This has been one of the more cohesive seasons of American
Horror Story. The themes are varied but
unified under a central character, The Countess. Tonight, we probe deeper into her backstory
while in the present, John struggles with his sanity and new characters emerge
from the dark corners of the Cortez.
The episode opens with workers wielding sledgehammers in the
effort to remodel the Hotel. Drake and
his son survey the work and discuss their future plans. Drake tells Lachlan he’s considering marrying
the Countess. Lachlan is puzzled, “I
thought you liked men?” Drake shrugs and
tells his son adult relationships can be complicated. The construction crew has found an anomaly
with an entire wall reinforced with an inch of steel. Drake asks them to tear
it down. When the workers break through
one man complains it seems horrible, like death. A shadow passes down the hallway. The men find
rat carcasses. Decomposing vampires rush
to the men and bite at their necks, killing them. The couple is dressed in twenties attire and
their eyes are pale like zombies. They
complain the men taste not much better then the rats they’ve been surviving on.
(Too much McDonald’s in the men’s diet?)
John is under bright lights answering questions posed by a
psychiatrist in a mental hospital. Alex speaks with him after the exam,
explaining she could help him be admitted to a much nicer facility. But John wants to stay, he sees the bleak
setting as deserves. In another interview, John tells the doctor about problems
with work and the stress he was under trying to solve the “Ten Commandment”
murders. John explains his “rock bottom”
moment was when he got into a physical altercation with his only ally,
Detective Hahn. At that moment, John
realized he needed help.
Iris reports to the Countess that Drake is busy attending to
his grooming needs. (Um, I’ll spare repeating the details!) Iris shows the Countess the bodies of
construction workers and she seems genuinely perplexed. She wonders if Alex might have killed the men
but dismisses the idea. “Whoever did this was starving.” The Countess
theorizes. Iris is concerned, “I’ve
never seen you scared before!” Despite Iris and Donavon’s plan to seek revenge
on the Countess, it’s obvious Iris still can’t help respecting her boss’s
ruthless savvy in dealing with both the living and the dead.
The real estate agent who brokered the Hotel sale is staying
the night. She boasts about her less
then honest deals with a friend on the phone. She answers the door, which she assumes is
room service. She is attacked by the
twenties era vampires.
Flashback to Los Angles, 1925. Actresses are gossiping on the set of a
silent movie starring Rudolph Valentino. Valentino takes notice of one actress, a young
Countess and slips her a note with his address. She arrives at his opulent mansion and
Valentino kisses her hello. They begin
to share a romantic dinner; he is impressed she can understand his Italian. The Countess shares she is the child of
immigrants from Sicily and moved to L.A. to follow her dreams of being an
actress. Valentino says he sees greater
things for her then simply acting. The
Countess compares acting to “being immortal” and states movies will become the
great American art form. Valentino puts
on a record and they begin to dance a passionate tango only to be interrupted
by a woman descending the grand stairway. Valentino introduces her to his wife Natasha. The Countess is hurt and confused, “I don’t
understand!” Natasha says enigmatically, “The gods have appetites!” The three of them dance a three-person tango,
which leads to a three-person horizontal mambo!
(These events maybe loosely based on Valentino’s real
complicated love life. His first wife
was a lesbian and he was married to a Natasha with whom he had a very public
divorce. As one of film’s first stars, Valentino seemed to have also suffered
from the first wave of paparazzi’s.)
Several months later, the Countess and an actress friend go
to the grand opening of the Hotel Cortez.
Her friend has noticed she doesn’t go out as often and the Countess
coyly reports she’s seeing somebody. (Or somebodies, including Natasha.)
Despite Prohibition, the champagne flows. The news arrives that Valentino is dead. The
Countess is mad with grief and rushes to jump out a window. March comes up behind her and prevents her
from jumping and dries her tears. He is
smitten, he looks at her deeply and confesses, and “I may never let you go!”
At the Hollywood mausoleum, several actresses go to see
Valentino’s final resting place. (I’ve been there, its still a tourist
attraction.) The women speak of the
“Lady in Black” who has been said to have visited the grave daily for months
leaving one red rose. The women theorize
about the mystery women, wondering if she is human or something else. They see her approaching and flee in fear. It is the Countess in a long black lace veil. Natasha appears and delivers the shocking news
that Valentino is not dead. Valentino
himself comes out of the shadows to greet her. He tells her his stunt double died but he
himself has been reborn.
The Countess explains to her former lovers how she met and
married Patrick March. She says she was drawn to his darkness. One night the Countess surprised him while he
was dismembering a man in the zinc bathtub. Instead of being horrified, she offered March
some advice, kill rich people and rob from them. Valentino listens to her story with pity,
“You’ve suffered.”
Valentino offers a story of his own. While he was doing the publicity tour for “Son
of the Sheik” he met a mysterious man on the train who seemed to follow him
across the country. Valentino thought he
saw the man do “unspeakable things” like feed on humans. Finally, the man introduced himself as the famous
German director F.W. Murnau. Murnau explains
while he was shooting the movie Nosferatu, he traveled deep into Eastern Europe
and discovered a secret group of people. “They were infected by an ancient virus which
gave them eternal youth and vitality.” The
director saw the coming of “talkies” as the death of his career and the
movies. Murnau decided to join the vampires;
he was ready to “die forever into immortality.” He offers to give “the dark gift” and make
Valentino a vampire. (The real F.W. Murnau died in a car accident in Santa
Barbara in 1931, at age forty-two. He is considered the best director of the
silent film era.) Valentino brought the
“gift” to Natasha and now he offers it to the Countess. She accepts the offer from her lovers. March observes the scene from afar but senses
his wife’s betrayal.
At the mental facility, a guard is flirting with a nurse
about a dangerous patient, the lead suspect in the “Ten Commandment” murders. John waits nearby. Once the guard is alone, John hits him to gain
access to the locked ward. Checking the
list of patients, John recognizes the name of his friend Hahn and assumes they
are holding the suspect under this alias. Inside the room is a young blonde girl dressed
in black, “I’m Wren.”
John observes the stark room. The girl hasn’t eaten her dinner. She says, “I’m not hungry for that!” John tries to question her about the murders and
what she witnessed. Wren reports she has
been present at each crime scene and she killed the security guard at the
church. (Which would explain why one man was ceremoniously displayed and the security
guard simply had his throat cut.) John
tells Wren it’s not her fault. He sees
his daughter Scarlett in Wren and they do resemble each other physically and
emotionally.
Wren speaks about her mortal life. It was the late eighties and she was terrified
of her father who would tell her, “I can’t wait for you to grow up!” One day he went drinking at the Hotel Cortez
and left the girl in the hot car. Dying
of heat exhaustion, Wren was almost happy she’d soon be dead, forever safe from
her creepy father. But, the Countess
appears and shatters the car’s window and took her in. She becomes one of the
undead children. John pleads with Wren
to help him find the murderer. Wren
bargains, she’ll tell John if he can get her out of the hospital. John hesitates, and then agrees. John is
insatiable in his quest to find the serial killer, believing it will restore
his life and sanity.
Back at the Hotel, Valentino and Natasha are finally
recognizable as the hungry vampires. They
bemoan their ruined appearance brought on by decades of starvation. Natasha blames the Countess and Mr. March for
their imprisonment. Valentino begs for her forgiveness. The pair spies a group of three Aussies
checking into a nearby room. (Looking like extras from the Vegas show “Thunder
From Down Under”) The hungry vampires salivate, “Who are we to deny a gift from
the gods?”
Mr. March waits anxiously for his monthly dinner with the
Countess. Ms. Evers scurries around
complaining about his wife’s tardiness, obviously jealous of not being the
recipient of March’s affections. The
Countess finally appears in another stunning gown of black sequins. (Lady Gaga
must have had a field day selecting costumes for her character or perhaps they
are from her own closet!) The Countess
informs March she plans to marry Will Drake. March is hurt and appalled. The Countess replies they’ve always been
honest with each other and he knows she never loved him. However, March had hoped, “I could make you
love me, but I couldn’t compete with a god.” (Valentino)
Flashback to the twenties, March decided to seal Natasha and
Valentino away on his mysterious floor.
The couple realizes they’re trapped and scream at the brick walls, which
entomb them. March smiles on the other
side of the wall. The Countess is horrified;
she never knew what had become of her lovers. March smiles, “That’s what was back there!” Maybe she had heard the noises and screams from
the trapped couple. March tells her they
are gone now. The revitalized couple
walks triumphantly out the hotel lobby. Nothing
like Aussie stripper blood, better then Botox!
John and Wren have managed to escape. They walk down the darkened street and Wren
says she wants to go home, back to the Hotel Cortez. Wren asks if John will kill the Ten
Commandment murderer. John assures her
he will. Wren smiles, “I knew I liked
you!” With his assurance, Wren runs out
into the street and is killed by a bus! The
final credits roll.
Next week there is no new episode due to the holiday. Even with more cohesion, the series still has
more craters then the moon. Where is the
army of vampire children who Max made on Halloween? How can vampires be immortal but still die so
easily, just not due to disease? How is John going to find the serial killer
without Wren’s help? How did John
magically escape through layers of locked doors at the psych hospital or is he
hallucinating again? Where are Sally and
her addiction monster? Why must we wait to see Matt Bomer for weeks on end, not
fair! If Valentino was the Countess’s
lover, was the creature baby the product of their union? I think Valentino would freak out if he saw
that thing! So many questions, which may
never be answered, but Hotel is still a delightfully frightening ride.
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