American Horror Story – Thirst

By: Kelly Kearney

After Alma joined her Daddy on the hunt for stardom, the child blood-addict quickly becomes an issue for the karaoke parasites, Austin and Sarah. The precociously hangry child could bring attention to their little P-town smorgasbord, and nobody is willing to risk fame and fortune for a pint-sized violin prodigy. Also, this week Ursula arrives in town and joins forces with an unlikely new talent; one she sees as a ticket to her own brand of stardom once she is introduced to “The Chemist.”

Alma is Hungry

After Doris (Lily Rabe) found Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) in the graveyard with a mouthful of bunny, she is officially done with Provincetown and Harry’s excuses for staying. As she scrubs the gore from her child’s face, Doris screams at her husband about all the blood-borne pathogens (once again mentioning Lyme disease) their little girl could have ingested. Harry (Finn Wittrock), who doesn’t seem too surprised his kid has followed in his vampiric footsteps, tries to downplay the concern over his kid’s new diet, but Doris isn’t having it. This graveyard buffet was the last straw. She is planning on taking her daughter and leaving town, with or without her husband.

Things get even worse when Chief Burleson (Adina Porter) shows up with questions about the recent reports of a young blood-soaked girl in the cemetery. The wounds on the dead rabbit left at the graveyard match the ones recently found on a murdered “d*ick-dock” sex worker. Burleson wants answers as to why that crime seems to point to the graveyard snacker they all know was Alma. Having killed the man under the dock in the previous episode, Harry knows his daughter had nothing to do with it. Before he has a chance to jump in with some made up alibi for his kid, a very pregnant and ticked off Doris takes a tumble down the steps and lands right at the Chief’s feet. Did she fall or was she pushed by her bad seed of a daughter? From the smirk on Alma’s face, we can assume she is less than concerned for her mother’s well-being.

At the hospital in Hyannis the ER doctor tells Doris she collapsed down the steps due to some early contractions caused by stress. Considering what they’ve been through since they all arrived in the beach town and Doris’ history of previous miscarriages, the doctor decides to keep her for observation. Maybe a break from P-Town is exactly what she needs to decompress? The town might be too much for the pregnant decorator but, unfortunately, it is exactly what Harry and Alma need to feed and create. Alma has been eying up the hospital blood infusion supply and Harry notices it immediately. She won’t even take money for the hospital vending machine and what kid doesn’t like a snack cakes and potato chips? He knows she is afflicted with the same need for inspiration, so he lies when he promises a worried Doris that he will take her home to New York. Of course, his need for stardom and his taste for blood keeps him from heading south for the city. So, instead, he hunts the Craigslist menu for a meal. He has another mouth to feed and from the sounds of Alma’s apathy for all of talentless humankind, if he doesn’t get blood into his little girl soon she will probably go on a rampage, starting with her pregnant mother. Whether or not the pill turned Alma into this heartless kinder-killer or if the girl who was counting roadkill pre-black pill was always a little bent, it’s hard to say. But now that she is driven by bloodlust this tyke is a force to be reckoned with. Heaven help anyone who crosses her path. She is also increasingly manipulative and possibly smarter than her own father. When she convinces him to make a pact with her to kick the pill habit, Harry leaps off the wagon and swallows more inspiration the moment he is faced with another bout of writer’s block. He’s also not slick about it because Alma catches him using and she demands he give her one too. If Daddy drops some creative flow, he better be sharing the goods with his little violent violinist. Of course, he’s still trying to be a good Dad and doesn’t want to break a promise to Alma. So, he hands her a pill while wondering what this could mean for her continued success. He can bang out a year’s worth of work on the keyboard and then ween himself off the pills and ride that success for years, but Alma needs to play continuously to reach her goals. There will be no break for her to kick the habit if she’s planning to make it to the New York Philharmonic by age eighteen years old. The pill puts her at the top of her game, but the life of a professional musician is one that is never satisfied if it’s not being challenged. Having no idea how this drug will effect a child long-term, Harry tells Alma he will supply her with blood so she does not have to feed. Hunting undesirables in the want ads so she can suck them dry is too dangerous and Alma, whose appetite seems to be a bit stronger than her father’s, begrudgingly agrees.

The Hunter is the Hunted

With a ravenous child and hunger pains of his own to satiate, Harry takes a peek at Craigslist for their next meal. He finds a female drug addict, Melanie (Rachel Finninger), living outside of town and from the moment she answers the door Harry looks at her like she is delicious. The flirtatious woman invites Harry in, but things don’t exactly go exactly as the writer planned. Distracted by her sudden display of flesh when she drops her shorts, Harry is attacked from behind by Melanie’s snuff film addict boyfriend Tony (Blake Shields). Apparently, the hunter was actually the one being hunted by these two Crisco-lubricated deadly perverts. Tony ties Harry up and locks him in a cage while he has Melanie block their killer sex scene. Getting raped to death by some dark web edge lord wasn’t exactly what Harry ordered for dinner, so it’s a good thing Dr. Lark gave him some rope shredding fangs last week. Chewing through his restraints, Harry attacks his captors, shooting Tony dead and sucking Melanie dry. He also makes sure to fill a takeaway cup of blood for his hungry little girl back home.

The next day Harry gets a surprise visit from his filthy-mouthed and fabulous agent, Ursula (Leslie Grossman). She just had to see what is was about this town that inspired her hottest client. She also brings good news in the form of an offer: Quentin Tarantino wants Harry to write his first television series slated to air, ironically, one the same platform AHS streams on Hulu. This is huge since the famed filmmaker typically writes his own manuscripts but now seems to be going through a bit of his own (possibly black pill sober) writer’s block. If he is enamored enough with Harry’s current work to step aside and hire him to head this new project, then quitting those pills is out of the question. The writer is overjoyed with the news and since Doris is in the hospital nearby, he has a good excuse to stay in Provincetown and get to work on this new series. Ursula tells him she is staying at the Land’s End Inn, something of an Easter Egg if you noticed the title of the book on Harry’s desk. She is hoping to catch a whiff of what’s cooking up all the success stories out of this small town, but after a run in with the local meth-hustler and P-Town’s take on Captain and Tennile, Ursula is anything but impressed. She insults barfly Mickey (Macaulay Culkin) when she brushes him off for being too white and too methed up, to land in her bed and then brings that same attitude to Sarah (Frances Conroy) and Austin (Evan Peters) when she mocks their stellar performance. It is something Sarah makes note of like she just added the agent to her “who should we kill next” list.

Mickey Spills the Town Tea

The following day Mickey learns the salty woman from the bar is Harry’s agent and ever since he took that black pill he has been writing up a storm. He wonders if she would be interested in his work so he tracks her down on the beach outside the Inn and gives her the scripts he just finish. Later that night Ursula is obsessed with Mickey’s work and thinks she can definitely sell it and make him a star, but there’s something about the drug-addict turned Hollywood star story that doesn’t sit right with her. She is beginning to get the feeling that something is very wrong with Provincetown’s community of artists and she wants Mickey to spill the muse-beans. Is this some sort of alien body snatcher thing where ET invades mediocre talent and turns them into legends of the written word? If not, then explain that karaoke gig from Belle Noir? Whatever it is that’s grinding out the hits, it stinks. But for Ursula, the overwhelming scent that lingers is money. If she can harness the very thing that makes P-town such an inspiration, she could open her own billion-dollar agency. Success isn’t just a meal served to the artists in town, business moguls like Ursula will chum the waters for a taste of that too. She wants in and Mickey is the key. That’s why when he comes clean about the pills. She makes him a deal: she will sell his script if he brings her one of those black pills. If he refuses, she will make sure nobody ever lays eyes on his work. So, with his future hanging in the balance and Sarah out to dinner, Mickey breaks into Belle Noir’s lair and searches through her sex toy drawer to find the pills. He helps himself to one, because why not, and heads back to town with the stolen goods.

Meanwhile, Sarah is dining on a trio of Craigslist losers with Harry and Austin. As they drink their victims dry, Harry is caught capturing some of the blood in a container for later. The minute the three are back in the car Sarah pulls a gun on Harry and demands to know who the blood was for. He comes clean and admits Alma took a pill behind his back and now he’s sharing meals with the little girl. Sarah puts the kibosh on that and says Alma is a liability that will get their little murder syndicate shut down. She orders Harry to cut the kid off of the juice, but after Sarah and Austin drop Harry off at home they start plotting to kill Harry before his carelessness costs them everything.

The Chemist

Like Belle Noir and Austin, The Chemist (Angelica Ross) also wants Harry (as well as his entire family) dead and she tells Sarah as much when the two talk about the newbies in town and the risks they’re taking if they are allowed to live.

Harry isn’t the only one taking risks. High on the black pill he stole, Mickey heads to the d*ick-dock to fish for a fresh meal. There he finds a fellow hustler and dealer named Beefy (Sean Jenkins) who he kills in a blood-thirsty tumble through the ocean’s breaking waves. After he gets his full of Beefy juices, he leaves the corpse on the beach, which turns out to be the wrong decision when it washes up further down the shore and P-town’s cops are called in. While his first feed is heading to the medical examiner’s office, the real threat to Mickey isn’t the cops but the deadly novelist insulting his home decorating skills. Belle Noir was waiting for her favorite “pay to suck” boy, Mickey, with questions about her missing black pills. She knows Mickey broke into her house and stole them and he doesn’t deny it. He is brimming with talent just like she is. That’s when Sarah puts Mickey in his place by comparing herself to a 747 and him to a paper airplane. “Don’t you ever think you’re anything like me just because you can fly a little.” I don’t know what’s more deadly, Sarah’s thirst for blood or her weaponized privilege. If Mickey wants to get back into Sarah’s good graces (jokes on him because she doesn’t have any) and have access to more pills, he will have to kill Ursula. Sarah didn’t like it when the agent poked fun at her singing and for that she has to die. Belle also orders Mickey to save a pint or three of blood for her from each and every one of his future kills. Whether this is just to insure she always has a tasty meal on hand or it has something to do with that sweet and tasty child, Alma (she loves the taste of innocence), we will find out. But, for now, Mickey has no choice but to agree to Sarah’s demands.

Back to Beefy and Chief Burleson is questioning a local visitor and interior designer (like Doris?) Holden Vaughn (Denis O’Hare), who witnessed the murder but was too far away to see the killer’s face. Vaughn, who is in town to escape the trauma of his favorite greyhound dying in his Manhattan townhouse, seems like your average artisan elite who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Not much stands out about him other than the how he reveals some glaring similarities between himself and the Gardeners when answering the Chief’s questions. Not that Burleson noticed it. She is too busy fake-smiling through Vaughn’s white privilege to notice those intriguing clues.

Ursula is in Charge

Stuck between Ursula’s promise of fame and Sarah’s promise to cut him off from the pills, Mickey takes a crowbar and breaks into the agent’s room looking to kill her. Lucky for her his heart isn’t in it, so when Ursula tells him she already lined up a gig for him to write the new reboot of “Speed Racer” he ignores Sarah’s orders and instead takes Ursula to see The Chemist. This agent wants to meet the creator of the very thing that inspires others to create. The Chemist, who already told Sarah she doesn’t need this level of attention the Gardeners keep bringing to her door, rejects Ursula’s offer to team up and sell her drugs to all of Hollywood. Apparently, The Chemist isn’t in this for fame and fortune, which seems strange considering the pill’s main side effects result in both for whoever takes them. So, what is her angle? She certainly doesn’t come clean with Ursula and, instead, summons Sarah that night and orders her to kill the agent, Mickey, and the entire Gardener family.

Speaking of Harry, he and Alma need to eat so he asks his agent to babysit while he procures a meal. Outside Chief Burleson is staking out the house. After she watches Harry leave she knocks on the door to speak with his daughter alone. She isn’t buying all the excuses the Gardeners and the townspeople keep giving her about the recent string of dead bodies washing up in town and she wonders if this is some sort of cult thing Harry brought with him from New York. She kindly tells the child she is taking her down to the station for more questioning and that later her father will be arrested for his role in the killings. At that an unsuspecting Alma calmly shoves a knife in the Chief’s throat and cuts the woman down on the living room floor. WHERE IS HER BABYSITTER?! Seriously, I wouldn’t ask Ursula to watch a houseplant let alone a blood thirsty child with an aversion to mediocrity. We get our answer when in the final moments of the episode Harry comes home with dinner only to find Burleson dead on the floor and Ursula and Alma playing cards. Did Ursula take the pills, too? What happens if The Chemist dies and takes the pill recipe with her? So many questions left to be answered.