American Horror Story 5.06

It’s American Horror Story episode 666: Mark of the Beast, and boy is he probably in a bar somewhere getting sloshed over how this show portrays him. Anyway let’s break it down by storyline:

Lady Gaga

We start with a flashback to 1926 where Lady Gaga is paying a visit to the Murder House of Season one. Apparently she’s 3 weeks pregnant(She looks about 7 months) and in need of an abortion, So she enlists the help of Dr. Montgomery who gladly obliges. He performs the abortion but the baby is still alive and munches on the doctors assistant. The doctor then presents the “baby” to Lady Gaga.

In the present Lady Gaga is still attempting to seduce Will Drake but is failing (Him being gay and all) so she calls in a reluctant Tristan to do the job.

She then pays a visit to room 33 where the baby (who’s name we later learn is Bartholomew) apparently resides saying that she’s going to Paris and going to solve her money problems (with murder, though not this week).

Lady Gaga, Will, and his son come back from their trip and Liz tells Lady Gaga about him and Tristan (see below). They plead with her to let them be together, with Lady Gaga finally saying that Tristan is Liz’s, Liz’s to bury that is as she slashes Tristan’s throat and leaves him bleeding out on the floor in Liz’s arms.

Lady Gaga ends the episode visiting Bartholomew and discovering Alex with him who tells her that he got hurt and she fixed him. Lady Gaga thanks Alex and we close out the episode with a view of Bartholomew’s face; which is missing both eyes, some teeth, and has a cleft palate.

Lady Gaga had a bit more to do this week since her storyline involved Tristan and introduced her monster baby Bartholomew, but she was still absent for the middle part of the episode.

Detective Fucked-Up-Sherlock & Dr. Awful

Detective John wakes up to his vampire son in his bed, who then speeds off. John pursues him and finds the coffins in the basement including one with his wife and son. He wakes them up which makes him pass out.

Dr. Alex then recruits Liz to dispose of the coffins and convince John that he’s going insane.

Dr. Alex later encounters the Swedish girls from episode one who had just murdered a guy (see below for why). She tells them that she can give them purpose in torturing her husband.

Det. John shows up at another Ten commandments crime scene where a priest has been disemboweled. He then goes back to the hotel for some hallway drinking where he is encountered by Liz. Liz tries to help him back to his room but John rejects him and encounters the Swedish girls who take him back to his room and have sex with him, springing a bloody leak in the process which scares John off down to the lobby, where he has brief conversation with Liz (who is unfazed by the naked bloody man in front of him) before going back up to his room where he finds maid Hazel cleaning the bloody sheets and the Swedish girls leaving his room, having found their purpose. 1920’s Evan Peters shows up for a glorious two seconds before disappearing, and John decides to leave the hotel, failing to notice that Bartholomew snuck into his suitcase.

Back at his house John and Scarlett, who’s upset about Alex forgetting about her and the whole separation situation. Scarlett sees John’s bloody shirt which tips him off that he wasn’t going crazy(er). He then discovers Bartholomew’s presence and attempts to shoot him which fails and scares Scarlett greatly (firing a gun near her and all). Scarlett get’s sent back to her grandmothers and John decides to stay in his house after telling off Alex who had shown up after the shooting. Alex then find Bartholomew and brings him back to the hotel.

Very busy week for these two, Dr. Awful is living up to her name, and John is going insane(er).

Liz Taylor

Liz and Tristan have sex and then have a fairly nice conversation where they reveal that they love each other, before Tristan is called up to service Will.

Liz did get her own storyline this week but aside from the above scene it mostly played out along with the other storylines. (See above and below for details

Ramona & Donovan & Iris

Ramona and Donovan stroll into the hotel to murder the vampire children. Donovan doesn’t want to do it however and heads to up to the penthouse. Ramona and Iris find the pool empty of coffins. They have a conversation about Iris’s new status and Iris heads off to find the kids while Ramona heads to Room 33 to kill Bartholomew, but get’s attacked and fails.

Donovan in the meanwhile smells Lady Gaga’s underwear and encounters the ghosts of the Swedish girls from episode one, he tells them the story of Kara, a school teacher who killed herself and found purpose as a murder spirit who performed water based killing. He tells them that they too need a purpose to stop their anguish.

Ramona and Liz catch up at the bar where Liz tells Ramona that he loves Tristan, though Ramona warns him that Lady Gaga won’t take it well (See above).

The trio’s storyline didn’t last long but it did have a bigger effect on the other storylines.

Analysis

This was a very off the rails episode. Tristan’s dead, we met Lady Gaga’s monster baby, and Detective Fucked-Up-Sherlock continues his downward spiral into madness, not helped by his single minded wife who apparently decided that driving him insane was the better option than bringing him into the fold in some manner. Tristan and Liz’s romance came out of nowhere since neither one had interacted with each other in any of the episodes before this and Tristan’s death just feels like an excuse to give Liz a reason to turn on Lady Gaga. The introduction of Bartholomew also came out of nowhere except for a throwaway comment in the first episode and I’m not sure where that development is going to go. Other than that this was a decent episode, storylines moved forward and that’s always a good thing. Anyway stay tuned for next week when we learn Lady Gaga’s secret origin story.

Miscellaneous

• So I guess the whole story Donovan told the Swedish girls kind of explains Sally’s behavior as a ghost. Her purpose is to have junkies raped and sewn into mattresses apparently.
• I guess that could go for Mr. March too, but he doesn’t act any different. I guess his purpose in life is the same in death.
• So what do we think Naomi Campbell’s purpose will be? Assuming she shows up again that is.
• Ditto for Darren Criss, whose awful hipster character will apparently be sticking around.
• The song that plays during the threesome scene is “One Caress” by Depeche Mode. Thank you again BehindDarkGlasses for knowing music better than I do.
• Now, we’re halfway into the season and we haven’t gotten a single musical number by Lady Gaga. I don’t know about you but I’d call that wasted potential. So until we get one I’m going to include song recommendations on these reviews that vaguely have something to do the episode in question and probably nothing to do with the songs themselves.
• This weeks song recommendation is “Malevolence” by New Years Day, because Jeezus was everyone being a dick this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghh-iSPw7sk

Originally published at deathmaster780.kinja.com.