringing her back to square one with plants. That's weird! They're going to make more mud, enough for the entire Coven. Misty makes a huge point of telling Delia she's an awesome leader, supporting my theory that Delia's actually the Supreme. Not that I particularly care about who the Supreme is at this point, honestly. Just pick somebody and get on with it, show.
Hank shows up just then, not to kill Cordelia like Marie asked him to, but to attempt to reconcile with her. He's happy she has her sight back! He's very drunk. He hugs her. She pushes him away. He begs her to take him back, but she holds strong and kicks him out. He meets Misty, and we see that it was indeed him who tried to shoot her in the swamp. Delia throws his ass out; she's filing for divorce. His shit is in a box in the closet upstairs, and he's welcome to get it and get out.
Hank gathers his shit box and tries to leave, but he is met with a growling German shepherd at the top of the stairs. This is Fiona's new security guard, a female dog named Endora (ha!), because, as she puts it, they are much more loyal and ferocious when it comes to protecting their families. Hank takes the warning exactly as it's meant and hurries out.
Afterwards, the dog starts barking and scratching at Zoe's bedroom door, and Fiona follows her in to find Kyle sitting on the floor flipping through another children's book. The dog runs up to him and starts adorably licking his face, and Kyle correctly classifies her as a "Doooo-guh." Fiona has another great line here: "Another goddamn boy. Jesus, these girls!" She calls the dog to follow her out of the room, but as soon as she turns she hears a loud crack, and spins around to see that Kyle has snapped the dog's neck, Lennie from Of Mice and Men-style. Yikes.
Nan and Patti are bonding away in Luke's hospital room. Patti calls her a "miracle" and brings her a king's ransom of vending machine cookies. I'm not proud of it, but that would be enough for me to forgive just about anything. Nan breaks up the love parade by telling her that Luke told her he spoke to God, and that God said he's judging Patti for what she did to Luke's father. Patti plays dumb, but we see a flashback to his father demanding a divorce over the phone (over the phone!) as he gets into his car. Once inside, he notices a bee. He tries to get out, but his door spontaneously locks on him. Then, he sees another bee. A whole swarm, in fact. The swarm stings him into lethal anaphylactic shock as we pull back to see Patti standing two cars away, sobbing and clicking the auto-lock remote every time he tries to escape like a crazy person. God told Luke all of this! Between Delia's second sight and God just spilling the tea on Patti, it's a very convenient season to be a character trying to uncover secrets.
God also told Luke about how Patti caught his father getting a blowjob in his office from another woman. Jeez, God! Anyway, the blowjob was apparently the last straw for Patti, and God has promised Luke that she will be judged. Patti goes dark and goes back to calling Nan a liar and a dark-sided demon and throws her out. It's an interesting choice for sure, but I do kind of love that no one calls explicit attention to Nan's Down Syndrome. I kept waiting for an enraged Patti to call her the "R-word" but it didn't come. I'm glad it didn't! It's just interesting that in a season all about the physical differences between women (race, weight, beauty, age, etc) and the impact it has on their lives, this one major difference that you'd think would be quite isolating goes almost unnoticed by everybody. Something to think about!
Hank mounts up in his hotel room, loading handguns, a shotgun, the whole nine. Shit's going down.
The girls arrive home to find Fiona and a newly articulate Kyle playing gin rummy on the kitchen table. Not a euphemism! They really are playing cards, as Fiona has taken it upon herself to spruce up his brain a little. She tells them Kyle is their new guard dog, and he will attack on command. That's one way to solve the problem of a dead dog, I suppose. Zoe. Is. Smitten.
Queenie arrives home after what I assume was her full eight hour shift at the receptionist desk, because Roots has concluded, and Delphine is triumphantly, petulantly insisting that she didn't open her eyes once during it, and that she is no more racially enlightened than she was when Queenie left. She also calls Queenie a "vile negress." God, what a child, this one. Queenie points out that she may be able to close her eyes, but she can't cover her ears without any arms! She puts on an Odetta record over old Civil Rights Movement footage and dares Delphine to find a soul somewhere in her little racist head. Queenie out.
Queenie arrives back at Marie's shop, where Marie is working with a customer. She calls Queenie out for being late, but gives her a pass for being late due to watching TV. Seriously -- dream job. Upstairs, Delphine is beginning to be feel the effects of Odetta's "Oh, Freedom," her chin wobbling with her eyes still shut tight. Downstairs, the women are surprised by Hank, who comes in, literally, guns blazing. He shoots two people before he gets to Queenie, who he shoots in the stomach, likely a survivable wound. Delphine's eyes are open now, and she's crying watching the infamous footage of protestors attacked with powerful hoses. Hank takes out a few more women before he gets to Marie. He clips her in the arm as Queenie picks up a handgun and crawls over to him. He aims for Marie's head, but Queenie but puts the gun in her mouth and fires, transferring the wound to Hank. His brains splatter against a window and we see the gaping, oozing hole in his head after he goes down, because this show loves gore possibly even more than it loves bitchy quips.
We don't see Queenie's brains, but she definitely looks at least passed out after she fires the gun, and I remember reading Ryan Murphy saying in an interview that he didn't want to do a spinoff for any of the characters this season because then he couldn't start killing them off exactly around this episode. So that, coupled with the fact that Marie shows up at Miss Robichaux's alone at the end of the episode, leads me to believe that that gunshot wound "killed" Queenie. Death means nothing this season, of course, so Misty or Delia or whoever could of course bring her back with all that mud they made, I'm just entertaining the possibility at this point that Queenie might be for real dead. We'll find out after the break, I guess!
Back at Delphi, Hank's father weeps for his son. Over at Luke's hospital bed, he wakes up to find his mother at his side. He tearily accuses her of murdering his father. She sweetly denies it, tells him to go back to sleep, and then SMOTHERS HIM TO DEATH WITH A PILLOW. Good god, this season hates mothers. If this is the last of Patti LuPone this season, her guest appearance didn't really serve any other purpose than as a vague criticism of religious zealotry -- which is really out of place and probably belongs in Season 2 – but mostly as yet another example of just how awful women can be to their children.
Fiona answers a knock at the door at Miss Robichaux's to find Marie at her doorstep, now much more amenable to the partnership Fiona proposed earlier. Fiona lets her in with a triumphant smirk. So, if the witch hunters represent male patriarchy's desperate attempt to rein in female power (and they do), does this mean patriarchy trumps racism? Does this show put any thought into what it's saying with these plot twists?
After the holidays: Stevie Nicks guest stars! Does anything else matter?
Mindy Monez will never look at a melon baller the same way again. You can tweet with her @garnisheater.