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Perhaps I’ve just been worn down. Perhaps we’ve passed through the quality looking glass and everything has gone topsy-turvy. Who knows. But “Tupperware Party Massacre” is a dementedly fun, twisted episode of Freak Show. It’s a sign of vitality at a relatively late stage of the season, and thank goodness for it. The episode has laser focus, not just in terms of its plot (which continues to foreground the significance of the freak museum Stanley is working with), but in terms of its themes. Here is an episode that, finally, feels consistently and, more importantly, successfully about things.

There’s been a collection of themes and motifs floating in and out of Freak Show all season long, but this week’s episode is the first that draws a line through all of its various plots and still keeps them orbiting around these themes. It’s no coincidence that the episode makes by far the season’s best use of the massive ensemble cast—and that’s including some dead characters!

Everyone in “Tupperware Party Massacre” is worried about normalcy, about feeling like a proper member of society. They all have the same goal, which is to be not something: to be not gay, to be not ordinary, to be not a freak. The characters have been born into situations, into bodies, that they can’t help, and that they can’t change (not for lack of trying). The sick joke is that for every one of them, their fantasy of normalcy is someone else’s freakshow reality. So you get the frankly brilliant parallel between Bette and Dot, who want normal, separate lives, and are cruelly prevented from that by their deformity; and Dandy Mott, whose “perfect” life and perfect body are shot through with insanity.

But don’t take this all to mean that “Tupperware Party Massacre” is too serious or ponderous. The title suggests, correctly, that we’re a little off center. One of the very first images is of Dandy playing around with Gloria’s corpse, held up on strings. “Now you’re my puppet mother!” is creepy, unsettling, and absolutely hilarious. I can go all in on this show if “demented circus” is the tone we can keep up.

Most of the episode’s set pieces bring a return to the off-kilter, Flannery O’Connor-esque Southern Gothic tone that the show’s earliest episode’s hinted at, none more so than the titular massacre. But even smaller, character moments embrace the horror of the grotesque. Take Jimmy Darling’s fling with Ima. He’s wasted drunk (and must have been for several days now) and is feeding her, or else has his pants around his ankles fucking her. The episode treats him as something of a punch line, but the sad desperation with which he gleans attention from Ima, and the wonderfully bizarre drunken sequence with Ether, paint a sympathetic portrait of the character for pretty much the first time this season. The writing, as well as Evan Peters’ plaintive performance, give a new depth to Jimmy Darling, and make it much easier to genuinely feel for the kid.

Dell also gets a much-needed boost of empathy, as his guilt over Ethel and Ma Petite’s deaths drive him to suicide. The sequence of his near hanging is beautiful, brilliantly filmed, with alternating flashes of black and blurry bursts of color as Dell’s vision leaves him. Desiree’s last minute rescue comes as a genuine relief, and you realize you’ve been holding your breath as Dell loses his.

Bette and Dot finally get some proper attention after a weeks-long lull this week. It’s unfortunate that Sarah Paulson is still getting the same notes to play over and over, but it’s still something to see how she has managed to craft two distinct, vibrant characters in the twins. Elsa and Stanley have tried to convince them that the surgery to split them is a good idea; they’ve made up some cockamamie story about how they each have their own heart and sets of lungs, so it’ll all be fine! Sweet Dot is naïve enough to believe it, and while Bette’s not, she still longs enough for a normal existence to consider the option anyway. The twins’ awkward romantic encounter with Jimmy is another in a line of appropriately weird scenes; it’s about time for the show to take more consistent storytelling advantage of the menagerie of curiosities it has on display.

The overall season arc gets a kick in the ass this week as well, as Dandy becomes an outright, outsized villain, convincing the town cop with surprising ease to shoot Regina in the head, and slaughtering a party full of housewives. He converges with the freaks once more, as Jimmy’s drunken escapade ends up getting him nailed for the murder. The comparison here, of the freak with a good heart and the normal kid who’s a secret axe murderer, might be obvious, but at least now it’s once again explicit, providing an easy justification for the plot, so that the story can make other, more interesting observations about its characters.

“Tupperware Party Massacre” is a really strong installment of Freak Show, exemplifying the season’s best strengths and addressing many of its weaknesses. Most importantly, it hits exactly the right mark of weirdness, while still balancing it with both horror and thoughtful drama. At its best, Freak Show can keep all of these balls in the air, and become wildly entertaining as a result. At its worst, those balls wind up scattered across the floor. Luckily, for now at least, Freak Show is at its best.

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.

Perhaps unavoidably, “Red Rose” is a step down from the preceding episode. Not only is there still one more episode through which to stretch the series’ denouement, but it’s also just plain impossible to maintain the emotional highs that we’ve just reached for what would amount to nearly three hours of television. Season arcs come in peaks and valleys, and for the bulk of its running time, “Red Rose” has to function as a valley. But even if last episode was any kind of equivalent to Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias,” “Red Rose” is no “Granite State,” no matter how very hard it’s trying to be.

The problem is that Sons of Anarchy’s valleys are very rarely interesting, and so, when we’re asked to spend multiple scenes pondering the re-mapping of gang territories throughout the improbably massive town of Charming, it’s pretty hard to actually care a whit about it. Peaks and valleys is one thing, but after the total wreckage of “Suits of Woe”, going back to business as fucking usual is a bigger letdown than usual.

At least there appears to be a purpose beyond simply explicating the mechanics of gang politics. As I see it there is a two-fold question here. First, why are all of these men still listening to Jax Teller, when they are all perfectly aware that his latest string of decision making has blown up all of their lives into all-out war? Because, this time, he promises everything will be great? That’s all the reasoning he has to offer, and they all still buy it. Jax has convinced everyone (and, more importantly, has convinced himself) that he is bringing some sort of beautiful revolution to organized crime, which is more than a little insane.

Now at this point I might throw my hands up in despair. (My notes from about halfway through the episode read, verbatim: OH MY GOD THEY’RE MARTYRING JAX.) Fortunately, though, the episode is prescient enough to pose a second question: How on earth does Jax Teller still have it in him to live this toxic life? “Red Rose” doesn’t get so far as to offer an answer, but it lays enough groundwork to leave me confident that an answer is coming.

It’s this second question that much of the second half of the episode concerns itself with, and it’s no coincidence that the second half picks up speed considerably. Once Jax finally levels with Unser, the episode returns to that well of Shakespearean inevitability that has been the sole driving force behind this season. Jax’s redemption tour, such as it is, is shaping up to be more of a suicide mission, and while that looks a whole lot like martyring at the end of the day, it still leaves room for the idea that Jax himself is irredeemable; that the only thing left is for him to die.

Of course I get to say this because, this week, Jax murders Wayne Unser in cold blood. Unser has since the beginning been the show’s moral arbiter, a narrative conscience, lingering around through losing his badge, through cancer, through complete and utter superfluity, if only to remind us that, yes, Jax isn’t the great guy he thinks he is. The character has gone astray (to put it mildly) over the course of the series, and even in this last season, he didn’t have as much to do as one might have liked—why, for instance, was he not permitted to discover the truth about Tara on his own? Would that not have had more dramatic weight? But regardless, the final standoff tonight between him and Jax is a suitable, appropriate end for the character.

I absolutely love the long sequence at Gemma’s childhood home. Unser’s arrival is pitch perfect, a would-be heroic moment, starring a sad sack old man and the violent psychopath he’s hopelessly in love with. For her part, Gemma creeps around the edges of the episode as a ghost, and even when Unser and Jax converge on her, she’s already gone; this, too, is her design, and she sees exactly how this must end. After Unser’s death, Jax and Gemma talk, but there are no histrionics. A moment that could easily have been overplayed, been melodramatic or even operatic, is instead chillingly, depressingly normal. Gemma and Jax may as well be discussing groceries.

Obviously, though, the big event of this episode is Jax putting a bullet through his mother’s head. The framing of this scene in the garden is perfect, Gemma facing away from her son, and therefore from all of the damage she has done. Her insistence that it was all for his benefit, all to save the family, rings hollow, because it is addressed to the void before her. “This is who we are,” she says as she basically instructs her son to kill her. Charlie Hunnam gives a season-best performance as Jax gears up over and over again to kill Gemma, each time leveling the gun at her only to drop it again. When he finally convinces himself to pull the trigger, it’s an act of violence that still manages to be sudden, and Sons’ unflinching approach to violence means we hold on Gemma’s face as the bullet flies out from her forehead. It is not as dramatic, not as gruesome, a death as Gemma likely deserved by this point—but it is fittingly tragic, the death we knew must come all along.

But no matter how good this scene is—and it’s really, truly great, seven seasons in the making, and carrying all that weight of expectation without once buckling under it—great scenes like this can’t exist in a vacuum, yet that’s what I feel like Sons constantly expects. The pacing of this season has been an absolute mess, and, “Suits of Woe” mostly excepted, every single episode has suffered for it, no matter how many great scenes or performances or shots they contain. That’s not to say there was room in last week’s episode for any or all of the events of this week’s. In fact it feels perfect to me to have Jax’s killing of Gemma as a separate beat. But knowing that something needs to happen at the end of episode 12 does not absolve one from writing the rest of episode 12, and that’s pretty much exactly what has happened here, and what happens on this show constantly.

So we face the finale with nothing left but to learn what Jax’s endgame is. We are basically guaranteed more politicking, more red herrings and fakeouts and needlessly extensive plotting, because Kurt Sutter and company are operating under the mistaken assumption that these plots are interesting in and of themselves. And we go into the finale with most of the remaining interesting characters already killed (more on that in the Strays). What possibly is left to cover? Who knows? But even if it’s only in fits and starts, from “Red Rose” it is already clear that Sons of Anarchy will ultimately be known as an epic tragedy, occasionally moving, frequently frustrating, sometimes human. If you’ve come this far, then those moments will still satisfy.

Stray Observations

• Another week, another scene of Juice getting raped. I had hoped that at the end of all this he might get his revenge on Jax, and perhaps the fact that I hoped that at all speak to some success on the storytelling’s part. That he dies, essentially sacrificing himself to protect the MC one more time, is tragic in its own right, but is so removed from the character-based conflicts that would make that tragedy really hit home that the overall effect is diminished. Juice has been on borrowed time since failing to hang himself, way back in season four, and his series arc ultimately took him to the exact same point. That’s a whole lot of middle for such a delayed payoff.
• Guest star palooza! Michael Chiklis popping up in a surprise guest role is pretty fantastic, and he and Katey Sagal get along brilliantly. Ditto Charisma Carpenter, who while perhaps not as recognizable of a name, does an equally good job of bringing weight to an otherwise minor role. Both characters are there for Gemma to bounce off more than anything else, but if you’re going to do this sort of story with the character, then it’s absolutely a smart move to fill these one-off roles with character actors who will make them mean something.
• Notice how Gemma and Jax use the same logic to justify Jury and Tara’s murders, respectively.
• Now presenting the Sons of Anarchy in The Return of the Terrible Irish Accents and the Interminable Montage
• Did Theo Rossi Show His Ass? Charlie Hunnam will be handling all man-ass duties forthwith. RIP Juice.
• We don’t speak of Anarchy Afterword in these parts, but if anyone did happen to catch it, please tell me someone uttered the phrase, “It was the right time for Gemma to go,” so that I can cackle wildly.

Parenthood really could have gone out for the year on a better note. “Lean In” is a middling episode at best, with stories that are repetitive, grating, and frustrating. As much as I love Sarah and Hank, it’s a rough week indeed when their portion of the show is the sole highlight of the episode.

“Frustrating” really is the best word for how I felt after finishing this episode. It’s not bad, per se, but it simply fails to deliver on any of the promise of Parenthood—fails to deliver on the promise of the season, of the series, of the characters, of it all. “Lean In” is at turns lazy, manipulative, and clichéd, but worst of all is the complete lack of awareness on the part of its characters. The various Bravermans act like real assholes this week, but we’re meant to root for them all the same. This is always true of Adam and Kristina, but here the problem is especially egregious where they are concerned, and it bleeds over into most of the other stories, as well.

It’s an occasionally problematic fact of the series that Parenthood’s characters occupy a bubble of white, upper-middle class SoCal privilege. But “Lean In” is written from within that same bubble, and it makes for some truly unsatisfying storytelling. Take for example Adam and Kristina’s story this week, which has them confronting Dylan’s parents over their decision to pull Dylan out of Chambers. Last time I wrote about Parenthood I defended the narrative decision to place Max’s parents in the school environment with him, but this week it becomes an awful mess. It’s a terrible idea for parents to supervise their children at school, but that doesn’t mean it can’t generate interesting conflict. The script for “Lean In,” though, just makes Adam and Kristina out to be schmucks. Well, more so than usual, at any rate. Kristina’s speech to Max last week was heartfelt and touching; this week, her insistence that Max was not harassing Dylan is wrongheaded and, frankly, insane.

What’s worst is that the whole thing is resolved by a family meeting, in which Max apologizes to Dylan for making her feel uncomfortable, and everyone more or less hugs it out. The whole thing takes a complex issue (actually, several complex issues) and reduces them to a pat, trite conclusion that lifts up the Bravermans without them having to actually address the flaws in either their administration or their parenting. Max learns a lesson and that’s great, but after some great, nuanced handling of this situation, the show really biffs the landing here.

As bad as all that is, the bits with Julia and Joel are even worse. If Kristina and Adam’s parenting this week is misjudged, then Joel’s romantic overtures are flat out insane. Joel is a creep this week, period, but the show plays up this latest development with maximum melodrama, an excruciating point that the overbearing score during their lunch scene drives home. It’s basically the second act climax of a Lifetime movie up in here. Which isn’t to say that Sam Jaeger isn’t great as Joel, but neither he nor Erika Christensen can make this dreck romantic.

It is as always a problem of perspective. The show has never been particularly interested in Joel as a character, which means that the divorce story has been pretty heavily weighted toward Julia. As a study of divorce and its many different phases, and the effect it has on not just the couple, but their families as well, the story has until now worked just fine. It was about Julia, and Joel was an object in it (the same way that Chris, Sydney, Victor and even Zeek have been). But now, this turnaround of Joel’s is thoroughly unbelievable, and so is Julia’s conflicted nature as a result. As for the story’s totally shocking and not at all stupid cliffhanger conclusion, the less said the better. How lazy and reverse engineered can a plot really be? Like with Adam and Kristina, the writing takes something interesting and new and takes it to the most unsurprising, uninteresting place possible.

But the show tops itself even in this regard! After a story with Zeek and Drew that is literally a repeat of the previous one, the episode closes on Zeek having another incident in bed, begging Camille to call an ambulance. Now of course this scene was spoiled by the crack team at NBC’s promotional department, so any potential impact it might have had is entirely out the window. By the time the episode ends you are basically rolling your eyes. I understand the logic behind ending the season here, especially since we began here as well, with Zeek’s health problems, and it’s a fine way to go about things, but it’s hard to be too surprised or affected by a “twist” we literally saw coming a week ago.

It’s a disappointing conclusion to the fall season, sadly. There are still bizarre pacing decisions, with Mae Whitman and Dax Shepard once again taking the week off; there are stories that are repeated wholesale from previous episodes; and there is just lazy, rote, cliché storytelling for too much of the time. The usual charm of the actors, even, is mostly lost, whether amid Zeek’s unnecessary gruffness with Drew, or Joel’s inappropriate declarations of love, or Kristina and Adam’s unbridled asshattery. Here’s to hoping for a stronger back half.

Stray Observations

• Sarah and Mark’s brief reunion here is nice, even if Jason Ritter is being trotted out as a “road not taken” for Sarah and not much else. That’s much better than him serving as the third point of a triangle, which is why I’d feared. It’s a nice enough story on that level, then, further solidifying that Sarah and Hank are for real, Betsy Brandt notwithstanding.
• Did Drew Holt get a haircut? No. He has been very busy studying.
• Well, you have Thanksgiving and suddenly it’s been two weeks since Parenthood aired! Sorry for the delay in getting this up—you’ll understand my reluctance to think about this episode any further, surely.

“There is but one rule. Hunt or be hunted. Welcome back.”

Welcome back indeed. House of Cards revealed the release date of season 3 with a special message from the White House. The entirety of the season will be released on February 27th of next year.

A special message from the White House.https://t.co/YxFcHfA5qy

— House of Cards (@HouseofCards) December 1, 2014