American Horror Story S04E02: "Massacres and Matinees"

Whenever you or I need to build a world, we stick with the basics: papier-mâché and dark magic. But television shows operate differently. Building a world means slowly introducing new characters and expanding the universe enough to give it scope and stakes, but not so quickly as to overwhelm and consequently bore the audience. You know? When there's too much to pay attention to, sometimes none of it seems interesting. Previous seasons of American Horror Story could fairly be criticized for introducing too many characters, concepts, and storylines too soon, but Freak Show has felt comparatively relaxed so far. A half-dozen of the major actors we've come to expect from the series have yet to make their Freak Show debuts, and when characters have been incorporated into the storyline it's been noticeably more organic and story-driven than before. Whereas last week's premiere episode was tasked primarily with introducing us to the various goings-on within the Jupiter, Florida carny scene, "Massacres and Matinees" gave us a chance to spend some real time with these people and to truly get a sense of the geography of the carnival as well as the surrounding town. Similarly, some key relationships became both elucidated or complicated while we were also gifted with a couple of solid nightmare sequences, mostly clown-related. But yeah, in general, great episode! Let's talk about it!

First off, you could tell by the swirling, insane camera work that this episode marked the return of TV's preeminent directorial madman, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. The opening shot was like a slow-mo roller-coaster ride across the freak show campus, and it ended on a panic-stricken radio broadcast:







From here we flashed around town as word began to spread that multiple unsolved murders had been committed. And, of course, all fingers and crab-hands pointed to a certain gaggle of outcasts.











For some reason these detectives found it suspicious that their detective friend had disappeared after paying a visit to this carnival, but the performers' story was airtight: They didn't know nuthin'.

Meanwhile this local toy store employee guy was not having a great day:

!!!

THIS is my favorite kind of horror scare. The something's-in-the-background moment where not even the camerawork or music points it out. You just sort of see it on your own and it's so so so scary. Anyway, then this happened:

His boss had been decapitated! Which would ordinarily be a good news, bad news situation, because at least the store would get to close early that day. But this ended up being a mostly bad news situation.

Whoops, sorry guy. Maybe pay better attention to clowns that look like walking corpses standing in plain sight? (Because let's be real, Twisty is not even coming close to passing for a non-nightmare creature, regardless of what this town full of crazies thinks clowns actually look like.)

Meanwhile the gang was all back at the tents having a great time.

Except at least one of them was feeling too guilty to be enjoying himself.

As it turned out, Jimmy Darling had been quick to razor-blade that one cop, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it or was proud of it or was cool with it in any way.

So they decided to dig up the guy's remains (cleverly concealed on the other side of a mud puddle from their tents) and burn the body. Except for the police badge, which Jimmy would be keeping as a souvenir. OR WOULD HE? He would not. He would be using that for something later, don't worry about it.

Meanwhile we got this very long and juicy scene between Dandy and his mom and their maid, Patti LaBelle.

There were a lot of amazing elements to this scene, including the fact that Dandy drank bourbon from a crystal baby bottle and also everything about Frances Conroy's performance. But also we finally started to learn the true extent of his mental problems when he announced he wanted to become a star.

Of course, merely wanting to be an actor wasn't the biggest indicator that Dandy was criminally insane. That would be the pile of cat parts he'd left behind the shed! For someone who really hated to be bored, he sure was practicing the most boring serial killer clichés possible.

Elsewhere, Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities welcomed two new members! This strong man dude and his wife, Angela Bassett! Apparently they were kind of on the run after she made love to a homosexual and her husband found out and overreacted:

Also if you were wondering what made this lady a "freak," this might answer your question:

Also she was a hermaphrodite downtown if you catch my drift. My drift means penis AND vagina. Anyway, they needed a job, so Elsa hired them if only so that the strong man could protect the troupe from rabble. He was basically going to be Steve from The Jerry Springer Show.

I mean, I'm not sure I felt like this was a good idea on the part of Dandy's mom:

And furthermore I'm not sure I felt like this was a good idea on the part of Patti LaBelle:

Is that a whole salmon wrapped in pickles with an olive eyeball? You're fired, Patti LaBelle.

But anyway, Dandy's mom had brought the clown home as a gift to her troubled son, which was perfectly timed considering Dandy had just tried to get a job at Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities only to be brutally reminded that he was not a physical freak in any way except for maybe his haircut.

And needless to say it was love at first nightmare for Dandy and Twisty. Who can blame those two? Don't judge! Dandy and Twisty's love is pure.

As it turned out, the bearded lady from Baltimore had some old beef with the strong man:

Apparently their feud had been one of those arguments that started with a small thing and blew up into a huge thing. In this case the small thing was the guy tried to murder Jimmy when he was a baby.

Yikes! Carnies were pretty mean to each other back in the day. Also the bearded lady had a better beard when she was younger. Maybe she should look into beard Propecia?

Then there was this scene that was all about trying to figure out what talent Bette and Dot could perform for the freak shows (because standing awkwardly as conjoined twins wasn't sensational enough). Bette felt that she had the most star power, so she demonstrated it by singing very terribly!

Everybody in the tent nearly collapsed from the horrible noise. At first Angela Bassett suggested that the twins just focus on maybe firing ping-pong balls out of their downstairs timeshare, but then, you guessed it, the reluctant Dot opened her mouth and she had a very beautiful singing voice!

But right away Dot's beautiful singing voice spelled trouble for Elsa. Would Elsa be upstaged?! Yes probably, she only has the one head for starters. And David Bowie songs only get you so far when you perform them several decades before they are written.

So back to Dandy and Twisty's playdate. At first it went well when Dandy treated the clown to a marionette version of The King & I, but then things took a turn when Dandy decided to go through Twisty's sh*t.

The main thing to know about hanging out with ghoulish nightmare clowns is that you should never, ever go through their sh*t. They really hate that.

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