So can we just all agree that we’ve crossed that line in the season where this show now sucks? Did anyone seriously enjoy this episode? I was BORED. Wes Bentley drives me up the fucking wall. All the stupid exposition drives me up the fucking wall. I’m so far up the wall I’m like that freaky baby from Trainspotting.
Is the season over yet???
This is episode 8 and there are THIRTEEN episodes and I am so over this show and they’ve renewed it for 2016. Someone PLEASE make sure I don’t sign up for this next year.
Let’s get this over with:
We’re back on the street where the Killer Kid that Agent Coop broke out of jail has just gotten splatted by a giant truck. Witnesses are shocked that she’s dead, like WTF she’s about 50 lbs and got hit by a speeding truck. Seeing her lying in the street makes Coop suddenly remember he’s also seen her lying in a glass coffin back at the hotel.
Coop hustles back there and demands that Liz tell him where she is. Liz is like Whatever Dude, them Demon Blondies are a dime a dozen. Coop tries to make Liz tell him and, LOL, Liz just grabs his arms and pushes him right across the room threatening to cut a bitch if Coop touches him again. Stupid crying Hypo Sally breaks things up. Coop demands to be shown the Ten Commandments Killer and his acting is just about as bad as Gaga’s. Liz and Sally exchange a look and Sally says Fine then, I’ll show you but don’t forget you asked for it.
Hypo Sally takes him to Room 64 and says there are answers on the other side of the door. They go inside and we start our 45 minutes of goddamn exposition again. Room 64 was James March’s office which we already know. He died there on February 25 at 2:25am. She tells Coop to push aside the giant 700lb armoire to find his answers. He does, because Agent Coop is super strong, ya’ll, and finds the vault door. He opens it (it’s not even locked) and discovers:
So I guess Ryan Murphy saved some money by re-using props from AHS Freakshow. There are ten displays, all labeled with a commandment, which we already know, but we have to listen to Sally explain every detail anyway because Murphy doesn’t want to waste any energy writing an actual story.
Yeah, she says, there were 90 years between two of the killings, but that’s because it took that long to find a successor. She shows him the eyes and tongue from episode one, and Coop says Not Possible! he catologued those into evidence himself. Sally just continues, tears streaming down her face but there’s nothing new about that. Coop asks who let the killer in here and Sally cries and says he had a key and then Coop loses his mind. OHHHH NOOOOOOOS. Coop starts having flashbacks and guess who the Ten Commandments Killer is?? That’s right, Twisty the Clown! Oh, just kidding, it’s Coop himself. So now what? We still have five episodes and the rest of this one to get through. Will we finally get to see what’s going on with all the loose vampire children and also Valentino and Wifey?
So now we get what seems like two hours of Coop flashing back on the killings. “It’s you, John,” sobs Crying Sally, “It’s always been you.”
OriginalCyn: “YAAAWN.”
Creepy Credits.
Now Coop is in the morgue where killer girl is all laid out, and his old partner Andy is there. Coop says he’s come to confess, and Andy’s all Whatever Dude, you’re a lunatic. But Coop spends the next hour or so giving him every detail of all the killings anyway.
Los Angeles 2010
So it all started for Coop right after that day when all the kids died from the defective generator (or whatever it was) and then the dad came home and blew his brains out. Coop went out that night to get drunk, which we all knew, then the bars closed and the only place in LA to go was the Hotel Cortez. Liz Taylor is tending bar, and Hypo Sally and Donovan are there drinking. Sally’s interested but Donovan gets in first and invites Coop to a party upstairs.
Upstairs, Mr. March is having his once-a-month dinner with the Countess. Donovan rings with Coop in tow, and the Countess answers the door. Mr. March has a goddamn tantrum at having dinner with his wife interrupted, but brightens up when Donovan tells him Coop is a cop who’s had a really bad day. “Did you kill anyone? Was there blood? Were people screaming? Can you share every detail, please, please, pretty please??”
Well sure, Coop would love to tell the whole story all over again for the second time in five minutes! And you know what makes Mr. March happy?
People who tell murder stories.
Coop wants a drink so March shoos everyone else away and serves up the absinthe. March yaks about the Good Old Days, then explains that he’s learned how to read auras, and Coop’s is black as the ace of spades. This is Los Angeles, so Coop is just all “Cool.” March says his aura means he can get shit done without fear of judgment, and also that he likes to dominate and control the people around him. They have a conversation about doing bad in order to do good, like maybe roughing up a suspect who’s already in cuffs. Banter-banter, then Coop suddenly is all “I’m BATMAN!” and says if they let the leash off him crime would totally go down in this city! And March thinks WOO HOOO! I gotz a certified crazy to do my work for me!
So they sipped absinthe and talked and philosophized for two days straight, until finally Coop is passed out on a hotel bed. March tells the Countess that Coop is for sure The One, just a bucketful of murderous rage ready to be set loose on the world. The Countess says No way, he won’t do it, “He still has Hope.” March shows her Coop’s wallet photo of the family, and the little blonde boy who needs a haircut. “He just needs a push into the dark side,” says March.
So Coop wakes up in his car in front of the house, and has no memory of anything. He just assumed he’d been blackout drunk for three days. Inside the house, Mommy Chloe doesn’t give a single fuck where he’s been. Holden runs in and Coop promises to take them all to the carnival at the beach that afternoon. Dun Dun DUNNNNN.
So after Holden disappeared, Coop figured the only place he felt comfortable was at the hotel. So he started splitting time between family and Mr. March for five years. Laundress Evers serves up some foie gras.
“It’s surprising how delicious a little cruelty can taste.”
“His voice was like a sliver of silk thread,” Coop says of March, “a thin strand that would wrap around my head before burrowing inside me with his ideas.”
WHO TALKS LIKE THAT.
March tells Coop he needs to release some of his pain, that he’s restricted by the laws he’s sworn to uphold. He takes him to his trophy room and shows him the head of his accountant, who was not only stealing from him but also had a horrific case of halitosis. “You’re a monster,” gravel-whispers Coop, “I’m gonna report this.” OOOOH I bet Mr. March is so scared. Yeah, Mr. Marsh is all Whatevs, it’s time you released some of that stress by murderizing some peeps.
Back at work, Coop is pissed cuz some murderer got off on a technicality. We see him meet back up with Mr. March and then we jump to:
Los Angeles 2015
Coop is meeting up with March again, on the 10th birthday of the missing Holden. Coop’s all down on the legal system and all the bad guys getting off and it’s not like a cop in L.A. can even beat a suspect to death like in the old days. Well, at least not without someone catching it on their damn smart phones anyway.
So March starts telling him about a man who brought his ten year old “nephew” to the hotel for a weekend of fun and amusement parks.
Uncle Jared was fun even before he started eating at Subway
But then Laundress Evers found a bunch of polaroids when she changed the sheets. March says the guy already checked out yesterday.
Oh we’re back in the morgue now, I completely forgot Coop was telling this story to Andy. Andy remembers this particular case because he worked it with Coop, but Coop explains that the whole pedophile story was just made up by Ryan Murphy so Coop would have a reason to be pissed, but it doesn’t fit a commandment so he also did this OTHER crime…
Coop answers the guy’s Craigslist ad to buy an Oscar statue. But instead of cash, Coop hands him the polaroid pics. What kind of pedophile forgets to take his polaroids with him?? Coop starts ranting and raving about tenth birthdays and shame on you etc., then takes the Oscar and bashes his head in. I believe that scenario counted as “Do not worship false idols”, the second commandment. So Coop loses his mind and goes back to the hotel to hang himself in the bathroom.
If only he’d succeeded. I’d be in bed watching Top Chef right now instead of this.
But Sally, “Sally was always there, like a shadow dancing at the corner of your eye,” like get over yourself Ryan Murphy. “She wormed her way in, the way smoke gets into your clothes… She was a bottomless pit of need.” Somebody please make it stop. Somebody bring me a vodka tonic, hold the tonic please. So anyway, at some point he’d started boffing Sally. In bed post-coitus one day they were watching the preacher shilling for dough on the old telly, and that’s how he got the idea for the next killing. So I guess we’re seriously going to go through each and every single murder.
Anyway, back to Coop almost succeeding at killing himself… Mr. March cut him down. He yells at Sally for not helping, as she was just sitting on the bed the entire time, and he says she can’t have Coop “yet”, and references their “little arrangement” again. And as he yells at her, look who makes an appearance!
We’ve missed you, Moist Paper Mache Guy!
Mr. March is yelling something about “this demon” that she and her kind had conjured with their “diseased acts” must feed, “If not on others, than on you, Dear Sally.” Okay, so this is supposed to be the whole explanation for Moist Paper Mache Guy I guess. Anyway, Sally is afraid that Coop will die “out there” so Mr. March tells her to be a smart girl and find someone who can move out in the world with him.
Now, Sally was out and about on Halloween, and the Countess and Donovan went out killing all the time, and Valentino and Wifey are all out of the hotel, plus those Demon Blondies… so why the hell can’t Mr. March do some killing of his own? Why does Coop have to be The Successor?
Deep breath, Cyn, deep breath.
So Andy pulls a photo out of his pocket and asks Coop if his “accomplice” looks like this chick. Coop says Hey, Yeah! That’s Hypo Sally! And Andy explains that Sally McKenna jumped out of a window at the Cortez in 1994. So why is Andy carrying around a photo of a rando dead girl from 1994?? “She’s been dead for more than twenty years, Coop!” says Andy. “Exactly!” says Cyn. WTF with Andy and his dead chick pics.
So, onward. When Coop is away from the hotel, he can’t remember anything about Sally. “The hotel is a jealous mistress,” says Sally. So why can’t he remember murdering people either?
Mr. March congratulates Coop for releasing some of his pain, and making the world a better place in the process. Time to head back to the vault to see the Commandments display! But only two cases have displays because March hardly got to any himself. I guess the theory then is that he couldn’t finish because he was killed. Buuuuuut…. every single other person can go out killing… Okay forget it. March tells Coop to continue on with his work, and to make himself head detective on the case so he’ll never get caught, to do it for his “only begotten son.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll be Batman.”
Back at the morgue again, Andy ain’t buying what Coop is selling. But we see a flashback to the scene of that first murder when Andy is talking to Coop about maybe being too stressed out after Holden’s disappearance. Andy says he had coffee with Mommy Chloe and Mommy Chloe said she was worried about Coop. Coop gets all dark and gloomy and Batman whispers “You had coffee with my wife. You had coffee. With my wife?”
We flash to the hotel when Sally tells Coop about the adultery couple. So Coop gives all the details of how he did that crime, and I’m not jotting down every detail but don’t worry it doesn’t even matter. Nothing matters. Andy is still arguing with Coop about the impossibility of it all, and Coop is still confessing detail after detail. Andy’s all Why couldn’t you remember any of this until now?? Dude, you didn’t do it, you’re just crazy! “I know you, Brother, and you are a lot of things but you are no killer.”
Coop graps a giant knife from the morgue carving table and shoves it into Andy. “Thou shalt not covet the neighbor’s wife, Andy. It’s one of the Ten Commandments.” Really, Coop? The guy had coffee with your wife and you have to carve his guts up? “Admit what you’ve done and I’ll show you some mercy.”
“You don’t deserve her.”
So Coop shoves the knife right through Andy’s heart.
Back at the hotel, Coop walks through the lobby holding a bloody paper bag. He goes up to Bates at the desk and she’s all Helloooo, Officer! but Coop says Hey! I know who I am now! I’ve been a guest here for five years!
WAHOOOO! exclaims Bates. She says it’s been exhausting pretending all these years.
“I wasn’t ready,” says Coop.
“Are we ever ready to see ourselves for who we really are?” Bates asks pseudo-profoundly.
Bates had wanted to just tell him the truth so many times, but didn’t want to add to his hurt. Coop says he has no regrets except for Killer Kid. But Bates says that kid ain’t Coop’s fault, it’s all on Sally.
Protect my boo, Kiddo!
Coop is shocked that Killer Kid was trying to protect him [great job she was doing from the inside of a psych ward jail cell], and Bates says “I guess in some twisted way we all were.” This is all sounding like the end of a very special ABC After School Special movie. We’ve all learned our lessons, now it’s almost dinner!
Bates tells him to walk away and leave everything behind, that he can do that. Any reason why she couldn’t have urged him to do that before? But no, Coop wants “the key to Room 64. I’m Batman.” Pleeeeeease can we give up the Batman voice.
He meets Mr. March up in the display room to view the newest entry, “Thou shalt not covet.”
Yes, it’s Andy’s cock in there.
March asks Coop what’s different about him now, and Coop Batmans “Clarity.” And March creams all over himself because “Death… is your art… I stand in awe of your talent. But what will you do with it?”
“Two more,” says Batman. I mean, Coop.
March is psyched that his masterpiece is going to be completed, and they hug. AWWWWW.
Jeezus Christ this is awful.
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