posted by @HeyItsKamo

Welcome to Briarcliff

So last night was the season premiere of the wildly popular FX creep-fest, American Horror Story, and it didn’t disappoint. After the truly bizarre end to season one (and not oh, wow that’s creepy/weird bizarre, but what the fuck, this is bad tv bizarre), I wasn’t really sure what to expect with season two.

We were left with a lot of unanswered questions after last years finale, and many more were answered too quickly which kind of ruined the show- the big reveal that Violet was dead the whole time was a great twist, but it came to us in the third to last episode…

I don’t know about you, but I had some serious beef with how everything played out in season one. It really seemed like the first five episodes were great, and then the second and third last episodes were even better, but the last episode to me was a serious let down and a lot of the other middle ‘sodes were just kind of filler; they easily could have gotten the story across in eight instead of twelve.

So enough of my bitching, let’s get right in to it. Season two, known as American Horror Story: Asylum, is a completely different story line from season one (thank God, I have no idea how they would have continued along with the season one story). Instead of a creepy old house with a history of murder and supernatural goings on, season two takes place in an insane asylum with a history of… murder and supernatural goings on.

The story begins like many creepy stories do: a young couple break in to an old, dilapidated (but strangely beautiful) insane asylum to explore its creepy corridors and have sex on old, strap covered beds. Adam Levine (weird choice) and some random girl goof around the abandoned complex, a place where once you got in… you never get out (foreshadowing for AV? I hope so!). They eventually come across a graffiti covered wall dedicated to the wards most infamous resident: Bloody Face!

So Levine and the girl start banging in this creepy room (I need to sidebar here: he literally spits on his hand and rubs it on his dick. How did FX get away with showing this?), when the girl makes him stop because she hears a sound. So of course they go and investigate and OH FUCK- Adam Levine reaches his arm through a door for some reason (to unlock it maybe?) and he gets attacked by something on the other side! The girl starts freaking out, but it’s ok because he was just kidding. Ha-ha that Adam Levine, always joking arou- OH FUCK HIS ARM JUST GOT RIPPED THE FUCK OFF!

This rules. This already has me for at least another episode, because seeing Adam Levine get his arm ripped off is good tv.

So roll the beginning credits and it’s just as creepy as the last seasons intro. Maybe more creepy because of the whole insane asylum vibe we’ve got going on, but either way it will be a joy to watch- the beginning introduction was one of my favorite parts of the first season of AHS.

So now we’re headed back to the 1960s. We see a guy at a gas station servicing a car and… wait a minute. I know that prick. Is that Tate? Oh dip, it IS Tate! That’s so cool that they brought him back from last season! It’s nice to see a familiar face, I bet no one else from last season will be on the show ;)

So Tate’s a gas station attendant/mechanic or something, and he’s closing up shop for the night. Suddenly, all the lights go out in his garage and he runs inside to grab something. Just then, the lights spring back on and we all get a scare as it’s revealed that it’s Tate’s (I don’t know or care what his new name is- it’s Tate, y’all) buddies just scaring him. Turns out Tate was going to grab a gun, which his one friend has pointed right at him (as a joke, get it! Like, he’s going to fucking shoot his friend. As a joke. They were such jokers in the 60s). So Tate tells his friends off and heads home.

The next scene shows us that T-bone has a pretty nice house and a new wife to match. She’s a black lady, so I’m guessing that it’s probably difficult for them to be in an interracial marriage in the 60s, which they address in their conversation when he arrives home. Suddenly: an awkward sex scene unfolds, with the end being topped off with a cigarette and a promise of dinner from the old lady.

While the wifey is in the kitchen, bright lights flood the house and Tate grabs a gun. He’s certain that it’s one of the locals there to harass him and his wife, but when he bolts outside, he sees that the lights are coming from… the trees. Way high up in the tress in fact.

Holy shit, are we about to get a 1960s style alien abduction story? Seems like it!

So Tate heads back in to the house after hearing his wife scream, and the place is absolutely trashed. She’s gone and out of no where there’s this loud noise that literally cripples our hero. He falls to the floor until the sounds subside, but then crazy shit starts to happen. Stuff seems to fling to the ceiling, almost magnetically, including Tate, and CUT TO TOTAL ALIEN ABDUCTION SCENE. This strange being is hovering over a naked T-dog, long curling fingers reaching out towards him. Butts get fingered, people- I don’t think I need to go in to any more detail than that.

Fast forward to a reporter lady heading to a beautiful campus for an interview (something about a bakery). It turns out the campus is an insane asylum, and while the outside looks nice enough, it’s a mad house (no pun intended) inside. A young nun leads the reporter up to what appears to be the head nuns office for the interview. When the step inside, we see that the head nun is actually Constance from season one! Neat.

So Constance and Tate are both back, that’s cool.

When the young nun and reporter walked into Constance/the head nuns office, she was sort of shaving this patient/inmate lady’s head. She’s clearly startled by the intrusion and sends the patient on her way, yelling at the young nun to knock next time. So the reporter and the head nun sit down to talk, but right away it’s made clear that the reporter doesn’t give a fuck about any bakery run by mental patients (crazy bread)- she’s there to get the story about the newest inmate in the nut house, a brutal murderer of women named Bloody Face (apparently he skins his victims and wears their faces or some shit? Yikes).

The head nun kicks the reporter out, but not before we get to see the arrival of Bloody Face, and in a predictable twist, it turns out to be Tate! Why’d ya do it, Tate! First the school shooting, now you’re cutting dames faces off in the 1960s? Get your act together, bud! Tate is brought in to the asylum, drugged, and then we head to commercial.

So T-bone is brought in to the recreational room, where he’s introduced to the rest of the animals he’s going to be living with for the immediate time being. This strange music is playing and some of the other inmates are dancing, including the shaved head girl from earlier, who basically tells T-dog that he can get it. T ventures over to the source of the music, and a nice French(?) girl tells him that he can’t touch it (the record player) or else he’ll get in trouble. Cut to some macho-prick (he says something along the lines of “did her dark meat slide off the bones easier than the rest of them?” implying that Tate killed his wife, and also making me think that the Bloody Face victims are mutilated – cow mutilation? Aliens!) inmate attacking Tate. During their scuffle they mess each other up pretty good, and in the process cause the record to stop playing. FUCK, IT’S THE ONE RULE, TATE! In walks the head nun with two goons and they muff our hero up.

So we’re back from commercial and Tate’s in solitary. The girl he met in the rec room gives him some food (she’s on cafeteria duty apparently) and a smoke. Tate asks her why she’s being so nice to him, given his crimes against women and all. She hits him with, “what you put out in the world comes back to you” before revealing that she hacked up her family “supposedly”. Tate again says he wasn’t responsible for the crimes he’s been accused of. We find out her name is Grace.

Back in the rec room, the head nun is getting cried to by the young nun from earlier, something about someone dying or something. The head nun goes and talks to a doctor, who’s kind of a prick. In their conversation, we learn that they have two very different points of view. He is strictly science over nature, he loves what science is capable of doing for medical research (oh boy, this might lead to some shit in future episodes – I’m guessing human experimentation). The two clearly have some bad blood, and the doc warns the head nun to “stay out of my business.” He claims that patients suffer diseases of the mind and body, and that’s why some of them have passed on recently- he claims that they’re cremated but I’m thinking nope. The head nun says since the docs been there, the patients that die are the ones that don’t have family, which is suspicious… The head nun, who we find out is actually named Sister Jude, says she’ll always win against the patriarchal male. Oh Lord.

Cut to the reporter lady hanging with another lady at her place, talking about how she’s suspicious of the head nun. Oh, they’re living together. OH! They’re dating. So reporter lady’s girlfriend is Clea Duvall WHO ALWAYS PLAYS A LESBIAN, WHAT THE FUCK, REALLY? Whatever, I like her. Anyways, I find it interesting that this story is touching on interracial and gay relationships in the 1960s, but I don’t think it’s going to go much in that direction. Also, I feel like this lesbian couple idea is just a draw to get male viewers to watch two(not very) attractive women kiss. Worried she’ll lose her teaching job, Duvall closes the blinds and I guess we’re lead to believe they kiss or whatever.

Gosh, I wish there was a scene of an old lady wearing lingerie…

Cut to a scene of Sister Jude wearing a hot red nightgown/lingerie number and praying.  Next we head to the kitchen where the sister is eating dinner with a priest. After some small conversation, he goes to pour her some wine, but she declines, saying “I’ve renounced spirits.” This part peaked my interest because she was a hardcore drunk last season. Also, I guess you can take spirits as booze, but maybe as the holy spirits/the holy ghost? Maybe this is alluding that she’s not really interested in nunning it up anymore (I smell a lot of ulterior motives already). Anyways, the conversation leads to the sister wanting to know where doctor Aarden came from; she’s suspicious and doesn’t want this guy here. “What else do we want except to save souls,” answers the father, trying to butter her up. He says he needs her, she’s his right hand and then she has a sexy fantasy about banging the father. Gross.

The young nun is out in the woods with some buckets full of something, meat maybe? Flash back to her talking to Arden, who says, “They’re getting hungrier.” Who’s getting hungrier? What are they feeding them? Does this have something to do with all the recent deaths of patients under Arden’s care at the asylum? The reporter lady comes out of fucking nowhere and they book it out of the woods because shit’s just getting crazy- weird noises, and the camera kind of chases them. Suddenly, we’re back in Tate’s cell and the good old doc is telling him, “you don’t belong here, not with so much to learn,” and he gives him a shot in the neck and in the strange flashing cut scene we again see the creepy curled alien hand.

Back to the people from the beginning of the episode. Homeboys arm is gone and the sex lady is dragging him through the halls, looking for some way to escape. She books it to the front door because Levine left his phone outside in the car (Really? Nobody would fucking do this ever) and oh snap! The doors are fucking chained shut. This forces her to go deeper into the asylum to look for an alternate escape route, and I’m sure we can all guess where this will more than likely lead us…

The young nun and reporter run through an underground tunnel system, and the reporter is asking all kinds of questions: what’s going on outside, who was she feeding, does Sister Jude know about this? She threatens to tell Sister Jude if the young nurse doesn’t explain- she wants to see Bloody Face, damn it! Meanwhile, Arden has Tate strapped to a table, yo!

The good doctor is explaining to T-bone that times have changed. This is now the time of science  and shits about to get sciencey (and cutty and needley and stabby… and bloody). The young nun and reporter are walking down a ward and the prick from the rec room throws something (shit?) on the nun. She runs away to get cleaned up, all the while the reporter is subjected to cat calls and what not. She sees a guard getting a bj from the chick who got her head shaved… and he sort of freaks out but they promise not to tell on each other because breaking into an insane asylum is bad, but getting a blow job from an inmate in an insane asylum is probably worse. The reporter then hides in a cell from the Sister Jude, who is making the nightly rounds.

Arden is now talking to Tate about brains (cut to shot of jars full of brains) and what lives within our heads. He tells T-dog that his victims were found naked -cut to insane scene of aliens probing and what not- and how the victims were found (skinned from the feet up, what did you do with the skin?). Suddenly, Arden finds a hard object in Tate’s neck, so he cuts it the fuck out because why the Hell not? It turns out it’s some kind of metallic (computer?) chip, which he takes out and then it turns into a spider-robot and it runs away! Awesome.

Now it’s day time, and Sister Jude is fucking MAD. She’s yelling at the young nun, berating her and what not, and it’s revealed that the reporter is not only in the asylum, but in a cell. SJ can’t believe it. All that was missing from this scene was Sister Jude glancing at the camera and complaining that she’s “too old for this shit.”

The reporter wakes up in the cell strapped to the bed, and Sister Jude tells her she’s there to stay. The reporter says that people will come look for her, but what she doesn’t know is while she was all doped up and strapped to the bed, SJ went and talked to her girlfriend and basically tells her that the reporter is in the asylum and isn’t coming out- the reporter gained access to the ward under false pretenses and now she’s staying because SJ is a spiteful bitch that can’t let stuff go apparently. Duvall is putting up some fight, but SJ says she’ll tell people in the community that she’s a lesbian and that would lead to Duvall being fired from her job as a teacher. Duvall, choosing her job of teaching third graders over THE LIFE OF HER SIGNIFICANT OTHER signs some paperwork committing the reporter. It’s complete blackmail, but that’s how we did it in the 60s, baby. Sister Jude tells the reporter lady that she’ll cure her of being a lesbian and the reporter. goes. nuts.

Cut to our boy Arden cleaning a cell and (of course) SJ is hella suspicious. She claims that it stinks and that something has been living in there… but what? Let’s slide to a different scene one more time, and Adam Levine is fucking dead, you guys. His lady friend is running down a dark corridor and she runs smack dab into mother fucking Bloody Face! See ya next week, guys!

Aside from some weird parts in the plot and character development, this was a great episode. I’m genuinely interested in seeing how this season will play out, especially now that both Tate and the reporter are basically trapped in this insane asylum, even though it looks like neither of them deserve to be in there. I thought the writers did a fine job of getting us some back story on everyone, and the cinematics were wonderfully done. The weird, choppy, fast edits are back and they really brought up the creep factor (especially with the “alien abduction” scenes).

The episode had excellent use of shadows and lighting, and as usual the music and sound was top notch. One of the things about AHS that drew me in last season was the constantly changing character development, back stories, and rich dialogue we were given. Yes, this show is creepy and it’s certainly another big draw for me, but I have to say the interactions between the characters are very well written- I hope this continues.

I don’t have many predictions yet, but this show has a way of making ridiculous stuff seem believable so here goes nothing: the young nurse and Sister Jude are the same person- Sister Jude is what happens when the good, young nun is finally corrupted. Dr. Arden has some kind of pact with the aliens. I mean, the dude didn’t even freak out when he cut a metal chip out of Tate’s neck, and the thing turned in to a spider and ran away! I’m guessing he’s doing some kind of human experimentation, possibly Re-Animator style, with patients at the asylum.

Stop back next week for the next installment- I’ll be more prepared next time and hopefully not write most of this damn thing from memory. I hope you had a fun, spooky time watching AHS, I know I sure did!

Like this post? Fucking hate it? Let Mike know in the comments section!