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Horror, Humour, and How?!
With 3 episodes left this season of American Horror Story is throwing us all for a loop and keeping us saying “Oh no they didn’t…but how could they…then who is…OH THAT’S JUST NASTY” until the end.
The episode opens with Sidney and the production team watching the events of Dominic’s arrival and enjoying the chaos they’ve created in their lives. They catch Rory’s murder, and the kreepy killer knnurses, on tape and barely notice it, then hear a shriek and find the production assistant dead outside the trailer.
The cameraman then catches Sidney’s murder and his own at the hands of the semi-twist villain: A deranged Kathy Bates dressed as the butcher.
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TGON Comments: We are absolutely baffled at how Agnes (Kathy Bates) was able to infiltrate the film sight. Production had intentionally antagonized her in the prior episode and blatantly said he hoped it drove her over the edge to do something like this. Given all of this build up it eludes us how Sidney wouldn’t have hired security (plus the fear of the Polk’s). Talk about your stupid, undeplanned horror trope.
Snap back to our main group in the confused after-math of Rory’s death. Lee sets the tone for the rest of the episode–explaining why she is going to continue shoving her phone in everyone’s face and Blair Witch Project everything (this episode is very referential of the Blair Witch Project, so brace yourselves during this recap).
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However, a few characters are still in denial about the situation they are in
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Denial: “Going back to L.A.” must be the new hip way to say someone has passed away, or the airlines are operating on a new barter system that involves trading vital organs.
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Kathy Bates earned herself an Emmy in the next scene. She is camped out in what looks like the cellar at the edge of the property, and sets up a camera to record her descent into madness. We watch her transition from playing The Butcher to being regular Agnes and regretting her decisions. She is playing at being lost in her character and splitting her personality so well it is almost as if she has been doing it for 26 years
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Agnes gets spooked by some Gaelic chanting and those weird stick dolls (*cough cough*).
We are taken back to the house with our main group and some boring story building (Who needs it). Dominic does a confessional and exposes the true colors we already knew, and also that he has a body camera (We assume this will be relevant in episode 8, as it doesn’t serve an important roll in this episode, yet they highlight it for a good 30 seconds).
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Then we get to see Agnes storm the house, completely unnoticed by the 6 living inhabitants, get all the way to the master bedroom and take a stab Slash at killing Shelby Miller.
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TGON Comments: Agnes must have inherited some ancient wisdom from all the chanting, because she vocalized the underlying theme of the season.
Fortunately for Shelby, luck favors the stupid and she gets away is saved by Dominic (shocking) and leaves the altercation. She also annoyingly filmed the fray, much to Agnes’ annoyance. Who ended up escaping the full house without being seen.
The main group rally around Shelby’s injury and the looming threat of a crazy old lady with a butcher knife and are shocked when Sidney doesn’t send an ambulance (they don’t realize him and his crew are dead. Gotta love that situational irony).
After a few hours of sitting around uselessly Matt decides to remind us why he and Shelby are a match made in heaven by suggesting the group split up (don’t do that) and enter the haunted woods they almost died in a year ago to look for the production trailer and find Sidney to get help
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But Lee redeems the family by being the most prepared character of the entire season. Maybe it is her experience as a cop, or her experience almost dying here last time, but she brought a gun to a ghost fight
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Monet and Audrey volunteer to go with her (mistrust), and they leave out the secret tunnel exit, which they are annoyed is rigged with cameras. Their annoyance soon turned to fear as the ghost of Edward Mott appears before them making very inhumane noises.
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Lee wastes a four shots on the apparition, which surprisingly drops it momentarily, but it gets up angrier than ever so the girls turn tail and run. In some bizarre twist we still don’t understand they somehow exit the tunnel and end up in the woods.
Eventually they find the production trailer, and Sidney’s half devoured body.
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Lee is practical enough to ignore the sick ass raven and search their pockets for a phone, to no avail (after dealing with Audrey’s stupidity, of course)
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Agnes returns to the scene of her first crime and makes a charge at the girls. A momentary charge as Lee uses her last bullet to put her down. As the girls try and navigate the woods to get to town Audrey stops to have her own Blair Witch confessional moment complete with crying snot face
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Of course those LED phone flashlights and the apparently never-ending battery of what seems to be the strongest smart phones in existence were bound to give away their position and they are ambushed by the real Polks who have new toys: Cattle Prods! Great for torturing your victims from 2000-9000 volts!
A nice plot twist then reveal shows us Agnes in her cellar hideout completely alive and heating up a pair of pliers to sterilize them and remove the bullet from her wound herself
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TGON Comments: Kathy Bates is a boss ass lady and Agnes isn’t the villain we deserve, but the one we needed to fill this episode.
Back in the house we see Matt wake up after consoling Shelby and sneak to the basement in a trance. Dominic follows him and witnesses him get snagged by and then shagged by The Witch.
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Being the nice guy he is, Dominic runs to wake up Shelby (recovering from getting cleaved) and have her go to the basement to witness it first hand. She remains very calm and tel The Witch to get off of him and then beats the witch with a crowbar (This seems like an unbelievable simple solution, but leave it to Shelby).
While trying to “rescue” Matt he admits that the only reason he came back was because he is in love with the witch and felt incomplete and empty without her.
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So like any normal person who was risking their life to save their relationship by going to a haunted house, and was just cleaved by Kathy Bates, Shelby took the crowbar to Matt’s head and busted it open like a watermelon.
Back to the currently-Polk-captured girls that went for help and failed miserably
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TGON Comments: The direcotrs of AHS did a great job of casting and costuming to make the non-reenactment villains look much more realistic and downright horrifying
Mama Polk then decides its time to prepare a nice meal of Lee leg for everyone to share, including Audrey and Monet who need prodded into it. In case anyone was wondering, the main ingredients to a good Lee leg are peanut oil, peppered seasoning, and “tenderizing.”
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Note that the creators never reveal if Lee is dead or just mutilated and writhing. We believe her to be alive considering they kept Dr. Elias alive to get more meat out of him.
The episode concludes with Agnes storming the house with a torch reminiscent of Episode 5′s setup. She is then joined and surrounded by a group similar to the prior one and is then confronted with the real butcher. Tho she pledges loyalty and fawns over her idol, Agnes, in full Butcher garb, gets butchered by the Real Butcher and goes out in a blaze of glory. We like to think this i how Agnes would have liked to go.
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With ou top pick for survivor gone it could be anyone and we can’t even speculate at this point (But we hope its Lee. She came prepared and deserves to keep at least one leg and live).
