Thursday, October 27, 2022

My Review of American Horror Story: NYC - Black Out

 


Written by Ned Martel & Charlie Carver
Directed by Jennifer Lynch

Whitely (to Cameron/Daniel): "I'm sorry. I hate to lie to you, especially since you know what's in my bag."

Oh dear. Massive heat, a roaring black out, more secret and lies and a killer who just won't quit trying to up the ante. Not to mention two recurring characters who have found themselves at the mercy of said killer. To me, I'm surprises it wasn't either Adam or Patrick who ended up in that elevator with Whitely but there's still time for him to catch up with either of them.

Both Daniel (Hale Appleman) and Cameron (Gideon Glick) have appeared in the previous two episodes and the death of the former's lover, Hans (Casey Thomas Brown) would've seen Daniel arrested for it had Patrick not stepped in to vouch for him. Because of that, we saw Daniel being proactive in trying to warn his community of danger, only for Adam to also vouch for him.

Then there was Cameron, initially annoyed at Daniel for disrupting his black out warehouse get together, only to help him seek out Hans's killer, even though doing that put the pair of them in danger by the end of this episode. Will both of them end up dead next week? One of them might. I have a feeling Whitely's story will likely end next episode to put the focus on the other killer.

Still though, Whitely nearly killed Gino at the start of this one, only for his taunting to lead Patrick into teaching his boyfriend. Then Whitely had fun taunting Patrick over the phone about his next kill. I liked that Patrick made some good character progress this week such as coming out to Mac and admitting his infidelities to Gino but Whitely kept managing to outsmart him this episode.

As for Patrick and Gino, both are lying to the other. I can't tell if Barbara genuinely was concerned about Gino or if a part of her was deliberately trying to sabotage Patrick and Gino's relationship. Perhaps it's both to be honest. Either way, Gino has cat scratch fever and Patrick won't tell  him about his own rashes and yes, the show definitely has hammered home where the story will be going on along with the ineffectual police force and serial killers.

Last but not least, there was also the Adam, Theo and Sam triangle. Theo finally ditched Sam and decided to go all in with Adam. Sam retaliated by attempting to bribe Adam to ditch Theo, only for Adam to refuse to do so. Yeah, it's nice to see Adam and Theo as a pairing but Sam will definitely be something of a problem for them. Saying that, I'm still not sure if he was the one who caused the fire that ended up killing seven people. Maybe Big Daddy's doing this stuff on his own like his attack on Patrick.

- This was the second episode to be co-written by Charlie Carver and he's got at least one more this season. Get him on the writing staff again for next season.
- Gino and Kathy Pizazz had some great scenes together and I did find the latter's impersonator rather funny in their one scene here.
- I'm beginning to think that Kal Penn's character, Mac might be the only straight prominent male character this season. Unless he's later outed in an episode.
- Whitely mentioned serving in Vietnam to Daniel and Cameron and being close to Gino's age to Patrick. That meat reference was a blatant one to Jeffrey Dahmer.
- No Hannah, Fran, Alana or Henry in this one. 
- Chronology: From where the previous episode left off and then a jump to a few days later.

Black Out certainly brought out the heat in more than one ways. I like where this season seems to be going. I find Jeff Hiller has done a strong job in making Whitely an unsettling baddie and I'm intrigued by everything going on with the main characters. This feels like one of the strongest seasons of the show and having a primarily different cast has helped with that.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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