The True Death

Our long, sexy, national nightmare is over.  This past summer, perennial WTF generator True Blood finally met the True Death and concluded a seven season-long run on HBO.  And while I can’t say that I’ll really miss the show, I am going to miss always knowing that there was something on TV that would make me shake my head and mutter, “well, okay…” 

True Blood started ridiculously strong back in 2007.  In an era where every single story emphasized the misunderstood, sympathetic, chaste, teenage nature of vampires, True Blood’s malicious, randy bloodsuckers were a breath of fresh air.  There was no “romantic” staring into each other’s eyes scenes, no “they just don’t understand us” soliloquies set to classical music.   You got the sense that the entire cast and crew of the show read about 30 pages of an Anne Rice novel and said to themselves, “well this is boring as hell” and then immediately got to filming a butt sex scene while covered in blood.

YES!

Because the show’s mission was always to showcase adults, the initial storylines functioned as a mature, if telegraphed, metaphor not for growing up or some other theme ripped from Joss Whedon’s notes, but for social issues like racism, anti-gay bigotry, and the American South’s continuing struggles emerging into the 21^st century.  (Sorry, southern readers.  You know it’s true.)  And while the show was never subtle about its issues (the opening credits featured a billboard sign reading “God hates fangs”), it made up for its lack of grace with original storytelling and fresh visuals that hadn’t been used before.  If you haven’t seen the show, the first time a vampire is staked it will make your mouth fall open. 

The first season featured an erstwhile murder mystery as a framing story to introducing us to a world where vampires have “come out of the coffin” (what is this thing you call subtlety?) and organized, more or less, under two factions – those who want to integrate into society and live among humans thanks to a new synthetic substance called True Blood that mimics human blood thus negating the need for vampires to feed off humans, and those vampires who still believe that they are the superior race and that humans should be subjugated, not cohabitated with.  Later seasons ran with this tension, showing more and more about how vampire society worked and the ways in which the rest of the world had adapted or not, including the rise of “fangbangers” who are humans who have a sexual proclivity with vampires and drinking blood and even vampire-focused legal offices that only operate at night and help vampires who have been undead for many years figure out what their legal rights are to property owned while they were living.  Add that to a healthy dose of graphic sexuality, and you're at least going to be entertained for an hour each week. 

Did I mention the ho-yay?

All of this world-building made for fascinating watching.  Even as the show began to jump off the rails around its fourth or fifth season, seeing how the creators imagined how the most mundane aspects of everyday life would be managed in a world where vampires were real (a specialty airline service with UV-blocking windows caters to the vampires who wish to travel abroad) was always still interesting.  And if you couldn’t get into the subplots involving werewolves, fairies, shapeshifters, or witches, you always at least had the recurring southern gothic drama between the townspeople of Bon Temps, Louisiana, to keep you occupied. 

Unlike the characters, however, True Blood was not destined for an eternal life and began to age.  Plotlines got more and more ridiculous, the show developed an unhealthy tendency toward melodrama such that the speechifying and campy grandstanding of the later seasons stand in stark contrast to the more nuanced and, at times, genuinely scary first few seasons.  Where the first two seasons played with the audience’s expectations about reality and mystery, the show in its later life preferred to keep strictly to over-the-top plot contrivances and characters behaving like characters instead of people. 

An assemblance of well-developed, three-dimensional characters that were sadly never seen again after season three. 

Nothing is more illustrative of this trend that season seven’s insistence upon finding a way to bring lead characters Sookie and Bill back together.  True Blood was premised on the story of diner waitress Sookie Stackhouse falling in love with Bill Compton, a nearly 200-year-old vampire who is the first of his kind to make himself known to humans in his small Louisiana town.  Sookie and Bill remained the show’s primary couple for the first three years before starting to breakdown in season four.  By the start of the final season, it is well established that both characters have moved on, however the writers couldn’t resist the chance for an easy bookend and piled on the nostalgia to create a final story arc where both characters realize that they are Meant To Be or something.  This is particularly remarkable considering that neither character in the novels that serve as the show’s source material ever comes to any similar consideration.  Thanks, Hollywood. 

The final season is slightly mitigated by sheer number of Easter Eggs tossed in to appease long-time viewers.   The return of several fan-favorite characters, as well as the reunification of several others, helped to send the show off properly even if several other major characters, Tara and Alcide being the two most prominent, are given some of the most abrupt write-offs in the history of television.

So Hail and Farewell, True Blood.  I won’t miss your convoluted storylines, but I will miss Eric.  I won’t miss your unfortunate tendency toward saccharine storytelling, but I will most definitely miss Pam.  Actually, thinking on it, Pam is the thing I’m going to miss the most.  Someone get Kristin Bauer van Straten a pilot, STAT.  Meanwhile, I remain confident that television audiences have not lost their taste for WTF programming.  In any case, Salem is going to have some large, bloody shoes to fill.

Oh, Pam.  You can keep sassing me/slitting my throat for another ten seasons. 

TV Sluts: Live! And in Person!

Clovis originally wrote the beginning of this post...and then had to leave town for work. *sad trombone* So I'm actually posting it (I'm = Maggie Cats) and writing the introduction to the introduction. Got it?

Oh, whatever. Just go with it.

Clovis:

Two things happened this week that are both rare and heavenly: Haley’s comet will make a pass-by to earth (no visuals, but there was a meteor shower!) and three of the TV Sluts managed to find ourselves in the same room at the same time. What did we do? Watch television, natch.

Damn, those are some good-looking tv bloggers. From left to right: Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats, and Clovis.

Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats and I all caught the first two episodes of Salem, WGN’s bloody and provocative new thriller set in Salem, Massachusetts during the infamous witch trials. How is it? Well, it ain’t your father’s Crucible, that’s for sure.

Salem covers the real history of the witch trials in only the broadest of strokes, something we should frankly expect from a show that takes one of the most poignant episodes of the real horrors of fear-mongering and suspicion in early American history and goes, “yeah, but sexy witches are totally more fun, right?”

Obviously the show places fast and loose with the facts, but fans of history and Arthur Miller will recognize some of the high points – In this incarnation, we see the events through the eyes of John Alden, a soldier who has recently returned to Salem after a long time as a POW in an Indian camp, to find Salem has become a hotbed of witchy activity. John Alden is not to be confused with John Proctor, the upstanding moralist in Arthur Miller’s play, but in real life is one of the contemporaries who wrote about the witch trials and thus how we know many details about that event. (Fun fact, he’s also my great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather. True story.)

So who’s leading this sudden upsurge in witchery? Unbeknownst to everyone but us viewers, it is Mary Sibley, John’s former love who has married into wealth and power in his absence and apparently also developed a taste for witchcraft after having a magical abortion in the woods. Yes, you read that right – this show doesn’t just go there, it has a summer home there plus a timeshare with options on New Year’s. In the first two episodes alone we see Mary’s demon abortion, apparitions of an Old Hag attacking a teenage girl, a demon orgy in the woods that looked like something out of evil Burning Man, a frog that is repeatedly expelled and shoved back into a man’s body, and a broomstick appropriated to a use that is far from its traditional expectation.

Watching Salem is kind of like this.

In short, Salem is what American Horror Story: Coven should have been – utterly crazy, completely unafraid of gore and terror, and willing to go the extra mile to bring the squicky and the sexy into the same room with each other. I make no secret of how much I enjoy watching train wreck shows – for that reason alone, I’m going to keep up with this one. But what did the other TV Sluts think of it? Take it away, Ladies…


Arsenic Pie:

Will you all think less of me if I say that I liked Salem? I didn't like it in an "OMG this is so thought-provoking and riveting" way, but I liked it in more of an, "OMG. This is so awesomely ridiculous that I cannot look away" way.

Aside from the completely anachronistic "I call bullshit" line from our hero, John Alden, I was interested in how the show mixed fantasy with actual events. It's an interesting take to say, "No, there were legit witches in real actual Salem doing all kinds of bad in order to get rid of people they didn't like" instead of the intense Arthur Miller "Joe McCarthy is an asshole" theme. I think that we are more familiar with the latter, and with the teenage Abigail Williams as the primary accuser. I'm not actually sure which character in the show is supposed to correspond with which character in The Crucible and which character in The Crucible corresponds to real life. I will defer to Clovis on that point.

I am more familiar with the play (English major what) than I am with the actual people in Salem. The Crucible was Arthur Miller's own particular brand of fan fiction, and he took people from the real trials and put them in his play but I'm not really sure how that translates to historical fact. Giles Corey, a character on Salem, appears in the Miller play, as does Brigid Bishop, who I believe at least gets a mention. In the play, Mercy Lewis is just one of the little nasty Salem accuser girls and not the one who is "bewitched" and it's Betty Parris who becomes bewitched. So, I did like that they changed things around. The play does rather beat one over the head with its morality stick whereas the show is morally ambiguous. Also, there are a lot of gross-out moments on Salem, which, sadly, there is a deplorable lack of in The Crucible.

ANYWAY, Salem also diverges from The Crucible in that its protagonist and primary accuser is a grown-up LADY, Mary (forgot her last name). In The Crucible, obviously it is the teen bitch-whore Abigail Williams. Mary, the only inexplicably English and posh colonist in Salem, was a member of the poorz and a SCARLET WOMAN because she was having RELATIONS with John Alden and she became pregnant. Enter her BFF Tituba (who is never hot in The Crucible, but she's gotten a teevee makeover), who is a witch and she convinces Mary to give up her baby to the forest in exchange for what turns out to be social elevation. Mary ends up married to some really old man, but no fear. She totally keeps him under wraps BY SHOVING A MAGICAL FROG DOWN HIS THROAT to keep him quiet. Mary's entire agenda is to punish the swells of Salem for keeping her down all those years, and I am pretty sure she's hoping that the witchy folk can take over Salem and build like Hogwarts or something. Anyway, she's a horrible human being.

I think the most interesting character thus far is Anne Hale, who is the daughter of Reverend Hale. She is both UPPITY and FORWARD, and is not content to work on her sampler. Oh, no. Girl wants to hit on John Alden and draw photos in the graveyard. Shocking. I think there's a lot of growth potential for her character, but her arc is a bit predictable at this stage. Cotton Mather, who leads the witchcraft investigation (legit -- how was that ever a thing?), is kind of an idiot and a hypocrite at this point, albeit hot, so I would like to see some more development with his character. As for John Alden -- I don't know. He just kind of reminds me of Russell Crowe.

Survey says: I think I will keep up with it unless it completely jumps the rails. Well, I think it already sort of went off the rails, so if it goes off further into Dracula land, I may give up on it. It kind of reminds me of Sleepy Hollow in the sense that it's mixing historical events with fantasy while being aware that the show is kind of silly.


Maggie Cats:

You guys. This show is crazy. And by that I mean crazy awesome. But seriously, it's also just crazy. The first two episodes alone fulfilled my "WTF" quota for probably the next 6 months. It's like somebody went into my brain and plucked out all the things I wished a show would be but was too embarrassed to admit, even to myself.

I went into Salem with no prior knowledge; I can't remember if we ever read The Crucible in my high school (we must have, right?) and I don't think I ever saw the movie with Winona. The actual Salem witch trials never really featured heavily in my interests, despite the fact that I was a History major with a semi-focus on early America. So I can't speak to the, ahem, historical accuracy of the events...though I am pretty certain that the Salem witches weren't real witches, so from my perspective the show can basically dowhatever the hell it wants. AND I LOVE IT.

Clovis described it as a train wreck, but I tend to disagree. Unlike American Horror Story, which basically throws every ridiculous plot device at the screen and sees if anything sticks, Salem unfolds in such a way that I think the writers know exactly what they are doing. The plot may be insane, but it doesn't feel random. Sure there's buckets of blood, sex, demons, and all the other good stuff, but it none of it feels out of place in the world the writers have created. And yet, it still manages to shock and surprise.

In short, Salem is not for the faint of heart. But if you enjoy the macabre, the surreal, and adult themes (i.e. sexy times!), and aren't squeamish, I think Salem might be the show for you. You know us TV Sluts will be watching.

Our impression of the banner at the top of the blog. 

Salem airs on WGN America (check local listings for stations) on Sundays at 10:00pm EST.

Recapping AHS: Our Long National Nightmare is Over

Yup, it's been forever on this one, everybody. I wish I could say it was entirely because I was too busy to write this, but it's more than that. I'll explain more at the end, but in the meantime how do we start the final episode of the season? With a music video! Starring Stevie Nicks, naturally! Seriously – it happened.  Vaguely because we needed to see a montage about how each of the girls study for their finals the Seven Wonders, but really it just came off looking a lot like an early 90s VH1 hit.

The night before the trials begin, Myrtle has literally prepared a last supper modeled after DaVinci. Mrytle explains that any of the four girls competing could die in the process. “Childhood is over, my girls,” Cordelia tells them. “Kick ass tomorrow.”

The first wonder! Each of the girls must use telekinesis to move a burning candlestick across the table to their hands. Misty goes first and nails it. Queenie, Madison, and Zoe each follow. No elimination round here!

What "light as a feather, stiff as a board" would like like if high schools had sorority hazing rituals.

The second wonder! Mind control! Misty is up first again and makes Queenie smack herself repeatedly. Queenie retaliates by forcing Misty to pull her own hair. Madison gets more personal, however, and compels Kyle to make out with her in front of Zoe. Zoe, however, will cut a bitch and makes Kyle come to her for an extended make out. Madison then forces Kyle to strangle Zoe until Cordelia interrupts the entire test.

The third wonder! Descent into Hell. As Queenie learned last time, getting down isn’t hard, it’s the coming back before dawn that’s tricky. Each of the girls lies on the floor and descends into their own private hell. Queenie is back in the fried chicken shack. She rolls her eyes and makes it back first. Madison follows closely – gasping for breath. “It was horrible,” she cried. “I was stuck on a network musical. It was a live version of the Sound of Music. I wasn’t even the lead! I was Lisle.” Zoe surfaces later, coming out a hell where Kyle didn’t love and kept breaking up with her and oh Jesus really, Zoe? I don’t even want to talk about that. Misty, however, is not shaping up so well – she’s stuck in high school biology dissection class. Misty keeps reanimating her dead frogs until her jerk Bio teacher makes her cut apart a live one. Over and over. Poor Misty is not getting the point, screaming each time she’s forced to kill the frog. It’s getting light out and she’s still not coming back to the land of the living. Cordelia wants to help, but there’s nothing anyone can do but Misty herself. Unfortunately, the time runs out and Misty’s body decays into ashes in Cordelia arms. Which I seriously have problems with, because Misty rocked. Ugh.

Misty, we hardly knew ye...

The fourth wonder! Transmutation. Which basically just means playing tag, but with lots of vanishing. The girls actually start to break into levity, beginning to have fun until Zoe transmutates herself onto the spikes on top of the gates and impales herself where no one can reach her. Bummer. Time for the fifth wonder! Bringing the dead back to life. Queenie attempts to revive Zoe but isn’t able to for some reason. “Guess who isn’t the Supreme,” Madison crows. Cordelia tells Madison that the only way to prove that she can be Supreme is to bring Zoe back to life, proving that she can perform that Wonder. Madison, however, isn’t too keen on bringing in another competitor, especially since Queenie has effectively been eliminated. Madison finds a third way, killing a fly and then bringing it back. Game, set, match. “I’m starting to think Fiona had the right idea,” Madison crows. “Crown me, or kiss my ass.”

That night, Cordelia confesses to Myrtle that she feels she’s failed for allowing the Coven to die out if Madison is the best they can produce. Myrtle, however, sees it differently – Cordelia herself could be the next Supreme. Her own lack of building on her power has been because Fiona has held her back all these years. Game on! Freaky Eyes Cordelia goes into action the next day, lighting fires from a distance, making Queenie dance, levitating a grand piano, and generally making Madison start to sweat. It’s not until she comes back from Hell and still manages to transmute herelf across the house that things get serious though.

On to the sixth wonder! Each of the three witches must magically devine the location of particular items that belonged to former Supremes in the house. Cordelia locates hers within moments. Madison, however, has a much more difficult time. She’s unable to ascertain the location of her item, suggesting several possibilities and never getting a single one right. She throws a temper tantrum. “I’m going back to Hollywood, where things are normal,” she screams.

Like getting paid to make out on camera with the frankenstein'd version of your real-life boyfriend.

As she angrily packs upstairs, a grief-stricken Kyle approaches her and grabs her neck, demanding to know why Madison let Zoe die. Madison cries that she loves Kyle and that she did it for them. Kyle does what he does best and strangles Madison, leaving her body on her bed. But because not even death can stop things from being creepy, Ghost Spauling is on hand to “help” by removing the body for Kyle.

In the greenhouse, Cordelia makes her move toward the final of the Seven Wonders, reanimating Zoe’s dead body. Now fully a Supreme, Cordelia finds her eyes magically restored and she herself now in the full bloom of “glowing, radiant health.” And what to do with her new-found Supremacy? Press conference! After the passage of some time, Cordelia makes the decision to announce the presence of witches to the world and is being interviewed by Cable News. She issues an open call to all potential witches, urging them to come out of the shadows and come study at Miss Robichaux’s.

As the applications begin to pour in, Cordelia tells Myrtle that she wants to restart the Council with Zoe and Queenie as members. Mrytle agrees, but is more concerned about moving forward on a new era, needing to “clear the rot of the past.” By which she means that it is only right that Myrtle, as the one who murdered the past Council, needs to die. “At the start of your glorious reign, the last thing you need is a Watergate,” she tells Cordelia. Cordelia thinks of Myrtle as her true mother and isn’t keen on this whole process, but it’s what has to be done.

Back to the Stake! Myrtle is back where she started, doused in gasoline and about to be put to death for the second time. At least this time it’s done in love? Or something? And she gets to chose her own dress and her own last word. (“BALENCIAGA!”) And with that, Cordelia lights Myrtle aflame and heads back to the Academy.

Before long, there’s a line of goth girls trying to get into the real live Hogwarts. Cordelia officially asks Zoe and Queenie to be her right hands and her Council. The three of them go downstairs to open the doors, but first Cordelia says there’s one more thing she needs to deal with.

In the living room, who should be there but a withered and decaying Fiona. Turns out that vision of her death was planted into the Axeman’s head by Fiona as a rouse to suss out the next Supreme. Obviously, it didn’t go exactly as planned. Either way, Cordelia figures out what happened and can tell that Fiona is in her final moments. Fiona explains that all her life she saw Cordelia as a reminder of her eventual death, though she “loved you plenty” in her own way. It’s actually a testament to how good both these actors are and how good they are at playing apart from each other that this entire scene is ridiculously intense when it’s just two women sitting in a nice living room talking. It’s hard to figure out when exactly Fiona is going to strike and she feels like someone who you just can’t trust asking for a hug. The tension is so well played that when Fiona begs for and end to her own pain from Cordelia, you legitimately don’t know what’s going to happen. Until Fiona, true to her word, slips quietly away, dying in Cordelia’s arms.

Goodnight, horrible princess. And a flight of demons, etc. etc.

And then, Fiona awakes in a simple bed in a country house somewhere, nice but far from the glamorous surroundings we’ve seen her in. The sun is shining and she’s healthy, but she’s confused. The Axeman comes in from fishing and Fiona is repulsed. “Why are you always like this?” He asks her. Every morning, she wakes up and she doesn’t know where she is. It’s been like this for “eternity”, according to the Axeman. As she begins to realize where she is, a place that “reeks of fish and cat piss and knotty pine”, the Axeman tells her he’s in Heaven with her and she’s not going anywhere. Somewhere in the shadows, Papa Legba catches Fiona’s eye and laughs.

And in the academy, the doors are opened and a vast new generation of witches streams in. All wearing black, naturally. “We’ve survived,” Cordelia tells the witches-in-training. “It’s our time to thrive.”

And there we are – the end of American Horror Story: Coven. What with the bevy of talented actresses, the luscious sets, the gorgeous atmosphere provided by filming in New Orleans, it seems like this season had all the makings of an amazing season of television. So why did it feel so...flat? Somehow it became an example of something where the parts were greater than the sum. To borrow a quote from a friend of mine, the season was like a Bloody Mary - a final product that just wasn't good, even though each of the pieces are enjoyable on their own. This season also suffered from a critical sin - it just wasn't scary. Lance Riddick's too-little-too-late turn as Papa Legba brought some welcome chills, but by the time we made it to him the show was too far gone into the overly drawn out plot line of the next Supreme for us to really ever get scared. Given that the first two seasons did such a good job delivering genuine "pillow of fear" moments, it was a serious letdown to lose those here.

I'm not calling American Horror Story's death nell just yet - even strong shows can have weak seasons and given that this show is an anthology, we can't expect every story to be as good as the others - but I will say that the writers need to take a serious look at what they need to accomplish in next season's story and learn how to ensure that spectacle doesn't completely drown out what makes the show interesting to watch. 

The White Queen

Starz has been making quite a name for itself with original programming lately. The channel first caught my eye with Spartacus, which I love, though it didn't impress me with it's take on Camelot (but I am thinking about revisiting that one on DVD).

I heard some good things about the limited run series, The White Queen, and decided to give it a try on Netflix. It initially aired in the BBC and on Starz last year. And it was....alright? I guess? I'm a big Tudor history fan, but was honestly a bit disappointed.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the series, how about some background and a brief history lesson, mmkay? The White Queen is set during The War of the Roses, circa 1460s, when the great English houses York and Lancaster vied for the throne. When the series opens, Edward IV of House York is King...and he falls for Elizabeth Woodville, a widow of House Lancaster. Whoops! Not a good idea to marry a member of your enemy's house. Edward is kind of a bastard, but Elizabeth (and more so her mother) ain't no fools, and they see that banging the King is a pretty good way to get some serious power and property. So they're down with going to bat for the Yorks. A girl's gotta do and all that rot.

So, Elizabeth is the White Queen in this scenario--because the symbol of House York is a white rose. Got it? The problem with all this history is also a problem with the show. It's SUPER complicated. Everyone is related to everyone else (thanks, inbreeding!), but people constantly change sides in the war and everyone is a pasty white person so it's kind of hard to keep things straight in your head. I spent a good 4 episodes trying to figure out who certain characters were and where they stood in the game of thrones (see what I did there?).

Comparisons to the other medieval dramas on premium cable are inevitable. So let's just get right into it. Unlike Game of Thrones, The White Queen doesn't handle the complicated plots and shifting loyalties of its characters particularly well. Starz tried to make things a bit more mysterious by implying that Elizabeth, her Mom, and her daughters have some witchy abilities, but it never really committed to that idea one or the other. Basically, The White Queen doesn't go far enough with the politics, fantasy, or battle scenes to be as awesome as Game of Thrones, nor does it have the sexiness to pull off being a guilty pleasure like The Tudors. It's kind of stuck in the middle, mired in mediocrity.

Ok, that last point might have been a bit harsh, but at the end of the day, I can tell you The White Queen didn't do a great job holding my attention, and the narrative was split between too many potential queens to tell a cohesive story. I wasn't really rooting for any of the characters to succeed (even though I knew how things eventually turned out), though ostensibly Elizabeth should be the center of the story and the "heroine."

Still, I stuck with it until the end which means I must have found some of it intriguing. It's also a welcome change to see several women featured at the center of story and to drive the action through their choices and machinations. I think what was really lacking was a character who was smart enough to effectively manipulate the situations and people. There was a lot of reaction and not a lot of actual action.

In sum, if medieval dramas are your thing, stick with the shows that have done it better and give The White Queen a pass. Now we just need to see how DaVinci's Demons and Black Sails shake out...

Recapping AHS: To Hell and Back

So after 10 long episodes (and some of them felt longer than others) we finally get to learn about The Seven Wonders via an old-timey silent movie style classroom infomercial. AHS is nothing if not stylized. For those keeping count at home, the Seven Wonders are defined as seven act of significantly advanced magic. They include telekinesis, consilium (mind control), transmutation, divination, vitum vitalis (bringing the dead back to life through breath) descensum (“a perilous descent into the nether worlds of afterlife), and pyrokinesis. Attempting them can kill you, but successfully performing all of them will make you the next Supreme.

Cordelia and her freaky fucking eye sockets comes to Madison to see what Madison knows about Misty’s disappearing act. Madison is cagey as hell, refusing to let Cordelia touch her and possibly see what she’s done, but eventually relents only to find that Cordelia apparently still hasn’t regained her sight. Kinda makes that eye thing a problem.

GAH! Sunglasses, woman!

Meanwhile, Queenie finds a bloody mess in the conservatory and hears Marie’s murderous thoughts, but can’t find a body. Queenie decides to practice some early Seven Wonders training and invokes Papa Legba, but finds herself back in the fried chicken joint she left back in Detroit. There’s a line literally around the block and no one else working. Confused, she begins to help the eerily quiet customers before seeing Papa Legba in the corner who tells her that she’s been brought to her own private hell – no power, no respect, stuck in a place where no one thinks she can do anything. Papa is impressed that she made it to Hell, however, praising her ability. He tells her that if she can’t get out of Hell by morning, she’ll be stuck there forever. Pulling herself out, Queenie finds Papa in her room who tells her what’s happened to Marie – Delphine dismembered her and spread her body parts all around. Queenie still needs Papas help. Thinking quickly, Queenie points out that Marie is now going to be in breach of her contract, which removes her from the equation of what’s about to come. That means that Delphine needs to be removed too…

Weirdest employee review ever.

At Delphine’s old house-turned-tourist attraction, the original docent has been replaced by someone much more…Delphine-looking. Delphine has taken up the revisionist history banner, telling her version of her “the elegant and universally admired Delphine LaLaurie” to the tourists while posing as a tour guide in the house. When pressed about the murders and the attic torture chamber, she coldly tells the tourists that attic is off the tour and anyway it was all lies and the attic was only for “firm, but humane” correctional behavior. She praises herself as “a visionary ahead of her time” thus securing her a future contract with Fox News.

When the tourists leave, Queenie confronts Delphine who admits to murdering the old docent after she critized her tactics and, worse, her entertaining. “Nobody’s going to waste their time on some uppity Negro when there’s a fabulous party,” she mutters when the docent tells the group that oftentimes the murders happened while revelries were going on downstairs. Priorities. Queenie tries to give Delphine one last attempt at redeption, hilariously by suggesting that she volunteer with the Urban League. Delphine, however, has been watching the news about Paula Dean and Anthony Weiner(seriously) and thinks this redemption shit is bunk. Seeing that it’s not going to work, Queenie plunges a dagger into Delphine’s chest.

Part of me really hopes Kathy Bates just did this in real life to screw with people. 

In the school, Fiona is finally getting her portrait done under Myrtle’s artistic eye and realizing her mortality is closing in. She attempts a final honest connection with Cordelia, telling her that her power is still inside of her and she can’t lose it or regain it. She also gives her an old necklace that was her mother’s. When Cordelia puts on the necklace she suddenly sees the house, the girls all laying slaughtered and mutilated on the floors and impaled on the walls. In her vision, Cordelia sees a hale and healthy Fiona pull the necklace off Cordelia’s own dead body and leave the house.

Cordelia hightails it to the Axeman’s apartment. Cordelia tells the Axeman that she also saw Fiona with a plane ticket in her purse, fleeing the country with her new health and leaving him behind. The flight leaves in two days and, given that he doesn’t exactly have a passport, clearly she’s not planning on him joining her.

Knocking things off the To-Do list, Cordelia then divines from Misty’s shalls that she is entombed in the cemetery. Cordelia brings Queenie to the crypt and has her pull the coffin from the grave. Misty’s body is still inside, but she isn’t breathing. At Cordelia’s urging, Queenie breathes life back into Misty, bringing her back from the dead.

At the school, Zoe and Kyle have returned: apparently Florida didn’t agree with them when Kyle angrily killed a homeless man and Zoe had to bring him back to life. Par for the course for that relationship, really, but Zoe is now convinced that she may be the next Supreme. Just then, Misty returns and begins to literally bitch-slap Madison across the house. What follows is a seriously awesome girl fight through the house that was one of the only real exciting moments this entire season. The awesome gets even better when the Axeman interrupts the fight to kill the girls and the girls collectively throw him across the room LIKE A BOSS. He’s covered n blood, which Cordelia divines is Fiona’s.

In a flashback we see Fiona coming to the Axeman after Cordelia left him. Axeman tells Fiona that he wants to take her out of town to go catfishing – he has a vision of them living together forever in a cabin by the river. Fiona laughs it off and tries to change the subject, but the jig she is up. Axeman finds the plane ticket in her purse, just like Cordelia said, and confronts her angrily. Fiona points out that with the next Supreme dead she has 30 more years of vitality – it’s not like she’s going to waste it in a rustic cabin by a river with him. And that’s when the Axeman lived up to his name, buring his axe into Fiona’s back over and over again before throwing her body into the swamp

Cordelia sees the entire scene. She tells the girls that Fiona really is gone, her body was thrown into the swamps and fed to the alligators. “Even I can’t bring back someone once they’re gator shit,” Misty demurs. The girls(and Kyle) are pleased that he’s gotten rid of Fiona for them, but they’re not about to let the Axeman go free either.  They descend on him, cutting him literally to pieces together in what almost passes for sisterhood.

Girlpower!

Somewhere else, Delphine is thrown being thrown into the cages in her own house, although she is dressed in 1830s clothes. Delphine screams as a fully unharmed Marie Laveau stands waiting with a white hot poker while standing over Delphine’s daughter, also imprisoned in a cage. When the daughter complains of being thirsty, Marie cuts Delphine’s throat and gives her the blood to drink. Marie is confused, though – she doesn’t want to torture Marie’s daughter and doesn’t know why she’s doing it or even how she got there. “You will do as you are commanded,” Papa Legba suddenly appears. Turns out, Hell is a funny place and Marie and Delphine are both condemned to spend theirs together. “Eventually,” Papa says. “Everybody pays. Everybody suffers.”

In the school, Fiona’s portrait is hung with care as Myrtle and Cordelia tell the girls that Fiona shirked her responsibility to name a successor. Which means each of the girls will be tested – they’re all going to have to compete in the Seven Wonders. 

And may the best witch win.

Recapping AHS: The Unholy Powers of Benadryl

The Good old days of 1830. Madame Lalaurie is returning to New Orleans from Paris, “the jewel of civilization” and complaining about having to come back and the lack of intellect and inner light of the black people. Upstairs, a slave has injured himself and is bleeding profusely. The blood begins to give Delphine ideas and we all know where that is going to head. She strings up the slave and flays him in her attic. “I think I’m going to like it here,” she says gleefully.

In the modern day cemetery, the Coven mourns the “untimely” death of Nan, Fiona and Marie leading the Wailing Widow charge. Cordelia is taking it especially hard that she’s lost another student, although in fairness at least Madison came back. No one seems quite aware where Misty has gone to. “Probably shall-twirling down to the Everglades,” Madison helpfully offers. Arriving to pay their respects are Queenie, who has a re-headed Delphine on a leash. Queenie put her back together without scars, Kyle notes. “If I could have done you, you wouldn’t look like you went through a blender,” she tells him.

"I'm trying to muster up crying. Is this what crying looks like?"

In Atlanta, the Delphi corporation knows that the witches have been the cause of their problems. Hank’s father schemes to arrange a meeting with the Coven and pay them off to undo the spell, after which point they’ll come back and slaughter them to a witch. Yeah, no way ANYONE is going to see through that ruse. Either way, Fiona and Marie agree to a meeting, counting on the double-cross.

Delphine, meanwhile, is getting a little sick of this maid life, cutting the fingernails of the witches and cleaning the toilets and listening to Marie talk about how next time she’s going to sever her parts and scatter them. That is until the moment when one of the (black, natch) gardeners comes into the kitchen having cut his hands pruning the fig trees. Delphine, ever so graciously, offers to help the man – by taking him to Spaulding’s old room in the attic, trussing him up and seeing “what makes the n*ggers tick” by cutting off his toes one at a time.

Not a joke: She's seriously singing "This Little Piggy" before removing the digits.

Zoe meanwhile is casting a spell in the bathroom to reveal what happened to Nan and discovers that both Fiona and Marie were responsible. Madison is unhappy with all the attention that Kyle has been paying to Zoe and not her. She tries to intervene with a helpful blowjob, but Kyle rejects her, causing an epic witch tantrum until Mrytle stops them. Madison declares herself the next Supreme and announces the new order begun. Or something.

In the attic, the eviscerated remains of the gardener are causing something of a mess all over Delphine and the dolls in the room. “Not very robust, were you,” Delphine bemoans. Suddenly Spaulding appears, admiring her handiwork and admitting that he’s a ghost now. Delphine takes that news well, but then, she’s immortal so I guess it’s not that shocking. Spaulding tells her that he knows how to release Delphine by killing Marie through means of a magic concoction that he knows of that will render her invulnerable for a few moments.  But first, Delphine must retrieve an item for him.

Queenie is moving back into her old room which was taken over by Misty. Cordelia tries to approach her to welcome her back, but Queenie notes that since Cordelia’s husband shot her kind of puts a wedge between them. Queenie reveals that she, too, has been manifesting new powers just like all the rest of the young witches, even though she was shot with a silver bullet. (Is that a thing for witches?)

Feeling dejected and determined, Cordelia repairs to her conservatory where she mixes up a paste and spreads it around her eyes. Then she grabs a pair of gardening shears and raises them to her new eyes, the ones that gave her sight but took away her powers. Screaming, she plunges them into both eyes.  When Fiona learns what she has done, she finds Cordelia guarded by Mrytle who refuses to let her in. “Your daughter has become something you will never understand,” Myrtle says. “She’s a hero.” Myrtle challenges Fiona, calling her an enemy to the Coven and dares her to touch her daughter and see if Cordelia’s psychic sense has returned.

"I really need more excuses to use words like 'blanched' when describing the living conditions here."

In the attic, Marie has fetched the “magical” item that Spaulding needed – a rare doll that Spaulding is particularly enamored of from the 19^thcentury. For her part, Spaulding gives her the special potion that will confer morality onto Marie – something called Benadryl. “Never speak its name aloud!” Spauling dramatically tells Marie.

In the conservatory, Myrtle calls Zoe to her, giving her a rare broach (or something – I don’t know fashion, I can’t tell you what it is but my friend insists that it’s by some rare designer that really exists) and tells her to hawk it for money then take Kyle and leave the Coven for their own safety. Myrtle warns her if she stays, Madison will kill both Zoe and Kyle.

At a very professional looking business park somewhere, the Delphi men have arrived in their Escalades and wait for the witches in a large conference room. It’s Marie and Fiona up against ten men. When the Delphi men ask if they don’t want to check for security or weapons, Fiona laughs. “I took down your entire company with less effort than it takes for me to mix a Rob Roy,” she says. The “negotiation” begins – Delphi offers to do whatever the witches want if they restore Delphi, offering that the war between them is outdated and a thing of the past. Each of Delphi’s directors have signed a 100-year truce that they offer to the women. Fiona counters that the only agreement that will work is if they agree to disband permanently. And give them a private jet and their private house in New Orleans. When no one seems interested in this, the waiter in the room reveals himself to be the Axeman and gets to what he does best, slaughtering every member of Delphi. (Marie, hilariously, plays on her iPhone through the carnage, apparently more interested in Words With Friends.) Fiona saves Hank’s father for herself, axing him personally at the end as Marie Instagrams the scene.

"This is so getting me new followers."

That night, Marie and Fiona toast to their success back at the house. Fiona heads out for her Axeman booty call, leaving Marie alone with Delphine and the “magic potion”. While it’s probably not great to mix antihistamines with champagne and Marie is clearly a little fuzzy from imbibing, Delphine has seriously overplayed her hand here and gets a surprise when she plunges a knife into Marie’s chest. Marie screams, but is more annoyed at having to pull the knife out than anything else and chases after Delphine, managing to only slip and fall down the stairs when Spaulding hits her over the back of the head with a doll. Turns out Spaulding was only interested in getting Marie out of the house and recommends that Delphine take advantage of the situation by burying the unconscious Marie in such a way as to ensure that she can’t get out of the ground.

But Spaulding’s not done being creepy! Guess who found Marie’s baby in the house and is thrilled to have a real LIVING doll to play with in the attic? <shudder>

Elsewhere in the house where no one can hear a woman falling down the stairs, Zoe and Kyle are packing to leave. Kyle is afraid to leave because he’s afraid that he’ll accidently kill Zoe like he did the dog. (Still not okay with that, btw.) Zoe tells him that she loves him and she’s not scared of him, just like any good woman about to enter into an abusive relationship. The two flee the house, running for the bus stop where they board a bus to Orlando (Don’t do it, guys! Seriously, the Mouse is scarier than certain death at the hands of a vengeful witch) and hopefully freedom.

Not the actual ending of this episode, but clearly what they're aiming for.

Recapping AHS: Guest Star!

Okay you guys – I admit, part of the reason I was so behind on recaps was because this season has been kind of, well, boring. Despite everything going for it, it’s just been hard to muster the interest, you know? So imagine my relief when we finally got an episode where things actually happened. It’s not the best AHS episode ever, but it is the best one this season so far.

Picking up where we left off, Fiona is offering Marie a cup of tea (and whiskey) and sympathy, offering her shelter from the witch hunters. It’s not clear if Marie has turned to Fiona because she really has nowhere else to go or just because she truly does recognize Fiona as an equal. (I’m hoping for the former – way more fun.) Either way, that night as she sleeps Marie gets a visit from the creepy as all hell Papa Legba who is the source of her immortality. (Thank you Voodoo Gods for finally bringing a scary character into a show that’s supposed to be about horror.) He tells her tonight is the night for her to pay her due, slaughter of everyone she currently knows and cares about be damned. To pay the price, Marie sneaks into the newborn ward in a hospital and selects an infant. Silly Marie – don’t you know babies are tagged so you can’t steal them from the hospital? Silly police who are here to stop her – Marie gets all magic-y and forces the two cops to kill themselves as she walks off into the night with the child.

Strange thing? Still hot.

The next morning, Cordelia angsts over the realization that Hank is the one who went all Columbine on Marie and her hair salon. Marie confesses that she hired Hank to kill the witches, so she’s got a bit of culpability here as well. “You were my sworn enemies!” she reminds them. Either way, Fiona reminds them, witch hunters don’t act alone.

Upstairs, Misty is singing to herself and practicing her Stevie Nicks-style shall turns. Fiona butters her up, though Misty is skeptical about Fiona’s newfound desire to share power with her as the potential new Supreme. To show exactly how magnanimous she can be, Fiona introduces Misty to her “old Friend, the White Witch.” Who is, yes, Stevie Nicks. For realz. Misty promptly faints upon meeting her. “You owe me five bucks,” Fiona tells Stevie. “I told you she was going to do that.”

Later, recovered from her vapors, Misty and the rest of the witches listen to Stevie perform Rhiannon on the grand piano and geek out along with Ryan Murphy behind the camera for getting Stevie on the show. Madison kvetches that she’s a big Eminem fan, so when does he play? “Marshall?” Fiona asks. “You’re not his type.” As she finishes, Stevie gives Misty her shawl and wishes her luck on the Seven Wonders test that she’ll soon have to pass.

OTP!

Upstairs, the younger girls emote over why it is that Misty is suddenly supposed to be the next Supreme (ATTN: Writers – finish these conversations quicker. We don’t need to have this same scene in every episode.) and try to out-witch each other. Meanwhile, the older witches pool what they’ve been able to learn about Delphi Trust, the front company for the witch hunters. Turns out the family dates back to Old Salem and has been hunting witches since the colonial times. Fiona suggests a sideways attack by cursing their money supply and bringing them down financially, rather than coming at them physically. Cordelia wants to help with the spells, but Fiona says she is tainted and can’t help anyone due to her association with Hank. Marie and Fiona cast a spell involving a maze, herbs, mice and a lot of traps as, elsewhere, the SEC and the FBI begins to close in suddenly on Delphi.

The spell, however, takes a lot out of Fiona as she collapses. While Marie tries to help her restore her strength, Fiona asks Marie for her secret for staying young and healthy. Marie reveals that she sold her soul to Papa Legba back in the 1830s. “I thought I was the shit back then,” Marie says. Having just given birth to her first child, she didn’t accept the idea of death until one night when Papa Legba came to her and offered her eternal life in exchange for a price. Thinking she was just going to have to get occasionally sexy with him, she agreed without understanding what he wanted was a pure soul, which meant giving up her newborn child and then one child each year thereafter. File under “Devil, deals with.”

On the streets, Madison and Misty have joined the tail end of a New Orleans jazz funeral procession. Because that’s what you do when you’re young, powerful, and really enjoy eating grilled chicken on a stick, and when your show runners realize that you’ve done almost an entire season and not yet had this iconic piece of the city in a scene. Madison points out that Misty is about to be showered with gifts as the new Supreme and that everyone, even Stevie, was likely just playing her as the new power on the scene. As the funeral makes its way into the cemetery, Misty enchants two gravediggers at Madison’s request.  Madison wants to show Misty that she is just as powerful as Misty is and to do that, she resurrects the man about to be buried. Confused, the man stumbles out of his coffin. Madison convinces Misty to drop the shall that Stevie gave her into the coffin as a way of proving that she isn’t enslaved to anyone else as the new Supreme. Silly Misty does exactly this, turning her back to Madison just long enough for Madison to conk her on the head, drop her into the coffin, steal back the shall, and send the gravediggers back to their work, entombing Misty into a grave. “Stupid bitch,” Madison smirks as she dances away to the tune of the jazz band.

Now, now… more just like naive. 

Nan and Zoe have gone to the hospital to visit Luke only to be told that Luke has died. Nan takes the news hard and insists on seeing Luke’s mother, suspecting her part in his death. The two come to Luke’s house, planning to find Luke’s body and bring him to Misty to resurrect him. Mother tells them that she’s had Luke’s body cremated, producing the urn. (Luke only died, like, yesterday. That’s some quick service crematory service I must say.) Nan is…displeased and forces Mother to her knees. Zoe tries to intervene, but Nan sends her flying into the next room. Nan grabs a bottle of bleach and puts it into Mothers hands. “You have to be cleansed,” she tells Mother and magically forces her to start chugging the bleach.

In the conservatory, Mrytle is playing a theremin despite Cordelia’s attempts to angst herself into an early grave. “Don’t be a hater, dear,” Mrytle tells her when Cordelia asks her to stop making that god-awful creepy noise. Recognizing how defeated Cordelia feels, Myrtle suggests that maybe she should leave the coven and seek out a new life. “Your salad dressing is absolutely magical, maybe you could bottle it?” she suggests.

Fiona, mindful of Marie’s advice that Papa Legba comes to those who are desperate enough for him, prays for his attention in her room. Her devotion (and a few lines of coke) are apparently enough for him to show up out of the blue, mostly invited, like a creepy Adele. Fiona gets down to brass tacks – she doesn’t want to die and is willing to do what it takes to stay alive eternally healthy. Papa Legba says he’ll need her soul and one night a year she needs to perform a service for him, for example “could you cripple your child?” he asks. “Today?” Fiona responds. “Absolutely.” (Comedy!) But seriously, Fiona will do anything. It deal is struck and Papa moves in to seal it with a kiss, but pulls back at the last minute. The deal is off, he tells her. “You have no soul.” Whaaaaaaaa? Well, the Axeman, helpful spirit that he is, appears and points out that all they need to do is find the next Supreme and take her down. “Let’s just kill them all,” Fiona vamps.

Thank you, creepy voodoo man, for finally giving me something in this show to not want to think about when I'm falling asleep. Aside from that enema thing, that is.  

The next day, Nan can hear the thoughts of the baby that Marie stole. Trying to rescue it, she is stopped by Marie and Fiona. Despite needing the sacrifice, Marie has genuinely come to see the baby as being something like her own. Seeing a two-birds-one-stone problem here between Papa needing a pure soul for Marie and Nan who is suddenly a liability,  it’s to the tub where they unceremonially hold Nan’s head under as she struggles to survive. “Oh come on, you’re not the first witch to be drowned,” Fiona tells her because misery loves company?  Either way, Papa isn’t thrilled about Nan’s innocence. “She’s innocent. Mostly,” Fiona insists. “She killed the neighbor, but the bitch had it coming.” The argument is apparently persuasive as Nan’s spirit emerges and accepts Papa’s offer to take her to the other side. “Anywhere is better than here,” Nan says and goes with him.

Later, because we can’t just use Stevie Nicks once, Fiona listens to Stevie play the piano in the parlor, finally letting some of the horror that she’s just been complacent in seep in. And yes, the final scene is total emotion bait, but damn if it’s not beautifully shot and damn is Jessica Lange doesn’t sell all the emotional exhaustion that Fiona, a woman who would like to do the right thing but ultimately is always drawn in by her own dark impulses, is dealing with.

Recapping AHS: Heads Will Roll

I know, I know! I'm wicked behind on recaps! I'm catching up, I promise! But first, jumping back a few weeks…

In the mean streets of The Big Easy, one woman sets out on a dangerous mission. That would be Queenie, purposefully taking a walk through the rough part of town to murder would be rapists for their body parts for Marie. Zoe and Madison find her and try to convince her to rejoin the Coven. Queenie’s less interested, figuring her luck is with Marie and Voodoo, not Fiona and Witchcraft. “War is coming,” she tells the girls. “And you’re going to lose.”

War is, admittedly, a little under-armed.

Fiona, meanwhile, is getting no better due to the cancer that’s rapidly advancing on her. “I’m starting to look less Samantha and more Endora everyday,” she bemoans. Delia has little sympathy, however, asking her to do them all a favor a kick off before Thanksgiving in order to save them all from her cuisine. What the cancer hasn’t stopped, however, is her sexual relationship with the Axeman, who is still somehow in a corporal body. Yeah, that’s not been explained. Anyway, he’s into her, but she doesn’t want to decay in front of anyone. Thankfully, she’s got a plan – remove whichever of the girls is the new Supreme, and her health comes back.

Which brings us to the next scene – Luke’s mother isn’t pleased that he was spending all that time during the Zombpocalypse at Halloween over at the house with all it’s “devil’s magic” and determines that Luke is unclean. What’s a mother to do with an unclean boy? Cleans him. Via a homemade chlorox solution that she forces Luke to take as an enema, stripping him naked and putting him in a tub. “You don’t have to do this,” he almost whimpers. “Oh, but I do.” She replies. Clearly she learned parenthood from the Norma Bates Correspondence School. (And though this is disturbing, can I say it is nice to see a welcome return to the inappropriate sexual crazy? We’ve been lacking that a lot this season.)

A boy's best friend is his mother and her best friend is a homemade detergent enema pouch.

Cordelia and the girls are plotting a way to kill Fiona when a knock at the door reveals a frantic Misty, who says she’s been driven from the swamp after a man with a gun found her in her shack the previous night. Only a warning from the resurrected Myrtle Snow got her out in time.  Misty reunites the Coven with Myrtle, who has her hair back thanks to “buying in bulk from North Korea for years.” Myrtle recognizes the troubles the Coven has been going through and points out that the one witch with them with real power, the next Supreme perhaps, is Misty.

Zoe is trying to get Kyle to learn through kids language games, but Kyle just wants to get kissy with her. So, your typical frat boy, really. The coven gathers for The Sacred Taking, a ceremony only used three times in history whereby the old Supreme sacrifices her life so that the Coven can continue. Though, in this case, we’re getting a little loose with the word “sacrifice” since Fiona won’t be aware of what’s going on. Once done, Misty will be recognized as the next Supreme. The girls are all a little jealous until Cordelia points out that none of the Supremes have had happy lives, all of them were crushed under the weight of the office, except Fiona who just ran away. Fiona’s going to need a “push” in order to give her own life.

Upstairs, Cordelia vomits before hearing music from her bedroom and seeing Madison dancing provocatively. “Thought you’d seen the last of me?” she coos. Fiona tries to force Madison from the room magically, but can’t muster the strength. Madison gives Fiona a choice – be burned tomorrow or swallow all her pills. She leaves and is replaced, Dickens-like, by Myrtle who catches Fiona trying to pack a suitcase. Fiona wants to run, saying she’s finally found someone she truly loves and begging for the last few months of life with him. Myrtle shows Fiona a vision of Fiona decaying in a hospital bed while the Axeman leaves her.

What we don't know is why all of Fiona's psychotic fever dreams look like Meatloaf videos.

Upstairs, the ruse is working. Fiona puts her face on in order to leave a good-looking corpse and tells Myrtle about the regrets and non-regrets in her life. “I’ve always been rigorous about not staying too long at the party,” she sighs. “I had the good form to know when it’s over.” Fiona dresses in a fine fur coat and high heels and swallows a handful of pills. She asks only that they hang her portrait where she chose and not in the basement with the disgraced Russian witch. (sidebar, I hope to God we hear more about that.) As she lays dying, Spaulding appears to her and begs her to wake up and tries to get her to swallow ipecac. As a ghost, Spaulding can finally speak again and tells Fiona what the Coven is up to and that Madison isn’t the next Supreme. And oh, it’s Go Time on the Revenging Witch Comedy Hour.

Speaking of revenge, Queenie brings Delphine a cheeseburger in her cage. “Whatever did I do to deserve this betrayal?” Delphine moans, rather richly. Marie, clearly, is enjoying the reversal and, to be fair, turnabout is kind of fair play. Delphine is pretty unrepentant with Marie, though, demanding that Marie bring her something to drink like a maid. Delphine points out that there’s nothing that Marie can do to her – she can’t die. Better to put her back in the ground and “when they dig me up in another 100 years, the natural order will be preserved.” By which she means there won’t be a “darkie” in the White House. Going back into the ground is not the only option though, according to Marie. “You suffer from a lack of imagination,” she tells Delphine. And then cuts her hand off. 

Voodoo justice. 

Downstairs at the house, Nan is a little steamed that everyone assumes that there’s no way she could be the next Supreme. She sneaks to Luke’s house, finding him tied up and gagged in a closet. She frees him and tries to get him out of the house when Mother spies the two of them and calls the police. And that’s when shit gets real, you guys – bullets suddenly start flying in from outside, killing Mother and hitting Luke when he protects Nan from the gunfire.

Next door and oblivious to the urban warfare, the Coven waits for Fiona to die. Misty doesn’t feel any differently, though which is all explained when Fiona enters the room and demands to know about the “swamp witch” who is supposed to replace her. Turns out Misty is gone, having fled to the house next door. Luke is taken to the hospital with a serious head wound, but Fiona finds her in the living room with Luke’s mother’s body. As Misty brings Mother back to life, Cordelia finds a spent bullet on the ground and sees that the shooter wasn’t random – it was someone after the Coven.

Zoe hides Kyle, saying that none of them are safe. Kyle manages to say that he loves her and doesn’t want to leave while Madison, who is “sharing” Kyle with Zoe overhears from the hallway.

In the morning, Cordelia fears that Fiona is going to punish her for trying to orchestrate her death but Fiona is frankly impressed that Cordelia would show such grit and determination. “You really are my daughter,” she says. Fiona notices the bullet, a silver one that’s been blessed and concludes that witch hunters are behind this. At that, the door bell rings, but only a box is left on the front porch. Sounds familiar, right? Fiona brings it inside and opens it to reveal Delphine’s severed head, the eyes of which suddenly flip open.

Somewhere, James Caan is enjoying this.