This season of American Horror Story might be titled 1984, but this week’s episode endeavored to cover more of the decade, and all the things pop culture homages have used to signal the Regan era since the late ‘90s were present and accounted for. Fluorescent make-up! Computers straight out of War Games (or, if you prefer, Jumpin’ Jack Flash)! Cassette Tapes and the boom boxes that housed them!
Beyond its use as an ‘80s references bingo, AHS’s 100th episode showcased so many of the things it’s been doing well for the last eight seasons, as well as some of its pitfalls. And all with a very important reminder — never eat the prison chow.
Brooke’s 1989 wasn’t very surprising, with the events of last week’s episode and her stunning track record of really, really bad luck. There was a little tension when Richard offered her a way to escape the needle — she’ll be the first person this season to reject the siren call of Satan (Satan… Satan…Satan). What was surprising, and surprisingly effective, was the almost quiet way five years behind bars has hardened her. Yes, flipping someone off and telling a priest exactly what she thinks of God isn’t anything early-season Brooke would have done. But avoiding the temptation to make her become raving and revenge hungry like Montana, or sullenly murderous like Mr. Jingles makes her almost even-temper monologue directed at Margaret that much more chilling. This is someone who has had only misfortune, who has completely embraced her fate, and who seems to believe, deep in her heart, that karma will visit anyone who has wronged her. An effective contrast to the rest of the Camp Redwood crew, who seem to think killing those who wronged them directly is the only way to go.
The fuzzy rules of the ghosts of Camp Redwood (they are real enough to murder, not to leave) make for some fun, comparatively low stakes bloodshed (RIP bird enthusiast), but while any opportunity for Billie Lourd to stare daggers in a multicolor zip-up sweatshirt is welcome, Xavier’s turn from ostensibly good guy to unrepentant murderer seems a little abrupt, even in a world when so little can turn someone bloodthirsty (and, as Xavier points out, apparently a world where nothing can change the limbo they’re living in one way or the other).
But Trevor’s ability to let Brooke take the fatal fall for Margaret while married to her might have been the night’s biggest head-scratcher. Would she really be stressed over his testimony, enough to marry him, when he had just explained he didn’t call the cops because he felt so sure her money would shield her from any accusations? And if he did feel so guilty about his silence, would it be that easy for him to watch Brooke’s execution?
The most endearing and weakest story of the night was Mr. Jingles’ transformation from Satanist sidekick to family man in Alaska. Beyond the truly bizarre idea that someone, anyone, would equate being a prostitute with being a mass murderer aside…once he’s lucid, Jingles is portrayed as a pretty smart guy. And pretty smart guys might think they’re able to hide from law enforcement in Alaska (the anonymity of the pre-internet, pre-facial recognition cameras era is truly terrifying), but probably not Satan. Maybe he got a little too cocky with the ease with which he was able to get rid of the devil’s most loyal, Billy Idol loving servant, but some black smokey force brought him back from the dead. And that doesn’t sound like something that’s going to be scared off by the cold.
The reveal that the person that gave Brooke the not quite lethal injection was Donna was genuinely satisfying and leaves plenty of questions for the next episode. Why not try to get an innocent woman out of jail before her execution? How could she be stable enough to perfectly apply blue-winged eyeshadow after the ghost of her father told her she was born to be a killer?
Next week, Donna and Brooke go on a road trip, Mr. Jingles returns to Camp Redwood, and maybe there’ll be a peak at a celeb doing their best Billy Idol impression?
Stray Observations
- Being sentenced to death for a series of crimes you didn’t commit probably weighs on you in a way that would negatively affect your decision-making skills, but that was a sad-looking last meal Brooke was enjoying. Even with a Snapple.
- The town where Richard was finally taken down has an excellent neighborhood watch program.
- Money can help you get around a lot of red tape, but surely Camp Redwood would be a crime scene if there was still blood on the dock?
- Poor dead Lorraine’s sister does not ask the right questions. When your brother-law-shows up at your door and yells that your sister is dead, your first follow up should not be “Why are you leaving the baby with me?”
- Did the German woman not call the cops when she was narrowly, at the very least kidnapped by her noisy neighbor? It would have been easy enough to direct them to the scene of the almost crime — just follow the blaring Black Sabbath.
- Margaret’s real estate ventures are super morbid, but honestly would probably be even more popular in 2019 than in 1989. Faux-skin covered lampshades? She might be a cold-blooded killer, but you have to respect the woman’s attention to detail.
73 Comments
I also don’t get Trevor at all here. He’s turned on by his would be killer but also just wants the money? He feels guilty about an innocent person being blamed but attends her execution without complaint?
He’s on drugs.
The treatment of Trevor in this bugged me, nobody saw Margaret kill anybody so they could have just blamed it all on Montana and or Jingles
Yes, why not blame it on Mr. Jingles, who is a known escaped murder that was never caught, as well as Brooke. She brutally murdered Carrie Fisher’s daughter in front of a bus load of kids, so probably what she did was worthy of death row in 1984 on it’s own merit.
As a great man once said, cocaine is a helluva drug.
I’m hoping Trevor is secretly in league with Donna.
What got me was Mr. Jingles’ beard in the scene where he decides to narc on Richard to the locals. What was that? Someone who looks like that should go to Alaska.
That was an…. unfortunate look, agreed.
That was fairly dead on as to how Ramirez got caught to. Except for the Mr. Jingles handing the newspaper to the woman outside the store part but he did get chased down, tried to steal a car get beaten to a pulp by the crowd.
But that shouldn’t have hurt him anymore since he was dead right? And it’s not like the other dude who didn’t know he was dead.
I was turned around on that stuff too. The satanist and Jingles were resurrected by Satan the folks at the camp are basically ghosts. I think the redirected still feel pain?
What? He’s not dead.
Yeah, that story is one I’ve wanted to see on film for years. It’s so bizarre and satisfying
Only Montana and Xavier are murdering, the rest of the Redwood ghosts seem content to chill out.I’m amazed that apparently Jingles was not only honest with his wife about his past, but she believed him and married him anyway. Also, that kid is…someone in AHS lore, but who? He’d be 22 around the time of Murder House, yeah?Donna has had five years to stable-up. That flier said Fleetwood Mac was gonna be there. Lily Rabe as Stevie maybe?Not even a mention of the mention of Briarcliff? At all? Or Margarets Ivana Trump inspired makeover?I mean, you snark but that’s literally how Ramirez was caught in real life. https://elpasotimes.typepad.com/morgue/2013/06/angry-mob-captu.html
How did the line go? “Everyone who goes to Alaska is running from something.”?
Re: Jesse Pinkman
I followed that article you linked and read the user comments below it, surely Travis Truman must be a troll with what he wrote?
God, I hadn’t even READ the comments. What the fart.
Ivana only wishes, we all know she stole her look from Patsy Stone
Yeah, the residents in real life were people from East LA, and it was probably more dramatic than what they showed; Wikipedia says he ran across the Freeway to get away from them and the mob still beat his ass. Don’t be a fucking abuela rapist in East LA, idiot. We gonna find you.
Indeed. And yeah, it was way more dramatic. And horror-esque. Apparently, he projectile vomitted everywhere.
UGH Her wig in that first 1989 scene! It looked smooshed like it just came out of a bag. I could see nothing but that wig.
Briarcliff was mentioned in the list of Margaret’s successes on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous intro.
I know!
Thanks for the link – I had no idea! I have to admit I was cheering when the mob caught up with Ramirez.
Ditto.
No commentary on the call out to everyone expecting a cameo showcase for the 100th episode? Seems it’s time to move past the “old timers”.
i was hoping for a Paulson/Peters cameo at lease.
Swear I saw Peters there. He was one of the other ghosts trapped in limbo. It was a brief group shot and he had a bad mustache but I could swear it was him.
Not him! That guy was in earlier episodes and I had the same reaction, but he’s just a strong lookalike
Not a fan of how they’ve basically just flipped the morality of almost every character on the show, but I’ll probably be back on board in an episode or two.
*shrug*
They’ve done that before, and it really irks me, especially as there’s rarely any real motivation for it.
Angelica Ross is so gorgeous it’s almost jarring to see her.I want to think that Trevor was so quiet because he was in on the fake execution.
Trevor being in on it would be a very AHS twist.
only 9 episodes this season. i’m only looking forward to Brooke getting revenge, as all the other stuff is a load of shit.
Talk about a waste of an anniversary episode! After all the buildup to the 100th episode, it turns out to have just a lot of place-setting for the grande finale. I realize that this season is supposed to have a campy tone, but this is the episode where the season turns into pure cartoon. I do my best to rationalize or fanwank away some of the more egregious plot-holes, but… Margaret survives TWO mass murders and not a single person finds that even the teensiest bit suspicious? Brooke and Ramirez get stuck in the same prison ward? (Aren’t there entirely different prisons for men and women?) The ghosts have apparently been murdering people at Camp Redwood for years now, and nobody’s reported any missing people? Brooke’s sentence is still carried out even after ANOTHER DAMN MURDER takes place at the camp? That would have at the very least merited a temporary stay of execution while the police investigate whether there’s a connection.
I felt certain that the 100th would at least bring us a musical number. You couldn’t have Lourd do a Billy Idol song?
When Brooke arrived at the prison the warden said she was just there for the night.
I guess whatever pretend women’s prison she was in before didn’t have death row facilities.
Seems like that’s actually accurate. All executions in California take place at San Quentin, and have since Folsom stopped performing them in the 30’s. So she would have been housed at the death row in the women’s facility, but brought to San Quentin for the execution itself. I may have fallen into a wikipedia rabbit hole.
To be honest, it IS American Horror Story. If you’re not comfortable with plot holes and questionable choices, you’re going to have a bad time.
After all the buildup to the 100th episode, it turns out to have just a lot of place-setting for the grande finale.Seriously.
It was such a waste of a 100th episode.
I realize this show requires suspension of belief, but they really push it sometimes. As someone else mentioned, there’s no way they would have the camp open like that if 2 murders JUST happened and “there’s still blood on the dock.” I doubt there was time to adequately sweep for evidence.
I’d say I’m looking forward to Brooke getting her revenge and somewhat of a happy ending, but AHS never has a happy ending when the season ends. Everyone gets fucked.
Blood would probably soak into the wood and stay there for a long time…
Brooke’s temporary placement in a men’s prison for her execution was far from the biggest plot hole in that sequence:1) When there’s an execution scheduled, the entire prison is typically placed on lockdown. Death row is also, obviously, the most maximum of security. It’s pretty much permanent lockdown. Possessed night shift guard or not, there’s no way Ramirez should have been casually walked out of his death row cell accompanied by only one guard.2) Brooke’s alleged murder spree was in 1984 and she was executed within five years? In California!? Where you can blow up a school bus full of nuns in front of a police station, while doing play-by-play of pressing the button and doing a Satanic ritual in the street, and someone will try to make the case you don’t deserve the death penalty?
Who the hell were her lawyers? Dewey, Cheatum and Howe?
There are still people on death row in California who committed their crimes in the late 1970s and early 80s. No way she gets to the gurney in five years. Especially in that era, when the death penalty was just being reinstated and there was still a lot of controversy and opposition to it.
Not to mention that (1) a famous guy who already killed people there was on the loose and (2) many of those kills would have been very difficult/impossible for tiny Brooke to do. I had a hard time believing Trevor (or Donna if she bothered to come forwards!) couldn’t have prevented that execution by saying something
They explained why Trevor and Donna didn’t come forward. Trevor was in bed (literally) with Margaret, and Donna was in hiding. If Donna had come forward, she’d be on the hook for the murders to some degree by enabling Jingles.As you noted, though, there should have been enough evidence to plant some seeds of reasonable doubt. Even if the jury convicted her, she’d have wiggle room for appeals for more than five years unless her lawyers totally sucked ass.
To take one of your points a step future, this show is and has always been a cartoon for adults. It’s looney tunes meets cheesy chunky. That’s why it’s so easy to suspense disbelief and not question a billion plot holes.It would be unwatchable if I saw it as anything other than a live action cartoon.
Oops future should have been further. Damn auto-correct.
Maybe the show is bad. Maybe it’s been poorly written for the last 85 episodes.
The show has always been bad, but at least it was bad in an outrageously ridiculously transgressive way instead of just head-scratching way. I miss the days when alcoholic nuns got electroshock therapy and then went into dream sequence dance routines about the Name Game, or two-headed twins became rivals in a love triangle with a lobster boy with a Marlon Brando fixation. Nowdays, all we’ve got are a bunch of kids who are all as stiff, two-dimensional and cardboard as the characters from the actual 80s slasher flicks it’s supposed to be satirizing. Ho hum.
I totally hear you. Part of me just wishes the show kept being as genuinely frightening as the first two seasons. Obviously there was always a camp factor, but when the show veered into being essentially a comedy, it just lost me. I could feel it stop taking itself seriously and just kind of exist to be ridiculous. But I’m happy the satire stuff worked for people. I mean it’s still on after however many seasons so it clearly worked. I just don’t know how much soul has been in in it for the majority of the run.
Margaret’s real estate empire reminds me of an idea a friend and I had back in the 90s…serial killer miniature golf courses with each hole representing a different infamous mass murderer. We never got beyond crude drawings of a couple of the holes, which I wish I’d saved.
It’s strange that Brooke took the fall for all of this. I’m not even sure why Margaret decided to blame her when she’d already put effort into framing Jingles and he was responsible for almost all of the other deaths. With Jingles it’s a simple case of him escaping to finish off Margaret and her managing to turn the tables. The only thing I can think is that Margaret has a need to be the lone survivor or the “final girl,” which Brooke would interfere with. I just can’t imagine how any of the evidence would really point to Brooke as the killer, though.
Exactly. I mean one there were the missing ears which is the Mr. Jingles trademark, second, she was just invited to go there and 3rd if there was any killing she was going to do I think it would be via shotgun? And where was Rita all this time?
A bus load of children witnessed her beating someone to death.
I guess the logic is that she doesn’t want an increased manhunt for Jingles since he’s realised the truth about her
Did someone get a freeze frame of the concert lineup? Seeing Paul Schaffer’s name on there made me laugh. If they can get him to cameo I’ll be happy.
Donna/Fake Rita must have been laying low for the last 5 years.
I loved this episode, was waiting for her to turn into the Shocker to end the episode to get her revenge! I wonder if his son that he left at his sister in Law door step is a killer in a later season. Like Tate or someone else lower on our Radar.
I can’t think of a Bobby or Robert we’ve seen in canon
I mean maybe the baby name is changed when put up for adoption?
I have a huge question that wasn’t addressed in the last review and wasn’t covered in this episode or review. Brooke lost her virginity to a ghost… WHY ISN’T THIS A BIGGER DEAL AND WHY ISN’T SHE HAVING A SATAN BABY!?!?! I mean come on AHS! Satan is all over this season. The whole point of last season was that Michael Langdon was a demon baby because he was the spawn of a human and a ghost. I realize that just because they had sex doesn’t mean she’s pregnant but I was sort of expecting that to go somewhere considering that we have had 2 seasons so far that revolve around Satan babies and the exact method of which to get a Satan baby is performed in the last episode to no fanfare.
She for sure had Satan’s baby. We didn’t see her in 1985 right?
Maybe the satan baby is Ben Harmon aka the root of all problems in Murder HouseThe timing doesn’t really work but the man needs a reason to be such a goddamn wreck
Grossman’s Ivana Trump hairstyle was a real gag factor for me.
And did she get like, a prosthetic ear or something, Xander Cruise style?
HELOO?! Leslie Jordan in da house!
YES! How could this not be mentioned?
He was pretty funny on ‘The Cool Kids’, too bad it got canceled.
First of all, Brooke is guilty. Of giving us a lot more Montana time at the camp, which is okay with me! She totally murdered Montana in front of a bunch of people though, and they conveniently did not catch the start of that fight. She is also harboring Satan’s baby, as someone smart mentioned in the comments, so lock her up. I don’t think they pinned the whole massacre on her? But I may have missed that.
Trevor! What a stupid future for Trevor. He gets to live, but then has to be Margret’s bitch? That was not the Trevor make-out scene I wanted. At least we’ll get more of him. They played the Jason sound when they first showed them and I thought he would super rage murder her but he did not. If she’s going into real estate and she bought Briar Cliff, she knows the realtor who sold the Murder House, bought Briar Cliff and got murdered at the hotel. I thought she was supposed to be the same character but that one is called Marcy. (As Steve noted: FUCKING LESLIE JORDAN!) . Olympian from the lake came back! I wonder if we’ll get to see an awkward reunion between Xavier and that limo guy Mr. Jingles killed off. All of the ghosts are completely turned around from their characters earlier in the season.
I also thought this week would be a long list of hilarious camp kills as people come in to set up for the event and Montana and Xavier go at killing like high school footballers playing a sex point game, but that did not happen. I’m excited to see more hapless “wandering into the camp” deaths, but hope that they get some better blood and special effects here. 80s slasher theme and the effects budget is spent on a cgi smoke pentagram? Bullshit.
Really? Not one person nor the review mentioned how hilarious it was seeing Leslie Jordan in that wig and 80s garb? Shame to all of you. But more shame to AHS for not doing more for their 100th episode. I needed way more cameos and camp.
The fuzzy rules of the ghosts of Camp Redwood (they are real enough to murder, not to leave)
I think I figured this out, at least as much as you can figure out AHS logic. Ghosts can interact with the real world but are bound to the place they were killed for whatever reason, which is why none of the campers can leave. Ramirez and Jingles, however, aren’t ghosts. They were brought back to life by Satan and thus can move around like any other living person.
The ghosts follow the same rules as in Murder House, so it doesn’t seem that fuzzy to me.
“the anonymity of the pre-internet, pre-facial recognition cameras era is truly terrifying”Isn’t an age in which we’re constantly monitored even more terrifying?
That was the best they could come out with for the 100th episode special!
Could The Smiths being the ending song of this be any lamer or anti-climactic? How stupid and pretentious, which is typical of Murphy & Fulchuk; ditto the writing this whole season. I’m not sure all of the praise is warranted. Slashers were simplistic stories. We don’t need a million killers. I like my slashers masked and/or deformed, acting alone, and sans Morrissey. As we used to say in the 80’s: Gag me with a spoon.