American Horror Story: Freak Show Review: “Pink Cupcakes” (4×05)

While there are still some issues with American Horror Story: Freak Show, there's no doubt in my mind that “Pink Cupcakes” is the first truly great episode of the season.

It has immediately proven true that, with the introductions and lengthy preamble out of the way, the show can now launch headfirst into the stories and issues that it's wanted to explore all along. Ryan Murphy had stated several times this week while promoting the episode that it was one that would amp up the horror quotient. Now, I've long since trained myself to believe nothing that Ryan Murphy says, but this once at least, he's telling the truth. “Pink Cupcakes” returns to the psychological body horror well that it's enjoyed for a while now, but it's also violent, and at times downright scary, and frankly, it's been too long since American Horror Story has delivered a good jump scare.

Of the major stories this week, the strongest by far belongs to Dandy Mott. Finn Wittrock is quickly revealing himself to be the season's standout performer, delivering a gleefully unhinged performance that turns on a dime from camp to terrifying. Dandy more or less plays out American Psycho this week, hitting the gym (if by “gym” we mean his freakish, candy-colored bedroom that is strangely devoid of furniture), soliloquizing about the sweet language of murder, then hitting the town looking for his next victim. Why he picks a gay strip joint to start could fill many thousands of words, but I don't think Dandy's psychosis is quite so easily explained away by closeted gayness. Murder and sexuality are definitely tied together for him, and with the suggestion that his father suffered similarly, I expect we'll delve much further into this in weeks to come.

At any rate, his trip to the gay bar leads him to cross paths with Dell, who turns out to be a closet case himself. Dell's been enjoying the company of Matt Bomer, who guest stars this week as the escort/prostitute. Bomer is essentially playing the stereotypical horror movie vixen here, and while the gay spin is interesting enough, it's not like he's really asked to do a whole lot. Dandy's murder of him is a prime example of the fine tonal line the show walks, and it has done so successfully so far this season. When the first several stabs fail to kill Bomer, Dandy's petulant cry of, “You're making me feel bad!” is a deeply uncomfortable laugh-out-loud moment, one that highlights the way that audiences are complicit in violence toward and subjugation of the people we might deem “freaks”.

Though the show is occupied by the idea of spectacle, and how observation and the “normal gaze” can be their own kind of violence, its exploration of that this week, through Stanley's attempts to procure freaks for the museum of oddities, leaves something to be desired. His scenes this week are a tough nut to crack, as the show portrays what might be flash forwards, but what might just be fantasies, with no narrative signaling at all to indicate what exactly we're meant to take from them. The notion of what “really” happened is thrown entirely into question, but not in a way that encourages any deeper consideration. Obfuscation is fine as a narrative device, as is disorientation, but if it serves only to confuse the audience and muddle the storytelling, then what's the point? The fake-out with the twins' deaths seems so far to have been only a waste of time.

Fortunately the remainder of the episode is clearer in its storytelling and more grounded in its conflicts. Out of Dell's encounter with Bomer springs a confrontation with Desiree, who, after a brief encounter with Jimmy, suffers a miscarriage. Here's an inversion of a trope for you: the miscarriage, far from a moment of body horror, is instead an affirmation of Desiree's femininity. Her trip to the doctor confirms that she is biologically a woman (at least, it does so by 1950s scientific standards), and she arranges surgery to reduce or remove her extraneous parts; it also confirms, courtesy of Ethel, that Dell is Jimmy's father. The real horror comes later, when Desiree confronts Dell with this knowledge, attacking his masculinity in the process, doing enough damage that Dell pays her doctor a visit and breaks all of his fingers. Angela Bassett gets her first great scene of the season here, in a darkly lit confrontation with Michael Chiklis that emphasizes the many physical differences between them in order to highlight her own femaleness.

Despite some missteps in the narrative's construction, as well as a story that still can't find room for all its many characters, “Pink Cupcakes” is still a solid episode, and the first great episode of Freak Show. It reaches at times the lunatic heights of Murder House and Asylum, while still finding room for the pathos of the later series, as well—and suggesting that there is more where that came from, too.

Stray Observations:

• The singing returns, but only briefly, and it's another rendition of “Life on Mars” anyway. (In fact it's possibly the same rendition?) “Fame” also pops up on the soundtrack this week, and I'm definitely down for more Bowie on this show. Let's get a “Five Years” ensemble number started, shall we?
• Twenty dollars to take Matt Bomer home? Sign me up.
• Gabourey Sidibe makes her first appearance this week, as Dora's daughter, who is off at secretary school. While it doesn't help that the conversation is half exposition anyway, and is trapped visually in the artifice of a telephone split-screen, Sidibe really is not the greatest actress, and her appearance here falls flat.