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
Showing posts with label Hotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hotel. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 January 2016
Thursday, 7 January 2016
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
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
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