Weekly Recap: American Horror Story, S05E02
By Ross Dickerhoof, Contributor
Previously on American Horror Story: Hotel. . .
The Countess (Lady Gaga) is a vampire who murdersexes people and drinks their blood in the Hotel Cortez, an institution of murderers, which she rules over with immortal boy toy Donovan (Matt Bomer). Donovan is the son of Iris (Kathy Bates), who picks up work there to keep an eye on him after pushing the junkie who nearly killed him, Sally (Sarah Paulson) to her death, which makes her a ghost now or something. Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) is staying in the hotel to investigate a murder and is grieving over his missing son, Holden, who the Countess keeps in the bowels of the hotel as a minion. Also, something about drill bit rape.
If there’s one thing that’s truly foreign to American Horror Story besides consistency, it’s boredom, but that’s the biggest reaction last night’s episode provoked. Yes, even with a scene where Lady Gaga rides a horse into a disco and nibbles on a woman’s arm.
Mostly, that’s because none of our main plotlines moved forward much this week. A good chunk of the hour and 40 minutes was taken up with a torturously dragged-out backstory on the Cortez’s designer, James March (Evan Peters, done up like Johnny Depp in Mortdecai), which can be very simply summed up with “he was an evil bastard who killed people.” Yawn. The black and white aesthetic didn’t help much.
Lowe’s Murder Mystery Funtimes didn’t go much of anywhere this week, either. All we learned was the killer targets those who violate the 10 Commandments, which is a pretty old hat. Looks like Ryan Murphy’s been watching too much Cold Case and Se7en. Lowe’s daughter trying to show him Holden’s still alive was a bust, too, and mostly just reaffirmed the status quo between Lowe and his wife. The “suspense” was utterly wrecked by the terrible child actors, as well.
The only storyline with a chance of going anywhere or getting much focus is the addition of trashy, impulsive male model Tristan Duffy (Finn Wittrock) to the Countess’s vampire harem, causing her to kick out Donovan, making him intensely jealous. This appears to be Ryan Murphy having a go at writing True Blood fanfic, but at least in True Blood the characters kind of had concrete goals? I don’t know what any of these people want, least of all the Countess, who’s a complete enigma thus far. Lady Gaga sure works that dom getup, though!
The lack of a unifying core element (usually the Jessica Lange character) present in all of the past seasons (except Coven) is really hurting this show and leaves too many threads dangling. Most glaring is the lack of information about how Sally’s still alive, despite being presumably pushed to her death--or why she’s even there, besides providing sassy one-liners and jump scares. Without core, strong character motivations or at least more distinctive set pieces, this season’s a big question mark for me thus far. The next episode’s titled “Mommy,” which, knowing Murphy’s issues with mothers, should be a doozy.
