American Horror Story: Freak Show Review – “Blood Bath” (4×08)

I think that we're far enough into American Horror Story as a television series now that we can diagnose the show's chief problem, especially because it's a problem that plagues Ryan Murphy's entire oeuvre, more or less. It's a problem best presented as a question: what is American Horror Story meant to be about? With Murder House you have an answer: fucked up family finally spends quality time with each other after their haunted house kills them. (Can you believe that Murder House is in retrospect the most focused and consistent, if not the best, installment of this series?) Ditto Asylum, which was about a ragtag band of outcasts who, in their struggle to escape imprisonment, become their own kind of family.

Coven and Freak Show gesture at similar themes, have similar trappings of families both born and made, and how these units compete with each other for prominence in the various characters' lives. But where the first two installments managed to keep these themes central enough to make the show cohesive (despite narrative loop-de-loopsdeadends and detours like the Rubber Man and Murder Santa), the latter installments feel composed entirely of such detours. It makes one grateful for scenes such as the ones that open and close “Blood Bath”. At the beginning, Gloria recounts the History of Dandy Mott, which while thoroughly unsurprising is also plenty creepy. Also ramping up the creep factor: the episode's final scene, in which Dandy bathes in his murdered mother's blood.

I'm sad to see Frances Conroy go, though I do wonder if it's truly the last we'll see of her, not just because she's been so delightfully batty as Gloria Mott, but also because the Motts have been by far Freak Show's most consistently engaging and entertaining component. Dandy's murder of Gloria fits both the “crazy shit happens” and the “be about something” criteria for a good episode of American Horror Story, and it's just so very rare that that happens anymore.

The rest of the episode is concerned with the other half of the season's ongoing plot. Dell somehow manages to trick everyone into believing that “some animal” killed Ma Petite. The little gal sticks around in flashbacks, however; and Ethel is burned enough to think that Elsa may have done the deed. What's this? Character-based conflict? We've gotten to this point in fits and starts but I'll take it. The confrontation between Elsa and Ethel has to drop more than a little exposition, but two great actors, a pretty awesome reveal, and some neat direction more than make up for it. Jessica Lange seems more engaged than she has over the past couple episodes. I don't necessarily think she was phoning it in previously, but it's certainly dialed up a bit now.

And like that Ethel is gone! Elsa frames an elaborate suicide with Stanley's assistance. (The only thing more elaborately staged is Elsa's grief.) That's two “main” characters that “Blood Bath” dispatches, but it says something that Gloria's feels much more significant than Ethel's, when one imagines the writing intends the reverse. But the fact is that none of these characters has been well drawn enough to warrant scenes like Ethel's funeral, which ask of the audience emotion that has not been earned. Take for example the sudden Girl Power speech that Desiree (remember Desiree?) gives Evey and Grace Gummer the Fork-tongued Tattoo Monster. “You're family?” OK, sure. The tarring and feathering of Grace Gummer's father hits on the “us vs. them” mentality that drives the season, the idea that “Freaks are family”, but it does so in that clunking, Murphyesque way. Sometimes it feels like the production team skips directly from pre-production notes to finished product, without ever whittling everything into a coherent narrative. Freak Show is “about something” in only the most technical sense; it demonstrates a fifth grader's understanding and execution of theme.

On the one hand, if our standard for American Horror Story is for crazy things to happen, like for instance the literal tarring and feathering of a man who previously turned his daughter into a fork-tongued tattoo monster, or a serial killer bathing in his dead mother's blood, then “Blood Bath” was a very good episode. And I read the Internet—I am well aware that this is the only standard by which many people view the show. The bar has been set so tremendously low by Coven that, as long as Freak Show can avoid being outright offensive or moronically plotted, which it so far has, then it remains a pleasant, occasionally freaky diversion. What frustrates is that the show is capable of more, has achieved more in the past, and shows glimmers of that potential still.

Stray Observations

• Danny Huston returns, thankfully NOT as the Axe Man. The long diversion into just how, exactly, Elsa got her fancy legs is perhaps unnecessary, style over substance, but I suppose this is the show we're watching after all.
• Gabourey Sidibe returns as Regina, Dora's daughter, and I'm so sorry you guys, but she just isn't a very good actress. Her line readings are so flat, and since she's taking part in the show's most exaggerated, surreal story, she really can't get away with it. Finn Wittrock and Frances Conroy know exactly what they need to do in these scenes, but Sidibe just seems lost, like she's shown up to read cue cards and collect a paycheck.
• “You're no better than the Roosevelts.” “How dare you say that name in this house?”
• Evan Peters should play drunk for the rest of the season; even an indignant and mourning Jimmy Darling is still adorably red-faced and slurry.