AHS: COVEN - THE HEAD

In this week's episode Queenie pays for her betrayal, Delia and Kyle have their natural human abilities restored and the witch-hunting corporation is introduced.

It begins with another flashback, this time to Hank's miserable childhood. His father took him for his (Hank's) first witch hunt, and like in any other movie about kids trying to shoot their first animal, Hank cannot go through with it. In the end, father shoots the witch, but gets his hand burnt by some magic fire. (Was it the reason Hank could not resist shooting the red-head? Unfinished Gestalt and all.)

Back to the modern day, Hank visits his dad, who's now the CEO of a witch-hunting corporation. This season fathers don't seem to treat their children better than mothers, so instead of approval for the taken initiative, Hank is getting yelled at. Why would he go to Marie? Why would he kill that witch in a motel room he paid for with his own Credit Card? His job was to stay with Delia (whom the corporation people blinded to make her depend on her husband) and spy.

Fiona and LaLaurie's talking head pay another visit to Marie (oh, I loved how they shot Delphine's headless body shooing flies) and miss Goode tries to convince the voodoo witch to join the clans to fight the hunters. Marie thinks she's the one who organized the attack, so she refuses. Fiona leaves, Queenie is told to burn Delphine's head, but instead she places it in her room and makes her watch Roots.

Myrtle finds a way to return sight to Cordelia. She invites her former Council colleagues, feeds them with something causing paralysis, scoops one eye from each with the melon baller and gives those eyes to Delia. Unfortunately, this causes Delia to lose her magic visions, so when Hank hugs her in his attempt to come back home, she doesn't know he's a hunter. She kicks him out anyway.

Joan sits by his son's bed, but after she learns through Nan that he knows she killed her husband (God told Luke she put some bees into his father's car and he died from anaphylactic shock), she murders him with a pillow.

The young witches return home and see Fiona playing cards with Kyle (and he's winning!). He also seems to be able to talk normally. Fiona found him and decided to turn him into a guard dog.

Marie practices some voodoo magic on Hank to force him attack the Robichaux, instead he comes to her hair salon and shoots everyone. Wounded Queenie proves Fiona's statement earlier in the show that the female is aggressive and loyal. She protects Marie by blowing her own brains out and because she's a living voodoo doll, this kills Hank. His father's mourning the loss in his fancy office.

It ends with Marie at the doors of the academy, clearly wanting to accept Fiona's offer to join their forces.

To be honest, this seemed like a weak episode to me, especially considering it's a winter cliffhanger. The shooting scene was the strongest part, Oh, Freedom made it quite emotional. Myrtle's lines were pretty cool and Delphine's situation was a little funny, but other than that... The flashback sucked, the corporation stuff SUCKED, all the scenes in the hospital were boring. And Kyle killed the dog! Somehow I'm fine watching him bashing his mother's head, but I started hating him when he crashed the dog :(

AHS: COVEN - THE SACRED TAKING

In this week's episode Queenie gets more involved with Voodoo magic, Delia tries to push Fiona to the grave, and Nan is rescued from a silver bullet.

Shockingly, it doesn't open with a flashback as usual. Somewhere under the bridge Queenie kills a homeless rapist and rips his beating "dark heart" out in front of Zoe and Madison, who came to call her back to the coven. She refuses to leave Marie and tells the witches they'll lose the war to Voodoo clan. Well, game on!

Cordelia, admirably bitchy (and looking fantastic with the cane), declares that Queenie's dead to her and starts planning her mother's orchestrated suicide (Orestes and Clytemnestra story echoes throughout this season a lot). She's interrupted by Misty and Myrtle, who managed to survive Hank's attack and now seek protection. Myrtle thinks Misty is the new Supreme, 'cause she's brought more people back than Jesus Christ. Other young witches seem quite hurt by this assumption, but they still secretly hope she's wrong.

The witches hold a Sacred Taking ritual, which was the easy part. Now they have to convince the selfish bitch (who's still planning to kill the next Supreme once she establishes who that is) to take some extra sleeping pills this night. Madison appears in her room in the red dress and announces that she, the new Supreme, resurrected herself, so now Fiona has two options: to be burnt on a stake or leave fashionably, like Norma Jean. Then Myrtle pushes the dying witch even further, by convincing her the Axeman won't stay with her till the end, so Fiona puts on some makeup and a fur coat, lies down and takes the pills. 

But as Myrtle leaves, the dead Spalding appears and reveals Delia's cunning plan details. Madison is not the Supreme, they think it's a swamp witch. Now let's cleanse you from those pills and plan your vengeance!

Talking about cleansing, Luke had to undergo a process of purification, carefully carried out by his mom (take off your pants!). She locks him in the closet, but Nan finds him and they attempt to run away like boyfriend and girlfriend. Joan stops them at the door, but before she could do anything creepy, Hank puts a couple of bullets into her chest. Luke saves Nan from the third shot and gets hit, she goes with him to the hospital.

Fiona disappoints everyone by not dying and takes great interest in Misty. She dares the swamp witch to use her gift of resurgence on Joan, and so she does. Delia finds the silver bullet on the pavement and figures there's a witch hunter out there. Zoe is very stressed by this news but finds comfort with Kyle, who tells her he loves her. Oh, and she loves him back! Madison overhears this and seems clearly jealous and upset.

Next morning Delia and her mother have a coffee together, and Fiona sort of openly admires her daughter for what she did. Cordelia says she's glad her plan did not work out, 'cause now the coven needs Fiona more than ever. Their conversation is interrupted by the delivery of Delphine's talking head. Tam-tam-tam!!! 

As always, so many things happened, yet the story has not really progressed that much. There are only five episodes left and I hope it all makes sense in the end. 

AHS: COVEN - THE DEAD

In this week's episode Kyle regains limited cognitive functions, Fiona dives into her love affair with the ghost-murderer and Queenie betrays the coven.

It starts with a flashback to Kyle's recent past, and we hear how he explains to his frat brothers why he wouldn't get any tattoos. Apparently, he wanted to become an engineer (bla-bla, Katrina, bla-bla, tattoos ruin image) and planned not to waste his life. Wanna make God laugh, huh. Now the improved version of Kyle checks "his" limbs and sees the stupid pictures his mates put on themselves that day and begins to comprehend something. Then Zoe comes in, planning to put him back to sleep, and sees his suffering. He takes her gun, but as he tries to blow his brains out, she stops him: she's still not ready to let him go. Instead, she tries to teach him how to speak.

Madison wonders around the house and tries to feel something, so she drinks, takes pills, burns her palms and eats like a pig. Since she consumed all the food, Queenie and LaLaurie go out for some burgers (for a person who lives with witches, Delphine seems too shocked by the drive-in mic box is talking to her). During this meal, LaLaurie tells Queenie that other witches will never fully accept her 'cause she's black.

Cordelia discovers Madison and as she touches her, she sees who slit the girl's throat. She then tells Zoe that she could be Fiona's next victim, so they have to kill her first (..."kill her once, kill her good, kill her dead").

Madison seduces Kyle (you're dead, I'm dead, let's waist no time), and Zoe walks in on them, of course. Later all of them have a threesome.

The Axeman invites Fiona to the house of some unfortunate fellow he murdered and hid in the bath tub. She spends a night with him and then tells him she knows about the body. He replies he knows everything about her, 'cause he watched her grow (old). She doesn't believe in ghosts but he shares some details. She runs away, upset, but then comes back to him.

Queenie visits Laveau, where she's offered to join the voodoo clan if she brings LaLaurie. Queenie asks Delphine about the worst thing she's ever done. Madame racist confesses she once turned her husbands and her black maid's bastard baby into a skin serum, so Queenie takes her to Marie's hair salon.

Zoe reunites Spalding with his enchanted tongue and asks who murdered Madison. "FFFFFFFFFFFFiona", he says and she kills him.

Hank's drinking in a motel room, surrounded by guns. He surely misses his wife and plans to pay a visit.

AHS: COVEN - THE AXEMAN COMETH

In this week's episode it is once again confirmed that dying cannot keep AHS characters from being alive, whether there is a decent body to put a soul to or not.

In 1919 witches-suffragettes of Robichaux discuss the Axeman's letter, where he warns the New Orleans that he's going to kill, but will spare everyone who'd have a jazz band playing that night. The girls decide to confront him and play the music that they like instead, and when the Axeman appears they stab him numerous times.

In our time Zoe's looking through Madison's stuff and finds a bunch of old pictures and the Ouija board. She convinces Nan and Queenie to put the board to use to find out what happened to the teen sensation. They manage to get in contact with a spirit who's willing to answer their questions, but it's not Madison, it's the Axeman! This is too much for Queenie, so she ends the séance before they get to know anything. Later Zoe calls the spirit on her own and promises to release him, if he says where Madison is. "Attic..." he replies, and we know he's not lying.

Fiona has a chemo treatment and hears the thoughts of other patients, which is a new gift for her. She's miserable and craving for one last love affair.

Cordelia and Hank enter the room Fiona prepared for her daughter's return from hospital. Hank is trying to help his wife, but as soon as he touches her, she sees the images with him and the redhead again and demands that he tells her the truth now, because sooner or later, she'll see it anyway. He doesn't, so she asks him to leave. At first Fiona's happy that Delia finally sees Hank for who he is, but she's no saint herself: the moment she touches her daughter, Cordelia sees Myrtle burn and gets upset. Fiona wisely leaves before more information has leaked.

The young witches find rotting Madison in the box and interrogate Spalding. He lies to Nan saying (or thinking, rather) that he killed the girl for sex. Zoe doesn't quite believe him, so she brings the corpse to Misty, who's dealing with Kyle's meltdown in her hut. Madison is resurrected, but does no remember what killed her. The afterlife wasn't pleasant for her, according to Madison, it's just black forever (sounds promising).

Hank pays a visit to Marie: turns out she's hired him to kill the white witches (so much for the pact) and he's already killed nine, the redhead was a witch too. Now she demands that he brings her the heads of everyone at the academy or else. Oh, and she claims the acid wasn't hers.

Cordelia wants to lie down but the Axeman appears and starts chasing her around the room with his weapon (hello, Lana Winters). The girls hear Delia's screams and after failing to get inside, read a spell to release the spirit. The Axeman leaves the academy and comes to the bar where he meets Fiona.

I can only say that with this whole Axeman release story, the first season, Murder House, makes a lot more sense.

AHS: COVEN - BURN, WITCH, BURN!

So American Horror Story was renewed for season 4 and no one knows what it's gonna be about. But Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett agreed to return.

This week's episode was about horrible mothers: Fiona and Delphine. It starts with a flashback to LaLaurie's Halloween party where she scares a potential fiancee for one of her daughters, Borquita, by making him touch human intestines and eyeballs floating in the blood. When alone, three sisters lament their impossible marriages with a mother like that and consider killing her. They pay for this conversation by spending a year in cages next to tortured slaves.

In our time, Laveau's army of darkness surrounded the academy. Zoe closes windows and doors, but Luke thinks it's all a joke and goes out to shoo a bunch of "neighborhood kids" away. However, when zombies eat a couple of passers-by after levitating Marie commands them to attack, he realizes he was wrong, but it's too late: one of the undead hits him with an axe. Nan rushes to help him and takes him to the car, which, as it turns out, is not zombie-proof. Zoe saves the couple by making the undead follow her instead. She finds a chainsaw and puts it to work, turning zombies into piles of body parts. She destroys all but one, and of course her weapon stops working, but she manages to turn the last Laveau's soldier back to dead with the help of magic. After voodoo witch falls to the floor, she says there's some real power in the academy now.

LaLaurie, full of remorse, lets Borquita in and tries to talk to her. But her daughter decides to implement her earlier plan and lifts her mother off the floor holding her by throat. Queenie sends Spalding to check if Delphine is OK. As he leaves, she hears the noise and comes out to check it. Turns out Borquita knocked out the butler and now is interested in getting to Queenie. The living voodoo doll tries her magic, but it doesn't help. Luckily, LaLaurie comes in time and stabs the zombie with a fire iron.

Meanwhile, Cordelia is unconscious and permanently blind. Fiona is wondering around the hospital under the influence of drugs and brings a stillborn girl back to life. Like Delphine, she clearly regrets being a lousy mother. When Delia's husband arrives, she has an argument with him so loud a nurse had to interrupt: she tells him she begged her daughter not to marry him, he says Cordelia hates her, you know, the usual in-laws' conversation. After left alone with his wife, Hank takes her by hand and says it doesn't matter what they've done to her, he loves her and will stay. As he touches her, she wakes up seeing what he's done to the ginger girl.

The Council arrives to make Fiona step down as the Supreme. She turns the tables by accusing Myrtle in throwing acid in Cordelia's face and killing Madison. To prove it, she takes Myrtle's red glove off and reveals the damage from acid on her hand. The Council sentences Myrtle to be burnt and they actually carry it out.

Queenie comes to Fiona and says she couldn't live knowing she's framed an innocent. Turns out she used her magic on Myrtle: when Fiona took her glove off, Queenie put her own hand to the acid to give Myrtle the scars. Fiona convinces Queenie to keep quite and promised her possible supremacy if she obeys.

Spalding tries to take decaying Madison out of the box and rips her hand off. Misty finds the remains of the burnt witch and resurrects her.

I guess no one really dies this season.

AHS: COVEN - FEARFUL PRANKS ENSUE

If the episode before was the worst of all, this one was the funniest. I like the show's traditional Halloween two-parters, they are always very special. The male characters have started to speak and reveal their personalities, but boy, I wish they didn't. As always, men are not very pleasant people in AHS (not that the same does not apply to real life, though).

It begins with the violent death of a black teenager, the son of Marie Laveau's friend and co-worker, back in 1961. Marie raises some voodoo zombies, who then kill the boy's murderers.

In our days Fiona finds bleeding Queenie and the bullman in Cordelia's apothecary room. Queenie is very weak, but Fiona and Delia bring her back to life. There is no time to take a deep breath though, as the Council, consisting of one bitchy gay writer, one diva and one clerk-looking woman, is summoned at the doors of the academy. Delia panics and tells them about Queenie's assault and her visit to Laveau, but it's not why they are here. Nan cannot hear Madison's thoughts any longer, and she assumes the girl's dead.

Kyle luckily escapes being poisoned by Zoe, fortunately, it's Halloween, so no one would pay attention to the guy covered in his mother's blood. Marie receives a parcel: the Minotaur's head, still blinking. She wants revenge and prepares to raise zombies again.

Fiona's son-in-law is out of town in a hotel. A girl  he found in a chatroom (Alexandra Breckenridge) pays him a visit, they have sex and then he kills her.

The Council begins interrogations, and it becomes clear that for Myrtle Snow, the Council diva, it is personal: she wants to bring Fiona down, and accuses her of killing Masdison. The story goes back to the day when Fiona was appointed the new Supreme. Myrtle somehow knew who killed Anna Leigh, and she enchanted Spalding's tongue, so he could not keep the truth when asked. Unfortunately, she did not have a gift of foreseeing future: Spalding's tongue was cut off and he could not say a thing. Now, after all these years Myrtle's asking the butler to write down the name of the witch responsible for his everlasting silence, and he writes down her own name. Turns out Fiona had nothing to do with his mutilation: he did it himself to protect her 'cause he loved her. Moreover, Cordelia says Madison wasn't the Supreme, so her mother had no motive killing her. The Supreme must be healthy, whereas Madison had a heart issue. Both Myrtle and Fiona are shocked by this.

Fiona and Delia go out for a drink and then the latter gets acid in her face from a person covered in black clothes. Spalding goes to his room full of dolls and chooses a dress for the latest piece in his collection: dead Madison. Delphine opens the school door to give candy to trick-or-treaters and sees three zombies, suspiciously resembling her daughters.

Two questions: didn't LaLaurie's daughters had too much tissue for the time they've been buried? And why didn't Nan tell Cordelia anything about her husband's thoughts? I'm sure she's heard them.

COPYCATS

Last week two of the comedy shows stole scenes from Friends (I can't guarantee Friends scriptwriters did not borrow the material from somewhere else, but from what I remember, they mainly stole from themselves). I watched Friends over a billion times, so that could not have gone unnoticed.

Modern Family introduced a male nanny, and not only they repeated all the key features of Sandy from Friends, they also referred to him as "manny" - Chandler used the word, 'cause in Tulsa, where he worked at the time, people had a tendency to merge words. Unlike Sandy, Modern Family's "manny" stayed, even though he predictably made the man of the house feel uncomfortable.

The second scene was in The Big Bang Theory, where Penny, after failing to be romantic, shows Leonard a box where she keeps all the stuff reminding of what he did for her. This was a copy from the episode where Rachel, after being confronted over returning gifts, brought a box with all sorts of crap from dates with Ross, because she's keeping things that matter.

The original was better both times, of course.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN - THE REPLACEMENTS

I think this was the worst episode in the history of AHS. I understand it's hard to maintain the reputation of a "shocking cable show" when all the major news networks show an X-ray of fetus with the bullet in its scull in broad daylight, but unlike real life, fiction cannot afford the luxury of showing things that "just happen", everything that takes place in the good show has to be justified somehow. This is something that I felt was definitely lacking in The Replacements.

Well, let's start, shall we?

The episode begins with the flashback to 1971, which reveals how Fiona got to be the Supreme witch and what was the thing that Spalding saw. Basically, she slit the throat of the previous Supreme, Anna Leigh, after she said she would never let Fiona take the witch throne. The most important piece of information in this act is that as the new Supreme "blossoms", the old one fades away and dies.

In our days Fiona visits some bar, and the scene from the last season is sort of repeated: men stopped wanting her (off: Jessica's voiceover sounded so much better than Taissa's), so she's decided to do the face lift. Her daughter, after failing to conceive a child with the help of snake sex, wants to try IVF (I assume); both women hear the bad news from their doctors: no one would dare to operate on them, their immune system is too weak.

Madame LaLaurie watches Obama giving speech on TV and does what Republicans did on the election night - weeps. Fiona makes her the house maid (or go back to the box!) and later - Queenie's personal slave.

Zoe visits Kyle's "white trash" mother and after seeing how much she mourns her late son (she nearly hanged herself), thinks of a great idea: why not return the Frankenstein monster home? She goes to the swamps, where Misty's managed to get rid of almost all the scars on his body, except for the ones that divide the body from his neck (it is probably meant to stress how different Kyle is from all the frat boys and their parts). Crazy Nicks fan doesn't want to let the boy go and becomes very aggressive, but he seems to want to leave her, and so Zoe successfully delivers him to his mommy.

A very different (and very religious) mother Joan and her attractive young son Luke move in next door to the witch school. Madison and Nan visit their home with cake, where the former has a conflict with Joan and uses her powers to throw knifes and burn curtains. The religious freak comes to Fiona with the Bible to tell what happened and demand that the witches stay away from her home. The Supreme suspects that Madison is her successor and takes the girl out to play pool and test her power.

Cordelia pays a visit to Marie Laveau asking to put a fertility spell on her (with goat's blood and a jar of sperm included), but Marie refuses to help her enemy's daughter.

Turns out Kyles was being repeatedly molested by his mother and when she tries to have sex with him (for the second time after his return), he kills her with his trophy screaming "NO". Zoe comes to the house and sees what he's done.

Delphine is cooking for Queenie, when she notices her Minotaur house boy outside. Queenie goes out and asks the monster to love her (physically), which he seemingly does, but probably not in the way she imagined.

Fiona is convinced that Madison is the new Supreme and asks the girl to kill her. Madison doesn't want to, so they engage in a fight and eventually experience wins: Fiona cuts the young witch's throat and Spalding sees it again. "This coven doesn't need a new Supreme", - Fiona summarizes - "it needs a new rug".

I can practically see what the creative process of AHS writers was, when they were thinking of what kind of horrible stuff they can put into the show. "Let's make Kyle kill his mother!" "But he's good" "OK, what if she's done bad things to him" "Like what?" "Incest?!"

In the first episode Peters' character didn't look traumatized enough to justify this kind of skeleton in the closet, IMO. Same with Queenie, she did not seem that desperate to explain why she would want to have her first sexual experience with a monster. Oh, well.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN - BOY PARTS

I still struggle to accept the new reality of AHS, mainly because it's a bit too cheesy and neither scary or funny enough to justify that. But I looove Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates together, LaLaurie character is very funny. I find it hard to root for Zoe, luckily, she stopped narrating, so there's not too much of her. Lily Rabe's role doesn't seem to suit her that well, I liked her as the devil more.

Anyway, back to the story:

A couple of alligator hunters are checking their traps, then they hear a Stevie Nicks song and find Misty Day wandering around the gator corpses. She's looking all Mother Earth and acting like a PETA activist. Long story short, she revives the dead animals, who brutally murder the men. Somehow, she doesn't feel much pity for humans, hmm.

In the academy, Zoe mourns Kyle while Fiona asks LaLaurie how she manages to stay alive for all these years. Cordelia interrupts by calling everyone for the morning witch gathering, which looks more like some AA meeting. Queenie tells the story of how she ended up in the school: she used her voodoo doll magic to deep-fry an annoying fast food chain customer's hand. The meeting is cut short by homicide detectives, who came to question Madison and Zoe about the bus crash. At first the girls manage to stay calm, but after Zoe is asked about the accident survivor, who died after she paid him a visit in the hospital just like her late boyfriend, she breaks and tells them everything. The witch stuff too. Luckily, Fiona comes in to save the day: she forces the officers to drink a glass of water with her spit, which seemed to have erased their memory. She then warns the girls that she's the one they need to be scared of.

Cordelia and her husband are trying for a baby the dark magic way (with snakes and blood and spells and fire) after the modern medicine has failed them.

Fiona finds out what happened to LaLaurie 180 years ago and pays a visit to Marie Laveau's hair salon to learn the immortality secret. They trade some quips; regular and voodoo witches don't seem to get along. After Fiona leaves (thanks for nothing and the hair extensions suck too!), Marie goes to the secret room with her Minotaur lover still alive.

Madison takes Zoe to the morgue to resurrect Kyle. The bus crash was so proper, they had to construct his body from various parts of his mates. At first, it seems the spell didn't work, but then Zoe sends Madison outside to say goodbye to the boy and kisses the sleeping beauty. The guard guy interrupts, but Kyle suddenly wakes up and protects Zoe from him. She takes him out of the morgue and can't decide where to drive him, but then Misty shows her presence in the car and suggests to go to the swamps. They come to Misty's hut where she puts some sort of dirt on the monster-boy (who can't speak or act like a human) which is supposed to help him heal. Zoe recognizes Misty as the burnt girl from Cordelia's story, Misty is very happy to see somebody like her. She suggests to leave Kyle with her and hopes Zoe would visit.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon & Michael Goi on AHS Bitchcraft