- Air Date: 11/28/2012
- Directed By: Michael Rymer
- Starring: Zachary Quinto, Sarah Paulson, Lizzie Brocheré, James Cromwell, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters
- Guest Stars: Frances Conroy, Sean Patrick Thomas
This whole episode felt like the sequence from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER when Lisa and Dan keep running through the same scene several times until they realize they’re in a dream. In this week’s episode, all roads truly do lead back to Briarcliff, everyone who has gotten out comes back in.
We open with Grace who is on death’s door after a botched sterilization operation. It seems like she’s about to bite it after Frances Conroy appears as the Angel of Death (with black wings and all), but Grace is revived by needle full of adrenaline. Sister May Eunice encounters Death after one of Briarcliff’s inmates commits suicide by utilizing a bread-slicer. They confront each other and the real Mary Eunice slips out for a moment only to be shoved back down by the Devil.
We then cut back to the most socially awkward basement ever with Thredson and Lane who are doing what my parents always referred to as “adult hugging”. This scene is a pretty great indicator of a lot of rumors on the internet being true (POTENTIAL SPOILER) that Dylan McDermott, who Ryan Murphy confirmed would be in this season later, is in fact the child of Thredson and Lana and has taken on the mantel of Bloody Face in the present. (END OF POTENTIAL SPOILERS)
Kit is meeting with his lawyer about the forthcoming trial. The lawyers advice so far seems to be: act crazy and you’ll avoid the chair. Kit takes his own advice and beats the lawyer with an inanimate object and escapes through the office window. Which I’m sure is what every innocent person would do, though that fake therapy session with Thredson is going to look pretty damning in court.
Back to the basement of awkward family reunions where Thredson decides to kill Lana via some kind of injection. Instead she fights back, stabs him with the needle, and strangles him with her shackle a la Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. She escapes and flags down a car. After jumping in the first car that passes she realizes the driver is a broken-hearted misogynist, who ends up offing himself without the help of a bread-slicer. When she wakes up, she’s back at Briarcliff with Sister Mary Eunice looming over her. Lana manages to get it ou that Thredson is the real killer and that Kit is innocent. But, of course, she’s telling the Devil who has her own uses for truth.
Sister Jude gets her own visit from Death and says that’s she’s almost ready, but needs to do one last thing. She visits the family of the girl she ran over back in the 40s. After some almost-telling-the-truths, the daughter walks in. She’s alive… apparently. I thought that she was dead, what with Mary Eunice leaving all those thoughtful “murderer” notes for Jude. Sister Jude meets up with Death again at a coffee shop where, to everyone else, it appears like she’s talking to herself. The waitresses decide that they should call Briarcliff to come get her. This is also the reason why I stopped trying to learn lines for plays in diners.
With one last push of plot for this episode, Kit returns to Briarcliff to save Grace. Then one of Arden’s mutant zombie attacks them because of course. Kit takes care of it with the bread-slicer and when the guard arrives to shoot Kit, Grace takes the bullet as she is ready for Death.
This episode was so plot heavy it almost broke my brain, but if we’ve learned anything (this is debatable) we’ll be treated to some character development for the next little while. Now excuse me while I rock quietly in the corner and try to remember what happiness feels like.
