Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches – The Witching Hour

By: Kelly Kearney

Continuing with their roster of Anne Rice books-to-television dramas, AMC steps away from goth-Queen author’s beloved vampires to delve deeply into the New Orleans witchy scene. The story, about a young doctor’s personal quest to uncover her magical past after realizing the unknown could have deadly implications for those around her, focuses on Rowan – an orphaned woman who seems to have a murderous talent she may have inherited from the family she is desperate to know. “The Witching Hour,” tired after the first book in Rice’s three-part series, kicks off to an intriguing start, so let’s conjure up a peek into the premiere!

DEIDRE MAYFAIR

We open in New Orleans where a doctor (Billy Slaughter) has been called to administer a shot of Thorazine to a homebound and catatonic patient named Deidre Mayfair (Annabeth Gish). Sitting on the patio in her rocking chair, Deidre’s dead-eyed stare would make any medical professional curious as to why Thorazine (a drug meant to calm the raging storm of psychosis) was needed. At a shocking forty-seven years old, the doctor can’t fathom how this woman aged to the extent of her current elderly appearance, but given the width of her medical file he shrugs off his concerns until he can find out more about her. Diedre’s home health nurse, Delphine (Deneen Tyler), lets the new physician know that he is late for their appointment, and from her attitude it’s clear she knows more about why Deidre needs those shots than any file could explain. Be that as it may, the doctor doesn’t jump at the chance to stick his comatose patient until he has thoroughly read through her history. As he skims through her past we see flashes of her life before she was permanently attached to that rocking chair, coincidently they align with an introduction of a San Francisco neurologist named Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario). These two women are linked, but how?

We quickly find out that Rowan, who was adopted at birth, finds solace in the rootless life of living on a houseboat. Her very existence is one that seems to be searching for something she can’t remember she’s lost. When Rowan’s adopted mother Ellie (Erica Gimpel) visits the boat to wish Rowan a happy adoption day, she points out the fact her daughter is a doctor and can afford to live in better accommodations. Rowan is set in her ways and Ellie seems to admire that about her even if she worries as any mother would.

After their brief celebration, Rowan heads into work where we find out that she’s not only a neurosurgeon but she specializes in pediatrics, not that her male senior colleagues notice her talents. They seem to treat her like the help, and even worse, take all the credit for saving her young patient’s life after she was forced to step in and correct her boss’ mortal mistakes. Dr. Keck (Jim Gleason) is your typical misogynist – treating his female peers and nurses like they’re invisible. Rowan has found a way to smile and nod through his sexism thanks to his age and the knowledge that one day she will replace him like a retired bad memory. With her patient in stable condition, Rowan leaves the surgical theater and runs into her mother, whose news doesn’t lighten her daughter’s mood. Ellie’s cancer is back and her only hope for survival might be in the hands of Dr. Keck.

THE TIES THAT BIND…

As we get a peek into Rowan’s life, the episode bounces between her current situation and Deidre Mayfair’s past – obviously linking these two on some ethereal plane of sameness. We look back at a teenage Deidre (Cameron Inman) and find her sitting in her catholic school uniform giving confession to the local priest (Joseph Meissner). As she admits her sins we see her scratching something into the confessional booth’s wooden frame. The word is a name, belonging to a man who everyone from her aunts to this priest, warned her away from. “Lasher” reads as she lies to the priest about avoiding him and obeying her aunts. Of course, it isn’t long before we see the face that goes with that name. As Deidre exits the school she is met by a crowd of cheering children tossing rose petals at her feet. In the distance Lasher (Jack Huston) stands watching, smiling, and Deidre knows the only man who has ever understood her ordered this flowery hello just to make her smile. The only frown is plastered on the face of her salty Aunt Carlotta (Beth Grant) – who isn’t impressed with Lasher’s antics and demands the girl stop encouraging him. What is a teenager who is locked up in an old musty house with four aunts supposed to do when a handsome…Man? Demon?…makes you his project? Later that night he pays Deidre a visit and he listens to her complaints about her boring life. There is mention of her mother and how he heard the same complaints from her before she took a swan dive off the house’s third-floor balcony and maybe that’s why Deidre feels connected to him; she misses her mother. By the end of their talk, Lasher convinces Deidre to toss on her best dress and attend her Uncle Courtland Mayfair’s (Harry Hamlin) masquerade party. It’s time this kid had some fun.

Once she arrives, her uncle (the flamboyant master of ceremonies) helps her feel welcomed by handing her off to one of his hand-picked hotties, a young guy named Patrick (Sam Evans). The two dance the night away until eventually taking the good times upstairs for a night of passion that is anything but your average first time. Halfway through the event Deidre opens her eyes to see a taloned beast above her that doesn’t seem to surprise her. The next morning Deidre wakes up alone and discovers that not only did her aunt find her and now she’s waiting outside to drag her home, but Patrick is dead! At least she assumes he is when he isn’t in bed but someone is being carried out of the house under a white sheet! She immediately assumes this is her Aunt Carolotta’s doing – a curse to keep her forever alone.

Nine months go by in the blink of an eye and we see Deidre is still locked in her aunts’ home but this time she isn’t alone; she’s with child! The priest from the confessional booth is back to counsel the soon-to-be-mother, but she picks up on his vibes and realizes, just like her aunts, he is afraid of her. She screams at him to leave and after a good cry decides she is going to sneak out onto the balcony of the third floor and join her mother in the afterlife. Just as she pushes off from the balcony, a force wielded by Lasher swoops in to pull her back from the edge. She hears him say “no” and asks her to find him. After sneaking past her Aunt Millie (Geraldine Singer), whom she overhears praying for the strength to do what she fears she might have to, Deidre catches up with Lasher in a room downstairs. She asks him to give her a reason to live and it is an obvious one – the baby. Her child is destined to change her life and he knows this because her mother bound him to Deidre. The key necklace she wears – both in this flashback and in her comatose present – is the binding her mother put on her. Now, it is time to remove it and see Lasher for who he really is. He tells her if she still chooses to stay bound to him, he will be at her every command. When she slips the necklace off, Lasher shapeshifts from face to face and even combines three at once while he tells her he is “everyone and no one; saint and demon.” What she sees doesn’t frighten her; she sees his true self and still decides to keep the binding and puts the necklace back on. That is when her water breaks and she starts to go into labor. The moment her child is born her aunt Carlotta swoops in and takes the baby from Deidra. She tells her terrified niece that the homebirth requires a trip to the hospital, but Deidra knows her aunt is sending the baby away and no amount of begging will stop her. Later, we see Carlotta hand the newborn to Ellie Mayfair and order her to raise the child as her own. She makes her promise to never reveal who or what she is. The baby’s name? Rowan. It’s what Deidre would’ve named her.

DEADLY SECRETS

Flashforward to the present and Rowan is in Dr. Keck’s office, ready to grovel for a favor. Her mother’s cancer is aggressive and her only hope is a study that is, unfortunately, all full. She was hoping Keck could call in a favor with one of the hospital donors running the trial and get her on the team as an intern. If they agree, they might be willing to add her mother to the list. Dr. Keck is still angry over being upstaged by the young female doctor and accuses her of letting her arrogance get in the way of her work. As he ridicules her and makes it clear he won’t help her mother, Rowan imagines the inner workings of his brain and some kind of arterial rupture. Dr. Keck grabs his head and instantly falls to the ground. There is no time to save him, he dies at Rowan’s feet from the brain bleed she envisioned!

Shocked by what happened, she heads to the chemo ward to sit with her mother and try to tell the sick woman what happened. Ellie reminds her she is human and doesn’t have the power to reach into someone’s brain and cause an aneurysm, but Ellie is wrong. It happens again the following day when Rowan meets with the donor, Daniel Lemle (Tobias Jelinek), heading off the trial. Lemle agrees to hire Rowan and add Ellie to the list but there is a catch; she must choose which patient Ellie replaces. As a doctor, ethically, Rowan can’t choose to possibly end one life to save her mother’s. Lemle is disappointed. He was sure when he agreed to hire her as an intern she had that killer instinct he was looking for. If she won’t choose, then he won’t help her. Her rage floods in like the blood in Daniel Lemle’s arteries and she has the same visions she had with Dr. Keck. He falls to the floor in a heap and Rowan once again, runs to Ellie with fears she is magically murdering people who upset her. Ellie, once again, tells her she isn’t capable of such evil, and she is too sick to argue over Rowan’s genetic disposition to murder, or her perceived paranormal powers. Ellie doesn’t have much time left to live and wants to spend with her daughter making good memories. So, while Rowan is out on an errand Ellie calls a man named Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa) -whose job it is to keep track of Lasher. From his research, he tells Ellie that the demon is still around the house in New Orleans, even though he can’t see him. If Lasher’s presence is felt in Louisiana, it is unlikely he’s stalking Rowan in California. Ellie is somewhat relieved but asks Ciprien who will protect Rowan once she dies. He promises he will, and soon enough, Ellie dies with Rowan by her side.

LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER

Back in New Orleans we see Deidre’s doctor finishing reading her file and he heads out to the porch to look at his patient. He notices scratches on her chest as if she was trying to claw her necklace off. He removes it for her and then with the needle in his hand and her home nurse watching every move, he whispers to Deidre that he won’t be injecting her today or any day. He wants to know the real her.

Once the key is off her neck Lasher isn’t bound to the house in Louisiana and is free to leave. Ciprien finds out about it and tries to warn Ellie but she is already gone.

That night Rowan is trying to sleep off her grief to the motion of her rocking boat. A storm is raging in the Pacific and as her boat rocks back and forth it forces her to get out of bed. That’s when she thinks she hears something other than the winds and rain and goes up on deck and that’s when she sees him. In the middle of the ocean, amongst the raging sea, a man is staring back at her from outside the boat’s window. It’s Lasher! The Mayfair woman can’t shake this demon!