(SPOILERS AHEAD, so witch your step, Coven fans!)
Season Three, Episode Seven: “The Dead”
Written by: Brad Falchuk; Directed by: Bradley Buecker
With an episode titled “The Dead,” you can expect a lot of the undead to be featured. And they certainly deliver on that. There is also a surprise murder and an even more surprising threesome. But more important, this episode sets up some future threats to the characters when AHS comes back from Thanksgiving break.
Quick Breakdown
This episode opens with Kyle and his frat buddies getting tattoos. He wants to be a respectable engineer when he grows up, so he’s refraining from tainting his body — but his buddies get some clichéd tats. In the present, Franken-Kyle is mourning his brothers as he sees that his appendages are actually theirs (tattoos and all). Zoe approaches, hiding a pistol behind her back.
Madison is in mourning as well. While she had been so unfeeling when alive, she finds that she’s terminally unfeeling as an undead. No matter how much she eats, burns herself, or consumes magic potion ingredients, Madison just feels empty. (At least she still has her sass.) Cordelia hears some noise outside her room and starts wandering around, calling out. She touches Madison and gets a flash of how she died at Fiona’s hands. Cordelia is invigorated by this discovery.
Zoe doesn’t shoot Kyle, but he does attempt to blow his brains out when he gets hold of the gun. She stops him, realizing she doesn’t want to get rid of him. Instead, she tries to retrain him in the art of being human, which just makes him feel stupid. Cordelia summons Zoe, and cold, unfeeling Madison tries one more thing to fill her void.
Cordelia tells Zoe that she’s shown promise as a powerful witch, and, as such, has put a target on her back. She tells Zoe that Fiona will do anything to kill her. Zoe is surprised, but not that surprised. She’s actually more surprised by the vehemence Cordelia shows as she intones, “We’re going to kill my mother.” As if that wasn’t enough of a bombshell, Zoe then walks in on Kyle humping Madison.
As smooth jazz plays, the Axeman seduces Fiona back at his place (which he acquired after murdering the current tenant). Just as Fiona is feeling sexy, her hair starts falling out. She tries to skip out, but the Axeman stops her, sexing her up with his sax fingers instead. In the morning, when she tries to leave, he confesses his deep love for her. Apparently, he’s been watching her intently while being trapped in the school. He even helped her battle bullies when she was little. Fiona is officially creeped out and leaves.
Disjointed from everyone else, Queenie and LaLaurie are turning into Laverne & Shirley. They grab burgers and shakes together and bond. But something doesn’t quite sit well with Queenie, and she visits Laveau. The voodoo queen tells Queenie off, but she confesses her dissatisfaction with the white girl coven. Maybe Queenie should just befriend someone her own age? Or at least born in the last sixty years?
Zoe’s not quite content with Cordelia’s revelations and does a little witchy experiment. When she discovered the Ouija board last week, she also found some other trinkets including Spalding’s tongue. Because Myrtle enchanted it (and saved it), it has retained its optimum moisture; and Zoe returns the tongue magically to Spalding’s mouth. She then ties up and extracts a confession from him. He tries desperately not to, but he does name Fiona as the murderer of Madison. Content with his answer, Zoe stabs him to death. (I must confess, I did not see that coming. Zoe is going very dark.)
Needing to feel refreshed after the murder, Zoe takes a shower. When she comes out, Madison has joined her in the bathroom. They have some girly innuendos about what Madison did with Kyle. Zoe remains calm, pretending she doesn’t care; but Madison knows better. She says that since Kyle is already dead, Zoe’s bewitched vagina won’t give him an aneurysm. She also confesses that sleeping with Kyle was the only time she has felt something since being resurrected. She then suggests they all sleep together, dragging towel-clad Zoe into the bedroom where Kyle waits patiently. The towel drops.
Fiona’s feelings are all over the place, and she almost acts rashly and buzzes her hair off. Almost. She then decides that the weird undead guy who has been stalking her is oddly romantic. She goes to him.
Continuing her buddy bond with LaLaurie, Queenie asks her to confess her darkest secret. LaLaurie does happen to have one awful thing that she regrets. Her slave girl had a baby with LaLaurie’s husband, so she murdered the child and used its blood for her youthful face mask. She dramatically reveals this to the slave girl who subsequently jumps off the balcony. This confession is just enough to tip Queenie’s opinion of LaLaurie, and she tricks the vile slave torturer into visiting Laveau’s salon. Laveau welcomes her nemesis back, and cages her up. Queenie uses a knife to draw blood, and Laveau uses the blood for her own facemask.
Rating
A-
The young witches are growing up, and they seem to be throwing whatever morals they have to the wind. It’s not that LaLaurie doesn’t deserve such a fitting punishment, but Queenie is betraying her coven for the evil voodoo coven. How long till she regrets that? And Zoe killing off Spalding was pretty heartless, but was she just eliminating him because of his loyalties to Fiona? She seems to know what she’s doing — except, perhaps, in the bed department. I loved seeing these girls make such drastic choices, and I can’t wait to see where the second half of this wild season goes.
Now for some random thoughts and my favorite moments of the night…
Hank makes a call to Cordelia, saying he’ll be visiting soon. We then see him on the floor of his apartment surrounded by guns of all shapes and sizes.
“Cordelia wants to see you. Well, that would be impossible. But she does want to talk.” – Madison, sass in tact.
While I’m happy Fiona didn’t buzz her head off, the inevitable donning of wigs that would follow would’ve been highly entertaining.
How annoyed are you that Thanksgiving is interrupting the season?
