Come one, come all to the new weekly TV Recap of American Horror Story: Freak Show in which every Thursday I take a look at the latest happenings in Fraulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities. What will the fourth season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series bring and what will we remember from this delightfully oddball group of characters? Join me as I look at the Top 5 Characters of the week, recap important events, and share overall thoughts on the series as well as any other interesting tidbits worth of mention.
Top 5 Characters of the Week
1. Dandy Mott (Finn Wittrock)
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| Finn Wittrock |
Importance: What is more amazing is how the show came to revolve around Dandy so gradually. While everyone was wrapped up with Twisty the Clown, he was plotting a career as a very unpredictable killer. In this case, he manages to kill an entire group of people at a tupper ware party. Why? Because he likes bathing in their blood. He convinces a cop to kill to kill Regina Ross (Gabourey Sidibe). He has so much power that you don't want to mess with him at all.
Best Scene: Right when you didn't think things could get any weirder, Dandy plays the privilege card. After convincing Regina that he murdered a lot of people including both of their mothers, she brings a police officer into the picture. Dandy manages to convince him to kill Regina in exchange for a million dollars. The results are a harrowing example of how corrupt the police force is and how willing they are to just obey a man whose connection to a corporation really is. Dandy just got a lot scarier after that.
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| Dennis O'Hare |
2. Stanley (Dennis O'Hare)
Importance: He is continuing to tear apart the Freak Show one person at a time. This time, he goes after Del Toledo (Michael Chiklis). Using his massive endowment, he frames him for being gay. It gets so bad that Del attempts to kill himself. He is the perfect con man who has managed to turn everyone against each other slowly but surely. Dandy may be the more flagrant piece of the puzzle, but Stanley is the unsuspecting villain that we should all be admiring a little more. He may not have killed Bette and Dot Tatler (Sarah Paulson) as we had initially thought, but he still knows how to mess with people.
Best Scene: In one of the more disjointed moments in the episode, Stanley has a frank meeting with Del. During their time, he discusses a few things that Del finds shameful. It eventually leads to them presumably having oral sex and driving Del and his masculinity to the brink of destruction. All the while, he is enthused and treating the demise as his own enjoyable game. No wonder Del attempts to hang himself in the next scene.
3. Bette and Dot Tattler
Importance: It seems like eons ago since Bette and Dot were reportedly going to get their heads surgically removed. While the logic makes no sense on how they could live a normal life and that Stanley is orchestrating something evil, they still hold out enthusiasm. Watching the two heads try and come to terms with their potential new lot in life is particularly interesting from an existential standpoint. They even try to live a "normal" life as a two-headed woman by becoming Jimmy "Lobster Boy" Darling's (Evan Peters) personal slave. It doesn't work out too well.
Best Scene: In their most vulnerable moment, Better and Dot break into a drunk Lobster Boy's bedroom and get into some sexy lingerie. When he shows up, they get naked and plead with him to let them be his slaves. Jimmy, despite his new alcoholism, is too compassionate to them to actually go through with it. The two sisters feel a little ashamed and long for some place in their life that actually matters. Will we actually get anywhere with them? Hopefully.
4. Jimmy "Lobster Boy" Darling
Importance: With Ethel Darling (Kathy Bates) dead, he must learn to live a pleasurable life. However, after one night of drinking with Del, he is a mess. He is desperate for attention and goes so far as to have sex with the fat woman. He is all over the place, selling himself for the sake of his own sanity. Things don't work out and soon he is even rejecting Bette and Dot. What is to become of this poor drunken wreck? Fingers crossed that he makes it out alive. However, after being arrested for crimes that Dandy committed, it may be awhile.
Best Scene: He has been through a lot in this episode. He has had sex with tupper ware party women who end up dead. He has sex with a fat woman that nobody seems to be happy about. Still, in a time when it seems like he couldn't be turning down any favors of any kind, he turns down Bette and Dot. Despite his low state, he still has compassion, which is heart breaking and awe-inspiring in ways that give him dignity. Yes, everyone else is falling apart, but he still needs to hold it together for everybody else. Good luck with that.
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| Michael Chiklis |
5. Del Toledo
Importance: The episode promised death, and everybody was suspecting that it would be Del. He has been through the ringer lately. He loses his former wife and while he bonds with his son, he turns him into a drunken wreck. However, the guilt comes to fruition when he meets Stanley and ends up presumably having sex with him and his wealthy endowment. While his suicide attempt is botched, the pain goes through him in ways that nobody could deny. However, it's more unexpected than those thinking that he would lash out at his peers as he did earlier in the series.
Best Scene: Following the encounter with Stanley, he decides to end it all in his trailer. He writes the suicide note and signs it. The fate is all over. He hangs himself from the ceiling. Writhing, he is seen facing his last moments as the lights begin to blur. He sees Ethel talking to him and the intuition that he is having becomes clearer. Things are bad. Thankfully, he survives at the last minute. Still, now that we know just how depressed he is, what's going to happen to him in the near future?
Overall Thoughts
I have no idea if the episode was any good. If anything, it felt like it just introduced a lot of psycho-sexual elements. Almost everyone seems to have gotten naked, exposed themselves or wanted something erotic in this episode. Dandy is getting naked in front of Regina and Lobster Boy is having sex with the fat woman. What an episode. It's full of strange moments that cannot amount to more than the awkward transition between Stanley and Del talking. During their exchange, things quickly turn to talk of oral sex and there's even focus on his large endowment. Sex seems to be the central focus of this episode, even though Dandy has done explorations like this far better in the past.
I don't know if it just was the title, but it was also disappointing because there weren't that many major deaths. You could argue that Regina's was crucial, but that was more to show how corrupt the cops are. Otherwise, it was a lot of no name characters who were introduced and disposed of over the course of the hour. There's a wish that the massacre did kind of stick to people within the camp. However, Dandy being this unstoppable force is pretty scary. Also, his ability to pin his crimes on Lobster Boy are especially ingenious and I hope something develops from it.
On another note, I liked how the series dealt with the grieving. Ethel may have been a rather secondary character, but she was effectively used to display the intuition of many characters throughout the episode. I liked that she popped up at random times to state what we needed to know. It was a surreal touch in an episode lacking the visual flourishes that defined the earlier episodes. Still, what's to keep Dandy from striking again? He has the police on his side. I just assume he is building his revenge to Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) or something.
Otherwise, I do find it at times a little meandering that the series is taking its time with some plots. Bette and Dot need to have something done to them. They need to stop complaining about their problems and actually have a story progression. Forgive me for misinterpreting their death last week. I feel like that was more of a mislead on the show's part. Still, despite the occasional interesting moment, this episode feels like a let down that was more about these arbitrary weird moments that don't gel together.
Speaking as we are nine episodes deep, we should be approaching the closing arc of a lot of these characters. Beyond Dandy being an insane psychopath, what is his goal? Is this just some big origin story? The series doesn't seem to be having too many plots starting to show their resolution. That kind of bothers me because this show has been all over the place and seems to be fine just being a series of moments that have interesting things happen sometimes. It is fascinatingly off, given, but I want so much more to be going on that matters instead of teasing it. I know that there has to be resolution in the next few episodes. I just wish that I knew what it was.
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