My Review of American Horror Stories: "Clone"

 

Written by Ned Martel And Charlie Carver

Directed by Max Winkler 

David (to John): "I want you to be happy, Johnny darling and I promise, one day I'll see you soon."

Aww, this episode really almost had the trappings of a sort of sweet inter generational love story. You had older billionaire David Woodrow Randolph (Victor Garber) and high school teacher, John Hunter (Guy Burnet). Almost being the operative word.

The episode saw the two of them living in a sort of bliss as David and John celebrated another birthday. Of course David had difficulty cutting the cake and John got treated yo a nice car. Then John went to his actual job and David ended up being put into a medically induced coma.

It looked like this episode was going to kill David off relatively early but with his doctor Anka Kieslowski (Dagmara Dominczyk) on board, it seemed like David had his own ideas about prolonging his life. They were ideas that John hadn't been allowed to voice an opinion on, nor did he seem particularly keen on.

While David was undergoing a recovery process of his own, John had to make do with an android version of David and basically train it. I kept waiting for this idea to go as wrong as it would normally do in other shows and movies. It almost kind of did but this episode took some surprising turns with the idea.

First of all, there was the mistrust to love story between John and the android David that actually was touching to see unfold. It even felt organic, in spite of the subplot where android David killed John's co-worker, Jordan (Casey Thomas Brown). Considering what Jordan tried to do to John, I didn't feel too bad about him being killed off. 

Sadly because this show seems to over commit to the idea of grim ending, someone had to die. John made the foolish error of thinking that the real David wanted an equal relationship. All David wanted was to literally fuck himself. By the end of this one, he got exactly what he wanted. Much as I hated John being sacrificed, there was something darkly comic about David looking inward for his soul mate.

- Charlie Carver previously appeared in American Horror Story: NYC and co-wrote four episodes of that season. Nice he came back to write for this show.

- I genuinely thought David was going to have an android version of John before the ending of that episode.

- Where was the David android storing/getting rid of the food and drink he consumed during this episode?

- Chronology: Present Day once again with AI being prominent to the plot as was Daphne in the first half of the season.

So far, I think Clone might be the best episode of the bunch and even this one had various plot holes. Saying that, I liked the lead performances from both Victor Garber and Guy Burnet and I'd like to see both of them appear in the main show next season.

Rating: 7 out of 10