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| Neil Patrick Harris |
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. Chester (Neil Patrick Harris)
Importance: He's a magician who wants to work with Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) and falls in love with Bette and Dot Tattler (Sarah Paulson) due to war flashbacks. He gets in cahoots with Dandy Mott (Finn Wittrock) after his murder-seeking doll decides to seek revenge. He is insecure and a very strange thing to add this late in the game.
Best Scene: As he is desperately trying to be accepted by his peers, he reveals to Bette and Dot that he has some deeper fears inside. Based on a flashback, he has probably one of Freak Show's most ridiculous elements to date in which a doll murders his partners after sex. If the moment isn't the most prescient for the character, it is at least the most baffling in the show's existence to this point.
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| Michael Chiklis |
2. Dell Toledo (Michael Chiklis)
Importance: After Jimmy "Lobster Boy" Darling gets his hands cut off and transported back to jail, he does his best to rescue him. In the process, he tells the story of how he was the black sheep of the Toledo family for being "normal." He leaves two police officers dead and while reunited with his son, is unable to convince the others that he did the right thing. Elsa shoots him after he confesses to killing Ma Petite.
Best Scene: It is the final moments of Dell's life. He is staring at a loaded gun and forced to be honest with his peers. However, there's a sense that his latest action was done out of love. The freedom of Lobster Boy was necessary, as he felt he was wrongfully accused. However, things didn't pan out and the bad decision he made involving Ma Petite caused Elsa to pull the trigger on him in a surprise turn of events.
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| Sarah Paulson |
3. Bette and Dot
Importance: They serve as nothing more than a lustful desire to get Chester to unveil his troubled past. They want to live a normal life with a nice man. It can't be that simple. Chester may have done the deed with them, but he is still uncomfortable, causing personal conflicts for the two, who also wish to be part of the magic act that he is putting together.
Best Scene: For a gay man, Neil Patrick Harris is really into having weird straight sex scenes. It is fine that they are in love. That has been common on the show. However, must it involve him having memories of a terrifying murderous doll?
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| Finn Wittrock |
4. Dandy
Importance: Popping up at the tail end of the episode, he decides to take advantage of Chester after he learns that he is a fragile war veteran. He promises to help Chester find his doll and bring her to justice.
Best Scene: The only one that he really is in. He talks to Chester about finding his murderous doll and possibly teaming up for something more dastardly. There's not a lot to his part this week and he is one of the saner elements if you can believe.
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| Jessica Lange |
5. Elsa
Importance: Hires Chester on the fact that he is capable of doing accounting very well. When she discovers that Dell killed Ma Petite, she decides to kill him. Meanwhile, Stanley (Denis O'Hare) is still trying to convince her to move to Hollywood with him. Also, she may be selling the company.
Best Scene: After Maggie Esmerelda (Emma Roberts) shows Elsa the corpse of Ma Petite on display, she decides to seek revenge. Going straight to the source, she kills Dell after he confesses. It solves the issue involving the emotional ball of rage, but it raises more questions as to what's going to happen now that there isn't a big strong person to protect the camp.
Overall Thoughts
What did I just watch? Seriously. What did I just watch? I know that American Horror Story can go to some strange places, but this episode feels totally arbitrary in a lot of major ways that wouldn't suggest that next week is the penultimate episode of Freak Show. For starters, it seemed rather odd that the show would introduce a new character this late in the game with Chester. True, he may be a temporary ruse for something greater, but he still feels inconsequential by the end of the episode. It's nice to see Harris getting freaky, but what's the point of it all really?
This is the first week in recapping the show where I had issues trying to figure out a Top 5 for the episode. This usually isn't hard. At most, I am missing one. This week was basically a lot of Chester and Dell and that was about it. Nobody else felt important in any major way. While it was nice to get catharsis from Dell, it also meant that the episode was dominated by such a secondary role that it undermines everything that this has been building towards. Bette and Dot were fine, but that's about the point on the list where I began to simply put filler.
I will applaud the show for officially doing every possible style of horror now. Earlier, I praised it for doing some F.W. Murnau tricks. Now, it goes into Child's Play territory and it is baffling. I guess that we needed a murdering doll for some reason. It only adds to the confusion that is this show and makes me wonder what is going on. How could a show that had so much in place continually knock them over in a lopsided manner? There's not a lot interesting going on. Admittedly, the "Two Days Earlier" card that opens the episode is kind of funny considering the few week hiatus it just came back from. Otherwise, it feels like the show hit refresh and doesn't really know what it's doing.
I get that the show isn't supposed to be hard hitting drama. Still, it has a weird relationship with sex and violence that occasionally tiers off into pointless camp. This is one of those cases. What is gained from a murderous doll subplot in which sex leads the doll to jealously kill Chester's loves? Is he just hallucinating and the metal plate in his head is causing all of the problems? Where exactly is this show going now that we're on the home stretch? None of this feels clear and at most we have a murderous doll to look forward to.
Freak Show is becoming a frustrating show in a lot of ways that I once praised it for. The camera shots are starting to wink too much at the camera and the excess of horror tropes doesn't feel warranted. Watching Dell beat a man to a bloody pulp (literally) felt a little pointless. We didn't necessarily need to see Chester have sex with Bette and Dot either. The only redeeming moment is the Elsa catharsis involving Ma Petite's death. It was great to see Dandy stop by after missing last time, but what is the point sometimes?
I can only hope that the show manages to salvage its story in the last two episodes with something great. However, along with mixing in some Asylum last time, I don't know what to think of it. The camp was fine, but the show feels the need to dump more and more. I want to feel like we're building to something. Maybe we are and I am unfairly judging things. Even then, I don't feel like I even enjoyed this episode so much as found minimal plot advancements that make it satisfactory. Oh well. I guess we have two more episodes of murderous doll action to go.
Rating: 2 out of 5
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