Thursday, November 7, 2013

American Horror Story: Coven - 3x05 Burn, Witch, Burn!

By s. Thursday, November 7, 2013
This week in American Horror Story we got to see witch burning, a good old fashioned chainsaw to zombie's head action and another episode of Spalding's little corpse/starlet slapstick adventure. It was, just as it sounds, really fun.

We begin in 1830's, during Halloween. Madame LaLaurie has one of her parties going on and young gentleman is introduced to her and her three daughters. LaLaurie, in particularly gruesome mood takes him to her chambers of horrors. There she asks him to put his hands in various bowls and guess what's inside them. It turns out they contain eyeballs and intestines, which we see being ripped out of slaves by LaLaurie herself in quick flashbacks.
Later on her daughters talk about how much better it would be if their sadistic mother was dead. LaLaurie overhears that and locks her daughters to endure some torture in her chambers, among her slaves. Back in present day, her daughters, now zombies raised by Marie Laveau are just outside the school.

Neighbor boy Luke thinks it's a prank and goes outside. Smart move, there. Nan runs after him and after Luke takes axe to the back, they both manage to hide in the car. Meanwhile Zoe distracts the zombies and finds a chainsaw after which we get sweet little homage to Army of Darkness with Zoe slaughtering the zombies with chainsaw. Thank God, finally she is not useless.
Before she gets to kill the last zombie the chainsaw dies and Zoe is on her own. Zoe falls, suddenly raises her hand and something happens - the last zombie falls on the ground, dead and Marie Laveau levitation is broken. When her friend asks her what happened Laveau responds that whatever that was there is a real power in the witch house now. Gee, Ryan Murphy. I wonder who the new Supreme is?

See how well Zoe does without Kyle? Oh, yeah, Kyle. He wasn't in this episode. Fuck knows where he is.
Meanwhile in the bar, Fiona hears Cordelia's screams. We get to see Cordelia's acid burnt face. Fiona is mortified. Then she is waiting in hospital. She runs out of pills and wanders the hallways in some sort of nightmare hallucination. She goes into a room with a young woman and her stillborn baby. After a sweet moment of Fiona telling the woman to hold her daughter, Fiona revives the baby.

Cordelia is blinded by the attack. She also has scars on her face. Hank arrives and him and Fiona have a short chat in which it's evident they both hate each other and Fiona doesn't think Hank is good enough for Cordelia. She is spot on when it comes to that. When Fiona leaves, Hank grabs Cordelia's hand and her new gift is awaken - shes sees Hank's actions in her mind and now knows he cheated on her.
This whole episode appeared to be revolving around motherhood, more precisely mistakes mothers made when it comes to their daughters. Back in the school, LaLaurie finally gives in and let's her daughter in - not surprisingly pretty soon she attacks her.

Then the zombie girl attacks freaked out Spalding and starts going after Queenie, who tries using her Voodoo doll power to protect herself. Unfortunately, none of it seems to work, but finally it's LaLaurie who manages to kill the zombie. Queenie holds crying LaLaurie, beginning perhaps the unlikeliest friendship in this season.
The next day Fiona expresses her gratitude towards Zoe for saving the girls. Then the council appears. Myrtle is still pissed off and she tells Fiona she needs to step down as a Supreme. And then Fiona brings her plan in motion - she fills the other two in Council in. Turns out Myrtle has been in New Orleans during the time Madison disappeared. Fiona had Spalding follow her.

Inside her room Fiona found the weird collection of images of her, something straight from psycho's text book. Myrtle, who is obviously innocent of killing Madison, tries to explain she was simply observing Fiona. but then Fiona removes Myrtle's glove and we see it has acid burns on it.
Myrtle is sentenced to death by fire. The girls accompany Fiona and then Council's bodyguards have Myrtle tied to a pole, while bitching music plays in the background. Fiona flicks her cigarette and Myrtle burns, to Zoe's horror.

Then it is revealed that Queenie helped Fiona. Fiona had Queenie do her voodoo doll thing and put her hand in acid, just before Fiona revealed Myrtle's hand. Queenie tells Fiona she feels bad about what she did but Fiona manipulates her into staying on her side, going as far as saying Queenie may be the next Supreme.
At the same time, at the creepy casa de Spalding, he opens a chest which contains Madison's body. He attempts to take her out, probably for another tea party, but instead he pulls her hand too much and he rips off her arm. His reaction to that was hilarious - I like that Spalding is a cute weirdo and not a full blow perverted psychopath like Threadson in last season.

The episode ends with Misty Day finding Myrtle's dead, burnt body. Misty does her magic thing and Myrtle opens her eyes. This season should be called when someone dies, call Misty.
We still don't know who threw acid at Cordelia's face. I'm still thinking it's Nan, since she is the only one without too many plots going on for her right now. All she has is Luke subplot and she seems to know and be able to do much more than people think.

With Cordelia's new power - which seems to be being able to look inside the minds of others, we are probably going to get some answers as to why things are so tense between her and Fiona. Surely it can't just be Fiona abandoning her in school. She will probably also get to the bottom of why Hank shot Kaylee.
There is a rumor going around that Hank is a witch hunter. We see Marie hiring a witch hunter in next week's promo - can it be Hank? I find it a bit implausible that immortal Voodoo Queen would need an assistance from anyone, much less a dumbass like Hank. Then again we did just get a scene where a woman was left alone with her stillborn baby in the same room for God knows how long. AHS logic, or lack thereof.

While the episode was not as fun as last week's, it did have many good scenes, though I'm still hoping for more Spalding and Madison. Unfortunately, it looks like Zoe will retrieve Madison's body in next week's episode and it's 'Better call Misty!'again. This is shaping out to be a love story between revived Kyle and revived Madison. Please, don't wedge Farmiga in threesome with corpses.

And we still can expect Myrtle to strike, since she was brought back. My best guess is that Myrtle, Misty and Zoe - after finding out Fiona killed Madison - will bring Fiona down together. But she will have some happiness before that - next week we meet The Axeman - legendary New Orleans killer. He will be played by Danny Huston and he will be Lange's love interest this season.

Considering how her love interest in season 1 was immature boy toy and in season 2 there was a platonic thing with a priest, it's great that Lange will finally get to play something completely new on this show. Genuine romantic spark.

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6 comments:

  1. I hope that this was just one of the few of the super powers of Zoe. I remember the old supreme (the one before Fiona) saying that many talented witches have 4 or 5 gifts, I hope that goes for Zoe.
    I also hope that Nan is the supreme and since she knows everything about everyone, well she should at least sense that Cordelia has a lot of power, she threw that acid in her face hoping that she will stop her mother from killing the next supreme - her.
    And the ending - La La La La La La....sweet!

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    1. Yeah, if they want her to be Supreme she is bound to do more shit than this! :)

      I really hope that Nan is the one and she threw the acid, but I just hope it won't turn out to be Myrtle and it's all done and gone now :/

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    2. I hope that Cordelia did not throw acid in her own face. If she did, then she must have the ability to heal herself.

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    3. I don't think that's possible - we saw someone else there and so did Fiona :)

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  2. Sati ,great as always. As ever a big fan of Farmiga. Am confused though as Ryan himself said the love story was Kyle and Zoe. Cannot stand Madison or the actress playing her so this will be a let down, but typical of murphy to lie to his fans surely?

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    1. Thank you! He did? If he did say it, Zoe and Kyle are probably the end game then :) Maybe him and Madison will just be...undead friends or something :)

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