American Horror Story Hotel 5.12 Review: Be Our Guest

At the end of last week's superb episode, 'Battle Royale, I wondered whether or not American Horror Story Hotel and any further story to tell. Unfortunately, 'Be Our Guest', made it abundantly clear it did not.

Iris and Liz (the only two left living), were desperately attempting to re-vamp the hotel to get more clients but those pesky ghosts kept murdering all their guests, particularly Sally and Will for some reason. Neither were willing to stop killing, wither, until March stepped in and told them all they needed to do was to ensure that the Hotel Cortez was still standing by 2026 (100 years after being built) so that it could qualify to be a world heritage sight, ensuring that they all lived forever. But first they had to convince them to stop murdering people. Cue twenty minutes wasted on two characters I didn't care about getting happy endings. Sally fell in love with the inter webs and became a social media star somehow, and Will entrusted Liz to be the spokesperson for his fashion label outside of the Cortez. And I guess that meant they were back to having avant-garde runway shows while a cover version of 'Nights in White Satin' was playing, so yay?

Despite all their success Liz was still down about Tristan not turning up to have ghost sex with him after dying so Iris hired Billie Dean Howard (a television psychic) to communicate with him. Tristan didn't want to talk though, but Billie got in touch with Donovan instead who said that his heaven was Iris' pancakes. Cue Iris' happy ending. After being apart of the joy that is cutting the umbilical cord of your granddaughter, Liz announced to all her ghost pals at the Cortez some time later that she was ding from prostate cancer (now that was funny!) and wanted them to kill her so that she could eternally live in the hotel with her 'family'. It was all very touching, especially when The Countess, who no one had seen in years, showed up to kindly do the honours and kill her. With her corpse barely cold, Tristan showed up to welcome her to the afterlife. Cue Liz's happy ending.

Billie Dean's involvement in the hotel however, with her three television specials, have started to bring unwanted guests to the hotel (these ghosts are so picky!) so on one Devil's Night John tells Iris to invite Billie to speak with him as he has been of interest to her for sometime. John explains to her what happened to him and his family after the end of his Ten Commandments killings, explaining that he Alex and Holden moved into the hotel while Scarlett went away to boarding school (with Will's son no less), until John was shot dead by the police one day outside of the hotel. John brings Billie as a party favour to Devil's night where him, March, and the other serial killers tell her to never mention the Cortez to anyone ver again or she would be tracked down and killed by Romana. Later that night, an adult Scarlett comes and visits her undead family as they sleep. Cue a happy ending for the Lowe's!

March described the Ten Commandment killings as an epilogue to his years of murder early in the episode, and much like that storyline, Hotel's final episode ultimately came across as hazardous, and ultimately unnecessary. Did these specific characters need such final (happy, nonetheless) moments in audiences eyes? I think if I ever re-watch the series I'll think as last week as the finale.

Rating: 2.5/5

American Horror Story: Hotel 5.11 Review - Battle Royale

In a series like American Horror Story in which several characters can die and come back to life in the span of an episode it's always hard to build anticipation with life-threatening cliffhangers. So when, at the end 'She Gets Revenge', Iris and Liz burst into The Countess' room guns a-blazing an observant AHS viewer would probably have assumed that The Countess would survive. And she did (and miraculously managed to crawl out of the room somehow), but poor Donovan did not, and before he died from the bullet wounds his mother accidentally inflicted on him he asked her to drag him out of the Cortez before he would to live there eternally as a ghost. It was a tender moment for the pairs confusingly under-developed relationship considering the amount of drama it's caused over the season. Am I sad that Donovan died? Not really, no. Much like the relationship his mother, his character motivations changed drastically episode to episode, so he was very hard to like.

What worked so well for this episode though is that all it's characters seemed to have a singular goal -  albeit with varying motivations - that The Countess had to die, and it made for compelling viewing. So yes, with Sally's help, and the blood of her baby vampires The Countess was able to survive. Sally wanted her to lure John back to the hotel so that be could be killed and forced to stay there with her forever, and that was after telling her and giving us a painful flashback to 1933 where she sewed herself to a couple before they unfortunately overdosed. But much like us, The Countess was not very interested in Sally's problems. One of her favourite boyfriends (the only surviving one at this stage, so I guess he was important) had been murdered and she had to kill her own children to live. She was not in a good place, and props to Lady Gaga who has been great all season, but definitely brought it in 'Battle Royale'.

Iris (after briefly mourning her son by rolling around on the bed with his ashes) and Liz stayed in the hotel despite knowing that The Countess would come for them once she had healed, but I guess they thought they would be fine once they freed Ramona and got her to help them kill her. Unfortunately Ramona was very malnourished from being trapped in that cement hallway with only vampire children as food, and also wasn't very happy with Iris for helping putting her there, so her and Liz had to go out in search for food. But as tends to happen with the Hotel Cortez, guests seem to arrive just as someone decides they need to do some murdering, and this time the victim was none other than Coven's Queenie. Although overall this episode was great I could potentially go into great detail here about the writers tarnishing previous seasons of AHS by haphazardly inserting a major character from Coven and unceremoniously killing her off here, but I won't. After some forced exposition about witch bloodlines and her voodoo doll nature March is able to kill her (because he cannot be harmed) and Ramona gains insumountable strength for drinking her blood. It turns out Match too wants The Countess dead - so that they can finally be together instead of having dinner once a month.
Ramona confronts The Countess in her suite and flirtatious, yet threatening, banter ensued between the two until a mournful Countess apologised for all the horrible things she had done to Romana and offered the Hotel Cortez to her as compensation, which Ramona agreed to for some reason (SHE DIDN"T EVEN NEED WITCH POWERS AFTER ALL THAT! QUEEN DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE). All The Countess wanted to do was take her son and leave the Cortez behind.

Elsewhere, John and Alex's poor attempt to have a normal family by keeping their never-aging son aware from grandma's eyes and kidnapping randoms to bring home to eat was put on hold when John returned home to only a Hotel Cortez key waiting for him. He goes to the Hotel and Sally tells him March kidnapped his family for breaking his promise and not fulfilling his Twelve Commandment killings, he still needs a 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder' trophy, and it beautifully fitting act he guns down The Countess as she is about to leave the hotel. It's the sort of moment the season was rockingly building towards, The Countess being the final victim of the Twelve Commandments killer, and I don't think its a moment that'll be surpassed in the remaining episodes.

Although it didn't really need it, 'Battle Royale's final scene was a revealing epilogue as March tries to ensure that Ms. Evers helps him accommodate The Countess, who is now a fully formed ghost. March tells The Countess he forgives her for turning her in all those years ago but its okay because they're together now. Ms. Evers cracks, telling The Countess she should have died outside of the hotel and telling March that it was her who tipped the police off about him all those years ago - knowing that he would kill himself rather then get caught. He is dumbfounded and banishes her from his sight, but returns to a cheerier mood as he toasts to his and The Countess her (after)life together while she cries.

It was a surpassingly fact-paced and emotional episode overall, but I'm worried that after this there is little for AHS Hotel to do. John is not that interesting a character, we don't really care what happens to his family, and I can't imagine March's plans for him are all that exciting. Iris, Liz, and Ramona have sort of been extraneous characters all season and they all lack motivation now that The Countess is technically dead. And everyone else is just resentful ghosts, surely there's not too much they can do? Although, as 'Battle Royale' expressed, AHS does still have the ability to surprise us.

Rating: 4/5

American Horror Story 3.13 Review: The Seven Wonders

American Horror Story: Coven concluded its season this week with the witches of said coven undertaking trails, or 'The Seven Wonders', in order to determine their new Supreme, and the tension between each of the candidates, as well as the allure of the successor's reveal made for an entertaining first half of the episode.

The girls first had to use their telepathy to move candlesticks, and then coercion to manipulate one another, and there was plenty of bitchiness and snark to go around, particularly between Madison and Zoe. Then the girls had to undertaken descensum, having their soul travel to hell and then return. Queenie returned from her personal hell first, having already visited herself behind the counter at PLACE with a line of customers as far as the eye can see in last week's episode 'Go To Hell'. She was soon followed by Madison, who had to endure playing a supporting role in a live network production of a musical, and Zoe, who had to endure Kyle breaking up with her over and over again. Their hell experiences were played for laughs, but I would have preferred a much more in-depth and abstract exploration in which we got to see each witch have to fight their way through their personal hells to return to their bodies. Misty's personal hell was a perfect encapsulation of her character, having revived a toad, and then being forced to kill the live reptile over and over again by a biology teacher. It was a poignant end for such an uplifting character, but her innocence and squirminess was also a significant reason why she would never make a good Supreme, and thus, Misty day died, unable to return from hell.

Cordelia was surprisingly anguished at her demise, considering she was the newest addition to the coven, and therefore the witch she knew the least. The others, however, were eager to continue with the wonders and were soon participating is a lively game of transmutation tag throughout the grounds of the academy, despite the calls of Cordelia and Myrtle for caution. For good reason too, for seconds later Zoe accidentally transmutated back into reality and impaled herself on the gates of the academy, which at least provided the opportunity for the remaining two witches, Madison and Queenie, to perform vitalis vitalum and bring Zoe back to life. Unfortunately Queenie was unable to revive her, and Madison, unwilling to revive Zoe back into the running to be the Supreme, revived a fly to prove her worth, and crowned herself the new Supreme of the coven. Cordelia and Myrtle was smart enough to know that Madison would serve about a good a Supreme as Fiona never did, but the notion it took them to get into such a dire situation until the considered Cordelia to be a possible candidate for the title was overdue.

Nonetheless, Cordelia quickly got to work undertaking the trails, and soon enough not only had she caught up with Madison, but had successfully demonstrated her skills in divination, a task that Madison was unable to perform. And Madison was very annoyed about this, promptly decided she was done with the coven and threatened to reveal them to the world. Cordelia and the others seemed non-plussed at yet another one of Madison's bitchy outbursts, and proceeded with the trails by reviving Zoe. Kyle, however, was not too happy about Madison leaving Zoe to die before this point, and strangled her before she had a chance to pack her bags and leave the academy. Considering the amount of power she seemed to have earlier in this episode, death by zombie strangulation seems unrealistic, but then again, what doesn't in American Horror Story? Madison definitely got what she deserved, but I found her death underwhelming, and Spalding's sudden reappearance to help Kyle hide the body was just unnecessary and confusing. Madison's death did provide a nice juxtaposition with Zoe's revival and Cordelia subsequent completion of the Seven Wonders, looking as radiant and refreshed as ever (including a new set of eyes), having become the new Supreme. Good on her, she was definitely the character most deserving of the title, having lost the most for the coven throughout this season.

Unfortunately the episode lost much of its allure once the Seven Wonders were completed and the rest of the episode served as an overly-long and tedious epilogue to the series. Apparently Madison's idea to reveal witches to the world wasn't such a bad one in Cordelia's eyes since she held a television interview in the academy announcing the existence of witches to the world and asking any girls possessing powers to come and see them. This didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I guess the series was trying to demonstrate that after the destruction of the witch hunters, the voodoo witches, and the witches among the coven that posed a threat, that they had nothing left to die from. Myrtle's sudden desire to be burned at the stake (again) for the murders of her fellow witches also made zero sense, since her actions, although against the rules of the coven, indirectly led to it being saved. But Myrtle's theory was out with the old and in with the new, so back to the stake she went.

Speaking of people coming back from the dead only to die again (was this really not the major theme of this season?), back at the academy Fiona, who was thought dead at the hands of the Axeman, revealed herself to Cordelia. Fiona told Cordelia about her ploy to let the coven think she was dead by implanting a false memory in the Axeman, letting the coven kill him, and then returning once the new Supreme had risen so that Fiona could finally kill them and stay alive. Cordelia proposed that it would be difficult to kill her daughter, but I think the only reason Fiona couldn't do it is because she had just grown too weak. I wasn't really emotionally invested in Fiona's passing or her heart to heart with Cordelia, their relationship has felt very one-note and underdeveloped all season, so there was no reason I would suddenly buy into it now. But that being said, Fiona's hell was on par with the excellence of Misty's; forced to endure an eternity of being the housewife of the Axeman, a perfect vision of the life she promised to him that they'd build together.

For a series and a season that thrives on the allure of the unexpected and crazy, American Horror Story produced a rather conventional, and rather happy, ending, and could have benefited from a little more of the bizarre nature of the shown viewers have grown accustom to.

Rating: 3/5

American Horror Story Asylum 2.13 Review: Madness Ends

While Lana kept her promise to close down Briarcliff, becoming a renowned television journalist to do so, the fact that it took her so long, and that she only did it to further her career made this episode difficult to watch. During an interview discussing her long career Lana spouts large amounts of exposition about what has happened to her, and the rest of the characters, since she shut down the asylum, and she does her best to play the role of the martyr as she does so. We discover that Kit, unlike Lana, was still a decent human being and went and retrieved Sister Jude from the asylum and invited her into his home. While the gesture was nice and all seeing Kit and Jude play happy family was difficult to comprehend having watched what had happened between these two throughout the season. Not to mention Kit's alien spawn, who not only took Jude into the forest and inexplicably healed her crazy before her death, but who also abduct Kit right before his own death of pancreatic cancer. His children are now a neurosurgeon and a lawyer, respectively, and apparently this is all the closure audiences are going to get from that alien storyline. Lana also took time to take down Cardinal Timothy Howard by exposing his knowledge of Dr. Arden's experiments at the asylum, and while I understand the need for Lana to put a face to the crimes that went on at Briarcliff, Howard wasn't all that bad, and I don't see why his life ended in a suicide, while characters like Jude and even Lana herself got very happy endings. The final standoff between Lana and her son Bloody Face Jr. was underwhelming, Lana was able to convince Johnny that she really does love him and is sorry, but Lana has become such a different character from the one we met at the beginning of the season that when she shoots her son in the head it's not all that shocking that she has done so.

Rating: 2/5