Written by Ian Brennan
Directed by Nelson Cragg
Hanover (re Henry/Lenore): "His mother wants me dead and I don't imagine it's a gentle death she has planned. She's never going to rest until she finds me."
Mildred: "Then we have to make sure that she never does."
So, this episode finally debuted Sharon Stone's Lenore Osgood and seeded her character into the backstory for Richard Hanover with results that easily could've came out of any season of American Horror Story. Hanover, you really are too dumb to live and I imagine you haven't got much longer on that front.
This episode quickly revealed that Hanover played a role in Lenore's son, Henry (Brandon Flynn) having lost his limbs but Hanover's version soon indicated that Henry was more responsible for his current situation though Hanover didn't exactly help matters.
When I reviewed the first episode of this series, I brought up comparisons to both Asylum and Hotel. We can now add Freak Show into that mix as Lenore and Henry's dynamic feels like a rip off of Gloria and Dandy's from that particular season. Henry literally comes across as Dandy 2.0 - a petulant, murderous, overly sheltered manchild with an enabling and campy glamorous mother to boot. I can already tell that Lenore's indulging of her psychotic son will be her undoing as the season progresses as well.
This week, Lenore got PI Wainwright to try and kill Hanover. Wainwright failed in his first and very public attempt and then indulged in some weird roleplay with Mildred. The only good to come out of that particular scene was that we got some flashbacks to Mildred's days in the army and the fact that she's developing an attraction to Gwendolyn and that was it really. As for Hanover, he's now got Mildred in his corner when it comes to dealing with Lenore and Wainwright but he'll no doubt live to regret letting Mildred infiltrate his life more and more.
Speaking of Gwendolyn though, this episode revealed that she's in a lavender marriage with Trevor (Michael Benjamin Washington) and she wants to end it, due to her growing attraction to Mildred. I quite liked Trevor in this episode, but I'm all for seeing Mildred and Gwendolyn just hooking up at this point, even if the former is in denial about her sexuality at the moment.
Getting back to the hospital side of things - Dolly made herself a bit too familiar with Edmund, which Mildred did not seem happy about while Huck seemed to be an audience point of view with the way he was openly horrified by Nurse Bucket's administering the hydrotherapy treatments of a lesbian patient in this episode. It's nice to see at least one stand up main male character so far this series as the rest of have been anything but.
- Mildred removed a book from Lily as she felt it encouraged her lesbianism but then later fantasised about being with Gwendolyn when she was having bad sex with Wainwright.
- Nothing better happen to Lenore's pet monkey. Seriously, just don't go there, show. It's so adorable.
- Standout music: Gabriel Yared's Une Novelle Famille.
- Chronology: Spring 1948 it seems, going by a brief conversation between Bucket and Hanover. The former's crush on the latter is depressing to watch.
Angel Of Mercy showed further improvement by fleshing out Hanover's character. I still don't like the guy and he clearly needs to be removed from Lucia State Hospital but at least there's more to go on with him. It does feel like this show wants to depict Mildred's sadistic side but at the same time, have her as this "heroine" of the piece. I'm not sure if it can have it's cake and eat it but it's certainly going to try, isn't it?
Rating: 7 out of 10
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