Saturday, October 31, 2015

Recap/Review: American Horror Story: Hotel - Devil's Night

Today is Halloween and three days ago, this show maintained it's tradition by pushing out something for the time as John had an interesting dinner with some of America's famous of killers.

Written by Jennifer Salt
Directed by Loni Peristere


Absinthe Makes The Mind Go Crazier: Getting ditched by his family for Halloween, John Lowe should've been at a loose end but it seems that Mr March had other ideas for the dashing detective and invited him to a lovely dinner party. If by lovely, you don't mind spending time with Aileen Wuornos (Lily Rabe), John Wayne Gacy Jr (John Carroll Lynch), Jeffrey Dahmer (Seth Gabel), Richard Ramirez (Anthony Ruivivar) and the Zodiac Killer as they taunt the crap out of you and murder two men also in front of you. With the way March kept going on about John's potential, I have a horrible feeling that the people Lowe is disgusted by will end up becoming people he'll have something in common with. Could John actually be the Ten Commandments killer? This episode kind of implied it, didn't it?


America's Most Wanted: As if the Hotel Cortez wasn't messed up in general, it seems that Devil's Night is an annual tradition in which all the killers in question (and possibly John now) are personally invited by Mr March to enjoy themselves as we learn that he sparked their murderous tendencies when they were alive. The casting for all the killer was absolutely spot but both Lily Rabe and especially Seth Gabel had a remarking resemblance to both Wuornos and Dahmer, that it made things just that extra creepy. Seeing Rabe once again on this show and following the cancellation of The Whispers - can we please have her as a regular next season?


Protector, Not So Much: Four episodes in and Sally proves yet again, that she's a walking liability. If she's not shooting you up with China White or sewing you into mattresses, she's literally walking you to your death. This week and as part of a yearly deal to be left alone, she drugs up a smug businessman and hands him over to March and company and while the poor bastard is getting stabbed to death, Sally's too busy further worming her way into John's affections. As repellent as Sally is as a character, I am finding Paulson to be her consistently brilliant self in this role though.


Losing A Child: This season has had a theme of lost children - the Lowes with Holden and even Iris with Donovan to a degree and keeping with the theme, we learned in flashbacks to 1925 that Miss Evers (real name Hazel) had her own son snatched and killed by Gordon Northcott and it's a story that she partially revealed to John at the start of this episode. I guess it kind of explains her current actions and it certainly gave Mare Winningham some wonderful material to play off on. Now that we have Miss Evers backstory, can we now have Liz Taylor?


Two Mothers: And this week when Holden wasn't snacking on poor Jasper, Alex was confronting the woman responsible for her son being a vampire. I have to admit, I really liked the scenes with Alex and the Countess (minus that one scene where Tristan smacked the former) as the pair of them bonded and clashed over motherhood. The result of Alex choosing to become a vampire to be with Holden might have been predictable as anything but I am interested to see where this will go in the next few episodes though. Missing from this episode however was Will, Donovan, Iris and Ramona who were probably having just as crazy a Halloween as everyone else but only offscreen of course.

Next week, Iris has to hide her vampirism from a suspicious Countess and a certain Warbler checks in.

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