Thursday, January 22, 2015

Recap/Review: American Horror Story: Freak Show - Curtain Call

Well, we've had better finales (or worse ones) but after 13 weeks of pure madness, it's time for this particular Freak Show to close up for good.

Written by John J. Gray
Directed by Bradley Buecker


The Elsa Mars Show: All season long, Elsa has been going on and on about wanting to be famous and in this episode, she managed to get her wish, but only because she met her future husband at the right moment. Elsa getting her fame and fortune in spite of all the horrible things she's done just seemed a little messed up, so the threat of her past coming back to take away her fame led to an interesting way of finally doing the character in.


Time To Die: Despite her previous misgivings about never performing on Halloween, Elsa knew that her career was about to crash big time decided to give her last performance (a version of We Could Be Heroes no less) and both Mordrake and Twisty the Clown decided to show up and take her soul away. However, even in death, Elsa seemed to get lucky with her soul being sent back to her freak show and reunited with her friends such as Ma Petite and Ethel. For a character who hasn't behaved that well, it seemed rather eerie that Elsa literally got the opposite fate that Lange's character, Fiona got at the end of Coven. This was an intentional callback, yes?


You May Now Kiss The Brides: If Elsa's fate left a bitter taste in your mouth, then the good news is that Dandy didn't get off so easily. Sure he upped the body count by murdering most of his staff but his hopes of living a married life with Bette and Dot came crashing down when the twins, Jimmy and Desiree banded together to take Dandy out. Let's just say that aside from being an amateur Cole Porter, Dandy is also a rather lousy Houdini as well. Drowning Dandy seemed a bit merciful compared to the horrors he's subjected various people to throughout the season but at least the show killed off the psychotic brat once and for all.


Happier Times: Thankfully Elsa wasn't the only person to get a happy ending in this finale. It seems that after bumping off Dandy, Desiree got married to her beau from a few episodes ago and had two children while Jimmy and the twins as expectant parents also settled into domestic bliss. Yes, it was a little syrupy but I am glad those four characters actually made it out of the season alive, given that so many other likeable characters were taken out.


Massacres: Dandy getting trigger happy and killing the likes of Paul, Penny, Legless Suzy and Amazon Eve was sad to see. I guess the show needed more of a body count but having the lot of them slaughtered by Dandy annoyed me more than Elsa's sudden (and somewhat implausible) rise to fame. On the plus side, at least Dandy finally died. That made up for a lot in this episode.

I'll be back to review/recap the fifth season and possibly it's network equivalent in Scream Queens during the autumn.

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