Friday, October 16, 2015

Recap/Review: American Horror Story: Hotel - Chutes And Ladders

This week we got a few more character introductions, an almost repeat of history for a certain family and some history about the Cortez itself.

Written by Tim Minear
Directed by Bradley Buecker


Dapper Kills: After being missing from the first episode, Evan Peters returned this week and his spell of playing nice guys has come to an end. For James Patrick March was not only the original owner of the Cortez but it became a place where he murdered a variety of people as Miss Evers cleaned the sheets afterwards. Then he killed himself and Evers to avoid police capture. In 1925. Except in 2015, he's very much alive and even attempted to recruit a partner in Finn Wittrock's trashy model, Tristan into a murder spree that didn't pan out. Considering what this season is dealing with - he's either going to be a ghost or a vampire. For now, it's possibly the former but either way, even with a strange accent, Peters exuded a decent degree of menace with this guy.


Trading Up Or Down: Keeping with Tristan - well, he was pleasant to watch, right? A bored, hedonistic model who managed to cause chaos during one of the least convincing fashion shows (completely with Naomi Campbell as well) at the Cortez while pissing off Donovan royally. He did however manage to flee the danger of Mr March before being turned into a vampire by Elizabeth in this one. I did like that we got some general guidelines for the vampires in this show - avoid sunlight, only drink from health bodies and cut for blood than use fangs etc. The flashbacks to Studio 54 were also a lot more entertaining than the slightly overlong March/Cortez flashbacks but I get the feeling the Countess is going to be revealed as March's former wife (or not) but in this episode alone we learned that she has her types in men as Donovan and Tristan are anything to go by.


Dumped: When he wasn't torturing Iris by avoiding contact with her as much as possible, Donovan also spent a great deal of the episode acting the jealous boyfriend. While he might be somewhat of a hypocrite in relation to his attitude with Tristan, I actually do think Donovan has something that Tristan lacks though as a character. That being said, I wasn't particularly devastated to see Donovan getting dumped by the Countess in this episode.


Scaring Kids, Sewing Up Adults: Sally was pretty nuts in the previous episode and here, she kind of excelled herself. When she wasn't scaring the crap out of Scarlett (who discovered her brother is a vampire), creeping up to John in a way that felt super creepy, she was also sewing up poor Gabriel from last week into a mattress. At this rate, aside from the Lowe family and Will Drake (for now), is there anyone this season who isn't going to be killing or covering up deaths now? Speaking of the Lowes - they're still Harmons 2.0 but they're needed to balance out the rest of the craziness of the season. At least John did seem to be making a connection between March's past actions and the current ones of the Ten Commandments Killer though.


Frisky Receptionist: Iris might be in despair over a son who hates her guts but she's more than happy sending bodies down the same chute that March was doing in the past and even seemed to delight in needling John when dishing the dirt on the history of the Cortez. Other than that, she hasn't had too much to do and neither has Liz Taylor either but with another eleven episodes, perhaps both will get more to do or die rather horribly. On this show, both are inevitable.

Next week, the arrival of Ramona Royale who terms up with Donovan to get revenge on the Countess.

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