"American Horror Story" gets into the spooky spirit this week with the start of its annual Halloween two-parter. Over the past few years, we've had zombies and ghosts and Anne Frank, but this year's installment revolves around a very strange and very specific story.
The World Building Continues
Two more "AHS" regulars arrive this week: Emma Roberts and Denis O'Hare play a con artist couple selling "fake" relics to places like the American Morbidity Museum, which apparently exists. They're caught out as frauds, but rather than having them arrested, the museum curator just complains about how the ease of free entertainment at home means times are tough for her establishment, too. She says that should the fraudsters manage to stumble upon something real, she'd pay them for it, and sends them off to see the freak show in Florida. Apparently, television really has been ruining people's lives in literally every way possible.
Meanwhile, in Jupiter, we learn that the carnies are taking the night off. The group believes that to perform on Halloween will summon the spirit of Edward Mordrake, a Victorian-era man purported to have a second face on the back of his head that whispered to him at night and told him to do terrible things. Yiiikes.
(Though somehow, on a show that includes Twisty and Dandy, he's only the third scariest figure on this episode.)
Mordrake's spirit, once woken, will not be satisfied until he has dragged some other poor hapless soul off to Hell with him, because … does evil really need a reason, I guess.
And The Secrets Pile Up
It's a hard knock life, y'all. Ethel is diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and told that she's got anywhere from six months to a year to live. Jimmy, meanwhile, is depressed about not being able to protect Meep from getting brutally murdered in jail last week. Dot and Bette are having their own set of problems now that Dot's had a taste of stardom.
The pair dream about separation surgery – a happy fun times romp for Dot, who assumes this would give her a perfect life with Jimmy at last, and a total nightmare for Bette, who rightly realizes that her sister pretty much wants to kill her.
Con artist Emma Roberts shows up at Fraulein Elsa's, claiming to be a clairvoyant named Esmeralda. Jimmy is immediately smitten with her, which we all could have seen coming from a mile away since these two are dating in real life, and Taissa Farmiga isn't part of this season.
After half an hour of denying me Jessica Lange's presence in this episode, Jimmy takes his new lady friend to meet Elsa, insisting she's the real deal when it comes to the whole fortune teller thing. Elsa is skeptical, until Esmeralda starts accurately deducing her life story from the objects in her tent … er, seeing the future for her.
She "sees" that some blonde woman (Marlene Dietrich) unfairly stole Elsa's career and promises that a tall, dark stranger is going to show up any day now and make her the star she deserves to be.
She says it's not too late, and Elsa suddenly decides that Miss Esmeralda is the most legit psychic she's ever seen.