American Horror Story – Winter Kills

By: Kelly Kearney

Part one of Double Feature has come to an end and, according to the displeased fans, the end of Muse’s story was blander than a Pale Fail standing next to one of Doris’ muted color schemes. It was lackluster, to say the least, and it left many questioning the unanswered plot holes – like why Doris kept talking about Lyme disease. The finale wasn’t so much bad as it was rushed and felt like the payoff was a bit shortchanged, which was a shame considering the other five episodes were a breath of fresh air after two solid years without the horror anthology delighting fans. So, lets sink our pointy teeth into what was great about this finale and what could have used a black pilled dose of inspiration.

Game Over

After a local fisherman finds the body of Chief Burleson (Adina Porter) floating out close to the shore, Officer Jan Remy (Dot-Marie Jones) interrupts the town council’s meeting with the news and that it looks like there could be a murderer on the loose. Martha (Robin Weigert), the Gardeners house manager, and winter time binge drinker, along with Holden (Denis O’Hare) and a few others, dismiss Officer Remy’s concerns as a simple accident. It is no surprise this council wants to deflect from the recent murder spree when we next see the Muses (A/K/A the Gluttons as Holden calls them) having their own private meeting about the problematic publicity these murders will unleash and how all of it ties back to the Gardeners. We learn from Holden, who holds court over Sarah (Frances Conroy), Austin (Evan Peters) and The Chemist (Angelica Ross) that the bloody fame seekers get to use the seaside Massachusetts region as their hunting grounds in winter. With the uptick in artists keeping the town going during the offseason, the Gluttons and the locals have a sort of partnership going. Blood for tourism dollars – what a Capitalistic dream! They all agree the town doesn’t need public eyes on these murders because it will keep fearful tourists away during the summer. Martha said it best, “The gays might stop coming,” and once that happens there goes the neighborhood! This is both a financial problem and a food scarcity problem and the Muses will not risk it for the Gardeners’ sake. Like the Gluttons who feed off the blood of visitors, the townspeople aren’t much different, only their blood is green and comes in the form paper and it is the true-life blood of the town. It’s an unholy partnership that will block any peeks into Burleson’s with Holden promising to take care of Officer Remy before she can crack the case. In the meantime, the council (or in particular the Gluttons) need to be more careful with disposing of their food waste. Holden then tells Sarah and Austin it is up to them to get rid of the Gardeners or else and, since he speaks for the council, it sounds like their refusal could have deadly consequences. Not that Sarah minds as she has been craving a taste of baby since TB Karen offed herself in the sea. She is all in. Also, during this private meeting we learned about how things work with the Gluttons during the summer. The Pales head into the woods in spring and the Gluttons agree not to eat anyone near the town after Memorial Day, this way all the tourists are oblivious to the negative yelp reviews about the blood sucking locals turning your vacation dreams into a nightmare.

Harry Wants Out

Over at the Gardeners Ursula (Leslie Grossman) is impressed with Harry’s (Finn Wittrock) latest masterpiece. According to her it is better than the last script he wrote earlier in the week. He tells his agent this is his last piece and he and Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) will live off his earnings in peace and off the bloody sauce. Ursula doesn’t support this idea and the side eye from Alma means she agrees, but Harry just lost his wife, so they nod along for now.

Later, when we find Alma looking at a bottle of vitamins meant to stimulate brain function post-black pill rehab, she and Harry barely have a moment to discuss life off the blood when they notice Eli is missing. It’s weird because Ursula was there the whole time, so how did she miss this? More on that later because Harry finds a letter from Sarah in Eli’s crib demanding he and Alma come to her to get the baby back. Harry knows this is a suicide mission, but cannot leave his baby boy in the hungry jaws of Belle Noir! Alma agrees and wants to help. After all, she is the only one who killed a cop, so she is ready for war!

When father and daughter head to Belle Noir’s to save the baby, Ursula conveniently stays behind to fulfill her true mission in this story: convincing everyone to buy her little black stardom pills. Like some kind of snake oil saleswoman, she heads to the graveyard to appeal to the Pales with claims of a new and improved drug to turn their fail frowns upside down. She says this new dose of stardom will be the one that finally does the trick, reversing their cursed parasitic fate. Instead of sinking their teeth into the agent turned drug dealer, the Pales are intrigued by what she is offering them. It seems Ursula found her willing test subjects, but at what cost?

Over at Belle Noir’s Harry and Alma arrive to find little Eli acting as the turkey to Belle and Austin’s blood-sucking no-Thank-yous-giving. Harry instantly tells them he is off the sauce and just wants his son back. He promises they will never see him or Alma again. His pleas go nowhere as Austin and Belle have had enough of the Gardener family ruining their beach town vibes. Just as the karaoke King and Queen are about to rip the newcomers apart with their fangs, the Pales come crashing through the windows and suck Sarah and Austin dry! They took Ursula’s pills and now they are hungry for the spotlight stealing Gluttons! Harry and Alma manage to get away from the blood orgy in one piece thanks to Ursula who swoops in packing heat and blasts her pale clients away. Apparently, she was working with The Chemist all along and the woman gave her old pills to feed the Pales knowing they would attack anyone who has been dosed or as an ounce of talent. Unfortunately, the revolution of the average lasted all of two minutes, but at least Harry and Alma are safe. Well, one out of two isn’t bad, because when the three make it back to their house Alma eats her father rather than leave Provincetown for a life of mediocrity! This “Bad Seed” managed to take out both parents while almost feeding her brother to Sarah in order to catch her father in a web of deceit she and Ursula spun! This kid will do anything to make it to first chair violin! The tween killer, along with the agent and the Chemist were all in cahoots together, and now they’re planning on pinning all the killings in P-town on Harry, the disillusioned writer who lost his mojo and his drugged-out mind. A serial killer angle will sell even more tickets to his Joaquin Phoenix movie and it might even send some true crime tourists to Provincetown for vacation.

The Los Angeles Riots Reboot

Three months later we catch up with Ursula, Alma and The Chemist living in Los Angeles like some kind of bizarre Manson family of the rich and blood thirsty. Life is apparently good with the agent finding distribution for her pill and her life partner in crime getting a cut of the profits. The Chemist is also finally able to tell Alma in a mother-daughter chat about her real reasons behind unleashing this drug on the masses: good old-fashioned payback. We cut to a glimpse of uniformed LAPD eating each other in the streets and she is proud as a peacock to see the evil doers get their comeuppance. I doubt that was part of the government test she was hired to run ,but our girl is freestyling her research at this point and what’s a few dirty cops lost in the shuffle? Payback was her motivation, but Ursula and Alma’s are more success oriented.

Alma is still nailing that Paganini and excelling in her chosen profession: violinist and youngest serial killer in America. We see her auditioning for the Philharmonic, but she isn’t the only musical prodigy in the running. According to her rival Rory (Benjamin Papac) “prodigies are a dime a dozen.” In fact, Rory (who is a few years her senior) tells her it isn’t her talent that will hold her back, but her age, which he equates to a bearded lady in the freakshow (an Easter egg to Kathy Bates’ AHS character). The youngest first chair ever? It is a world-wide distraction the orchestral institution does not need. Everyone will come to see the child prodigy but quickly lose interest in the circus sideshow and the tickets sales will plummet. That’s show business baby, where greed and profit margins keep artistry in a stranglehold. Alma doesn’t like the sound of this, so when Rory steps outside she follows him and quickly turns the competition into lunch. She nails the audition and lands her first chair dreams, just like The Chemist’s little drug promised.

Next, we get an Ursula update and find her speaking at a screenwriter’s seminar about Harry Gardener’s legacy. The audience is filled with wannabe stars and untalented fame seekers looking for their big break, and boy, does Ursula have something for them. She starts off by telling the attendees how Harry’s career skyrocketed with awards and recognition after his crime spree and untimely death. Even the scripts yet to be made are sure fire winners heading to the archives of some of film’s most important works. Ursula, an agent of chaos, goes full Matrix-Morpheus and tells the class the key to success isn’t in a “red pill or blue pill. It’s in a black pill.” That is when she pulls an Oprah and tells everyone to look under their seats because there is enough stardom to share with everyone! You get a pill! And you get a pill! You all get to be famous! Of course, anyone who knows anything about what it takes to make it big understands that talent can be a needle in a haystack and most of these students aren’t even in the barn. The predictable happens and, as we watch Los Angeles devour itself, Ursula explains in a voiceover that the world is full of mediocrity working overtime to convince themselves they are legends in the making. The problem is the making of a true legend is a long and tedious road of failures. Only the ones willing to swim through that bloody river of rejection and endure the “no’s” are the ones who are granted success. She ends with “at least with these pills the world can find out if you’re any good.”

As the episode comes to an end we see The City of Angels descend into an apocalyptic nightmare while The Chemist and Eli head off into the darkness for a new town and maybe even a new drug, one with less side-effects and a pinch of immortality. Let the average eat the rich and the rich bow to the fails because This Chemist’s job is done here. She got her revenge and a family, so she is blowing this desert of bloody fails for parts unknown. We never do find out if Alma and Ursula survive the sacking of Hollywood or if Doris ever tested positive for that dreaded Lyme disease, but as the tides recede the shores of Provincetown and the West Coast elites burn in their talentless fury, we do hope the spirit of Tuberculosis Karen rises up from the sea and ties “Red Tide” and “Death Valley” together somehow or else what was the point?