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Last night’s episode of American Horror Story: Freak Show has left me with one resounding feeling.
I miss Twisty.
Hear me out before you label me a lover of creepy clowns with murderous tendencies. I do not carry the same torch, if you want to call it that, for Dandy mind you.
While “Pink Cupcakes” had its revealing and somewhat shocking moments throughout the hour, I didn’t find myself nearly as engrossed in what was happening on my screen as I have been in previous weeks.
Before Twisty’s untimely (or timely, take your pick) demise, I found myself always on edge. I never knew when he was going to pop up creepily in the background and in broad daylight no less.
That kind of sporadic moment kept me in a constant state of not knowing and as a viewer of a show of this particular genre, it makes for a more exciting viewing experience. It keeps you more in tune to what’s happening elsewhere in the episode. Plus, I felt like the writers could have dug so much deeper into Twisty’s past.
Back to tonight’s episode… Interesting details were magnified and clarified for a couple of Jupiter’s resident freaks.
Jimmy’s guilt over Meep’s death continues to torture him. He goes looking for daddy Dell, but finds Desiree in the trailer instead and opens up to her about Meep. Jimmy causes Desi to bleed after things get hot and heavy, and she is rushed to Ethel’s doctor of many specialities. The doc informs Desi that she suffered a miscarriage and is in fact not a hermaphrodite, but a full-blown woman with “large lady parts.” He tells Desi that a little cosmetic surgery will have her parts looking their proper size in no time.
This news doesn’t sit well with Dell, who has been busy reuniting with his long-lost boyfriend, Andy (Matt Bomer).
It is more than plausible that Dell has a boyfriend, but since he has been under the impression that Desi was a hermaphrodite, he’s very adamant about having his cake and eating it too.
After their confrontation, Desi is set to leave Dell so she can go off and be the woman she never thought she could be, and more importantly, have lots of babies. Dell has no interest in having more children, especially now that he’s fighting the urge to leave his wife for Andy.
Once Desi leaves, Dell does the only sensible thing and goes to the doctor’s office. He talks to the doc for all of five seconds before breaking all of the poor man’s fingers so he can’t operate on Desi. That’ll teach him. An anger management class or two probably wouldn’t hurt, Dell.
In light of Twisty’s death and Dandy essentially taking over where Twisty left off, I just have to say that Dandy represents all that is wrong with this generation of American kids. Spoiled, bratty and entitled individuals, who are continually enabled by their parents, hello Gloria! Granted most don’t channel that behavior into becoming clowns that murder people for sport, but the characteristics are still there. I don’t know if this was Ryan Murphy’s intention, probably not, but I’ll gladly be the one to draw the parallels.
By that thought process alone, it makes it impossible for me to find one shred of a likability factor in Dandy. He acts like a five year old, and I constantly find myself wanting to stick him in timeout.
The maid felt the same way and she received a nice slice to the jugular as a result. After murdering Dora, Dandy leaves the body in the dining room, pools of blood staining that expensive, expensive tile flooring. Gloria finds her in the morning, blood curdling screams and all.
When Dandy offers to help bury the body, Gloria makes the great parenting decision of 2014 and sends Dandy to his room. For killing someone.
After cooler heads have prevailed, Dandy and Gloria share a nice mother/son gardening moment when they drop pieces of poor Dora’s body into the garden, using them as fertilizer to help the plants grow. A roundabout way of being cremated, no?
It’s easy to see Dandy’s desire to kill is only getting stronger. Later, he heads out to a gay club, the same gay club that Dell happens to be at with his boyfriend, Andy.
Dandy slips in for a moment of time with Andy after Dell departs and convinces Andy to leave with him. He takes him to the clown school bus of horrors. What happens next is a mixture of predictable, weird, gross and utter perplexity.
I lost count of how many times Dandy stabbed Andy, but it was…a lot. Here’s the thing though, Andy wouldn’t die. Dandy was busy sawing off limbs, Dexter style, and Andy was still talking. Alive and talking while his other arm was being cut off.
May I just say that, having Matt Bomer on the show for five minutes and then having his character brutally stabbed (I think to death, he was still moaning at the end), served what purpose? Just another pretty face to murder? We found out Dell likes men because of him, but with Andy’s “death” (it will forever be in quotes until I know for sure) does that plot point just get dropped like a hot rock?
Bottom line: Dandy needs practice. A lesson in body disposal among other things. I would say keep Annalise Keating’s number on speed dial, but…1950s.
I’m still trying to figure out Stanley and Maggie. I can see Maggie softening, even through the dollar bill signs. She even used her palm reading for dummies material on Jimmy when she tried to warn him off from the Freak Show to keep him off of Stanley’s radar.
Stanley continues to feed on the insecurities and egos of both the Twins and Elsa, convincing all of them that they are destined for fame and fortune outside of the Freak Show.
In a flash forward scene, we are shown the heads of Dot and Bette displayed in a case in the morbidity museum. Stanley is all about the benjamins, morals and feelings be damned, and we come to learn that he was the one who managed to somehow succeed in obtaining the heads.
Whether or not Stanley was the one who actually killed the Twins is still up for speculation. He makes one attempt at ending their lives by offering them poison-injected pink cupcakes, but Dot refuses saying they have to watch their figure since they are going to be stars.
Elsa cozies up to the Twins for a moment and offers to be their mentor when they leave with Stanley. Dot doesn’t like the idea one bit, but Bette can’t see past the stars in her eyes.
We learn at the end of the episode that Elsa and her ego have different plans for the Twins and she ends up unceremoniously dropping them off at Dandy and Gloria Mott’s mansion to get them off of her show and out of her way.
There are so many working parts to this show. I’m always interested to see how it will all be tied together. That being said, this episode didn’t have the same fluidity as ones before it and fell flat in several spots. Like I mentioned earlier, for me, it’s the loss of Twisty. He sort of felt like the glue that was holding everything together. I’m not sure Dandy can do the same. And this is only after one episode.
One bright spot was that Gabby Sidibe finally made an appearance this season as the now departed Dora’s, daughter. We only got a glimpse, but things will surely get more interesting when Sidibe’s character comes strolling back into Jupiter.
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