American Horror Stories – Ba’al

By: Kelly Kearney

Putting a twist on the familiar evil fetus trope that films like Rosemary’s Baby made so famous, episode 5 of the anthology series titled “Ba’al” welcomes back “AHS” alum Billie Lourd, who plays a childless heiress desperate to be a mother. Enter a friendly office receptionist armed with a Sumerian fertility totem and the happy couple is well on their way to planting an evil seed. 

The Joys of Motherhood

We open on Liv (Billie Lourd) and Matt (Ronen Rubinstein), a young couple sitting in a Beverly Hills fertility clinic hoping for a way to grow their family. As their doctor warns them of the complications should they proceed with his plans, the young couple is determined to give this baby-making thing another try. With the appointment over Matt leaves Liv to get the car while his wife strikes up a conversation with the receptionist, Bernadette (Virginia Gardner), who notices she is struggling. The friendly woman knows all about failing to procreate and lucky for Liv she has a fool-proof plan that could help. She hands Liv a Sumerarian fertility totem she just happens to carry around in her purse and instructs Liv to place it under her bed during sex and let the ancient baby gods do the rest. This totem is a family secret that is of no use to her since she isn’t interested in having a baby. Liv and Matt have tried everything else, what’s this little figurine going to hurt? She thanks the woman behind the desk and later that night puts it under her bed before she plays mattress tag with her actor hubby. As they make love the thunder rages outside and the totem shines its way to a new series opener. 

Sixteen months later and a baby was born to a very exhausted Liv who appears to be suffering from post-partum depression. She asks her hands-on maid, Norma (Misha Gonz-Cirkl), why she ever got pregnant in the first place because the lack of sleep has Liv questioning all her life’s choices. She can’t comfort her son, Aaron, who shrieks whenever she comes near him. With her husband working as a day actor on “NCIS,” Liv is alone, over-worked, under-rested and exceedingly unhappy. “It was such a f*cking mistake,” she screams at Norma. Later that night, as she is attempting to shut out the cries of her son, she remembers the totem under the bed. “I forgot about you,” she says. “Thanks for everything you little sh*t.” Instead of her original idea of throwing the totem into the trash, Liv shoves the magic miniature into a box and sticks it in her closet. Enter her dead-faced husband who is in full corpse makeup when he decided to stop home on his two-hour filming break to see his wife and his appearance almost gives her a stroke. Not amused, Liv questions why he bothered to come home at all if he has to go right back to work, but he tells her Norma the maid called him because she was worried. Liv, who compares the helicoptering domestic to living with her mom (family is cheaper), resents her husband’s job and how it takes him away from the home, especially since she is loaded. Being a kept man isn’t in Matt’s wheelhouse and he explains that his job is an important factor in becoming her equal when it comes to their family’s finances. The two talk about Liv’s issues with becoming a stay-at-home mom living in “baby hell” when all she ever wanted to do in life was exactly that. Reality can be harsh and now she wishes she never embarked on her maternal journey. Matt attempts to calm her fears by telling her she is a good mom who is just having the normal issues most women go through after having a baby. She isn’t convinced and says she feels guilty for wishing her son out of existence. This pushes Matt to tell her his agent gave him the name of a therapist who specializes in postpartum and, at first, Liv rejects the idea but eventually chooses to give it a chance. That night, while listening to baby Aaron cry, Liv tries to ignore it until she spots something terrifying on the monitor: A two-legged creature, human-like in its gait, but demonic in its features, and it is hovering over Aaron’s crib! This prompts Liv to go check out the boogeyman stalking her son, but when she gets to the nursery everything seems normal until she thinks she hears growing from behind the closet door. Nothing is lurking behind the closed door, but then she looks down at her tablet screen and sees it: a whole group of demons surrounding her son! Gasping, she spins around to take on anything in the room only to find her son sleeping peacefully and not a single sign of any paranormal pack of fiends. 

Pickle Jar Syndrome

The next morning Liv is sitting in Dr. Berger’s (Vanessa Williams) office for her first therapy session. Having been a mother herself, Berger understands that stress and sleep deprivation can lead to any number of late-night dreams and delusions. She reaches back into her own experiences of being a new mother and admits she once thought she saw her baby climb up the walls of his nursery in a tired haze. This makes Liv feels safe enough to open up to the doctor about her rather taboo feelings about Aaron, namely that he hates her. She explains the lack of attachment he feels towards her and how it makes her feel unwanted and like her very existence is a detriment to his happiness. Thank goodness for Norma, who seems to have the maternal instincts her son craves and Liv is feeling that jealousy. Dr. Berger equates Liv’s feelings to the Pickle Jar Syndrome, where she struggles for hours to open a jar in hopes of grasping one those briny green spears, only for someone who didn’t put on the effort to walk in, open it and eat her pickle. It somehow makes the pickle less enjoyable to eat and, in this metaphor, Aaron is that tasteless pickle and all her efforts to bring him into the world now feels like it was all or nothing. Dr. Berger tries convincing Liv to hire a night nurse, but the overprotective mother refuses. However, she does agree to the calming detox baths suggested. After the first bath to keep the cranky baby balanced, Aaron seems happier and Liv is hopeful the baby detox did the trick. With her son sleeping through his usual tirades it offers Liv some time to sleep and recharge her maternal instincts, but all that changes when she heads into the nursery and spots the totem she tucked away in the closet has now morphed into a demonic figurine and it’s sitting in the baby’s crib! Liv quickly checks the box but no totem and nothing about this makes sense. She immediately accuses Norma of playing a trick on her but when the confused woman sees the figurine she instantly freaks out. Norma rips off her apron, rattles off a prayer in Spanish and tells Liv she can no longer work for her while simultaneously running out the door. Within moments of the front door closing Liv hears the familiar growling echoing through the vents from the basement. Grabbing a flashlight she heads down to check it out and thinks she spots something moving behind the furnace. Upon further investigation she finds claw marks around the HVAC system and a ripped to shreds vent dangling from the ceiling. Before she can figure out what caused the damage, the vent falls and the jagged edges slice through her arm. When she confides in her husband about what she saw he questions why she never mentioned the fertility totem before and how it could later morph into this satanic-looking thing she found in the nursery. None of this makes sense to Matt and it still doesn’t answer the question of what made those huge claw marks in the basement. He chalks it all up to delusions caused by a lack of sleep and tells her to pull herself together because he is booked for more “NCIS” night shoots and he can’t leave her alone if she isn’t stable. She promises him she is fine, but after a bit of research on the winged demon figure nothing is ever going to be fine until she renounces the demon that has been hiding in the shadows of their home.

Beelzebub, or Ba’al the demon, once again appears on the baby monitor and after she records the video clip and plays it back and listens to the audio she hears something that terrifies her. “I want him,” the growling voice says, but her husband can’t hear anything through all the static. Liv quickly becomes obsessed with the recording forcing her husband to contact Dr. Berger for a house call. When the doctor hears the recording she says it’s a simple case of Pareidolia where Liv is searching out patterns to fit her demon narrative. Similar to spotting the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast, she thinks Liv is looking for terror where there isn’t any. But Liv knows what she heard and no gaslighting head shrink is going to convince her otherwise. Berger gives her a Zoloft prescription and tells her to try and get some sleep and maybe the demons will disappear. 

Later that night Liv takes her medication as she readies herself for a dinner party with Matt’s friends. After a meal and some drinks the partygoers break out the board games and all agree to tempt the spirits with an Ouiji board. When the glass moves on its own and spells out “HEISMINE,” Liv freaks and causes a scene in front of Matt and his college posse embarrassing him enough he tells his crying wife to either fix her issues or he is leaving her.

A LIFE GIVEN; A LIFE OWED

At her wit’s end and dressed like she’s Coachella’s version of a ghost hunter, Liv confronts the clinic’s receptionist Bernadette about her possessed gift. She tells the apologetic woman that the totem is the demon Ba’al and, while he did give her a child, now the winged beast wants him back. She orders the woman to teach her how to get rid of it before it’s too late. Bernadette, who we quickly learn is a master of magic and the dark arts, seems trustworthy when she tells Liv the totem was never a demon but a family heirloom meant to help. What this could be is some demon who hitched a ride on the fertility God’s tail and, lucky for Liv, she has a ritual that can send Ba’al back to Hell where he came from. With Bernadette’s family ritual book and the ceremonial dagger that goes along with it Liv has a chance to finally get this monster out of her life for good. 

That night, while Matt is on a night shoot, Liv performs the ritual by reading from the book inside a circle of candles and cutting her hand with the ornate dagger. Flinging her blood around the room Liv slathers the sticky red fluid on the Ba’al statue and summons him in Latin. The candles flicker and when she spots the demon out of the corner of her eye she drives the dagger into its chest. Only, it wasn’t Ba’al she stabbed, it was Matt! As her husband falls to the floor Liv screams, “NO!” But it’s too late. The deed is done. 

Two weeks later and Matt is alive but his wife is in a mental health facility and devastated over what she did to him. When he visits her in the hospital he immediately tells her he knew she wasn’t well and forgives her. Aaron is fine and she could leave the hospital anytime she chose to but she doesn’t trust herself around their son and won’t go home until Dr. Berger says it’s safe to do it. Matt says goodbye and tells her he loves her, but when he gets to the hospital garage his mistress Bernadette is waiting for him! The entire thing was a setup to get rid of his wife and play family with Nurse Ratchet! She isn’t even a witch and he’s certainly a better actor than his struggling extra work on “NCSI!” He even calls Liv “a crazy b*tch” after he just got finished professing his undying love for her. Everything about Matt is a lie and once his lawyers make sure Liv is committed for life it’s onward and upward towards money, stardom and sponge baths with Nurse Hotpants. 

THE GAS LIGHTERS

“If it were a series, it would run for eight seasons,” Matt’s champagne toasting buddies say about the gaslighting performance they all pulled on Liv. Everyone was in on this “Drive Liv Crazy” reality show and they couldn’t be more proud of it. As they smugly brag about destroying a young mother’s life, they admit they carved the claw marks, messed with the baby monitor, switched her meds to trigger a state of psychosis and even dressed in Ba’al costumes to sell their performance. Leaning heavily on their movie-making and special effects careers they managed to melt poor Liv’s brain and, of course, they did it all for her money. Matt and his friends cheer at the thought of never having to work again because no role could ever pay this good. As they all celebrate a job well done, Matt heads upstairs to change Aaron’s diaper and that’s when the party kicks off. The lights in the house flicker and the real demon Ba’al emerges to tear Matt’s friends to shreds. The beast disembowels a few and crushes the rest, including Matt’s mistress’ neck. Luckily for him Matt managed to survive the deadly demon ordeal long enough to get arrested for their murders because “a winged monster did it” doesn’t hold up in court. 

When we next see Matt he is in jail and getting a visit from his free and much healthier wife. He confesses that he never wanted a child and after years of ignoring his wishes he decided he didn’t want her either. But he did want her money and so did his friends. Liv and the rest of the justice system assume he killed his friends because he wasn’t willing to share the fortune, but that wasn’t what led them to the morgue. He tells Liv it was the demon who unleashed unholy Hell on their “F Liv” party and now he needs her to pay for a good legal team to beat the murder charges. She laughs as she walks away while Matt screams for her to avoid the house demon before it’s too late. Little does he know Liv and the Ba’al are tight. So tight that she summoned him to life in the hospital and sicced him on Matt and his friends when she realized what they were up to. Now that demon is her puppy she won’t release him from her witchy dog collar until he gives her another baby! These stars-cross-upside down lovers have one little Anit-Christ so they might as well start making an army! Even a winged demon makes for a better father than that lying and greedy husband of Liv’s and she is going to make sure her little spawns know it.