Thursday, September 26, 2019

My Review of American Horror Story: 1984 - Mr Jingles


Written by Tim Minear
Directed by John J. Gray

Jonas: "Ghosts aren't real."
Margaret: "There are ghosts in the bible and you're here so they must be real."

Yeah, we're exploring ghosts again. It was obvious from the moment that Richard tried to bump off Jonas the hitchhiker that something was amiss and at least the episode didn't waste time explaining what.

Jonas being a spirit that cannot move on from his guilt over Mr Jingles camp slaughter does make me wonder if he's the only we're seeing this season. I don't think Margaret is a ghost but the episode certainly upped her darker side with her brazen dismissal of Hopple's warning about Jingles being on the loose as well as her questionable alliance with the Night Stalker to boot.

Is it wrong that the best moment from this entire episode was seeing Margaret and Richard - both God and Satan's overt advocates chatting like they were best mates as the former cleaned up the latter and sent on his way to kill Richter? Maybe but it doesn't stop that scene from being highlight of the whole episode as we got a little insight into Ramirez's past which Margaret had zero problem using to her advantage as well. Of course this is an alliance that will probably go south very fast by next week.

Keeping with the revealing stuff, I was a little surprised that Brooke's backstory included a wedding that turned into a bloodbath, courtesy of a psychotic would be groom. Still though, it was an amusing flashback not too dissimilar to something we saw during Scream Queens second season and it's nice that while Brooke might be testing everyone else's patience with her crying about killers that Montana seems to be mostly on her side.

Then there was Xavier. I didn't make a note of the threatening phone call from last week but here it was quickly resolved as it turned out that he has a history in gay porn, despite being straight and the only way to get Blake off his back was to get a replacement for the latter's movies. Of course Mr Jingles somewhat saw to Blake but in a surprising move, Xavier seems to be rather regretful when he discovered that Blake had been murdered.

As for the rest of the episode when the Night Stalker wasn't trying to finish Brooke and getting irritated with Jonas not dying, you had Jingles dispensing of some bodies with two groups in two different cabins, looking for keys and awaiting a rather sinister presence knocking on the doors. Aside from Rita nearly getting killed, I don't think any of the regulars (or even Ray) are likely to die this early in the season just yet.

- Chet admitted to taking steroids and despite the press releases, it seems like the show might be honing in on Brooke being pairing with Ray instead. Montana clearly fancies Brooke though.
- Amazing it took just two episodes to slip in a Ghostbusters reference, courtesy of Margaret mentioning Dan Akroyd.
- Standout music: Nice Day For A White Wedding, anyone?
- Chronology: From where the premiere episode left off as well as a flashback to Brooke's wedding in 1983.

Mr Jingles didn't really explore much with the title character but he certainly added to his body count while the Night Stalker and Margaret provided the best scene of the whole episode. I liked the character bits we got here and certainly didn't mind the episode being largely set at night. Overall, a little better than the opening episode.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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