At episode six, we’re roughly half way into the season of American Horror Story: Hotel, and there’s a potentially important new character/subplot introduced. With the show’s habit of changing focus from one week to the next, though, it’s hard to determine how much we should care. If we’re excited about the idea, it’s likely to vanish next week, with the storyline either abandoned or concluded. Plus, how vital can it be since we’re just now hearing about it?
Whether you like it or not, this development provides the season’s link to other seasons, particularly the first, now known as Murder House. The episode (Room 33) opens in Los Angeles, 1926, as the Countess/”Mrs. Johnson” (Lady Gaga) visits Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), the sadistic abortionist in the basement of the house from season one. She’s three weeks pregnant, but looks like she’s about to pop and that her baby might have horns.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy,” he tells her, after the baby jumps off a stainless steel tray and kills the nurse. It’s a very “It’s Alive” moment. Jump to the future and this… thing (?) is still an infant that lives in Room 33. As it escapes its room and follows Alex (Chloe Sevigny) home, its role in the episode is primarily to put Alex in the Countess’s good graces after she returns it to its crib. The final shot of the episode gives us a quick glimpse of the monster that it appears to be.
The rest of the episode belongs mostly to Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) and Tristan (Finn Wittrock). They, in scenes we’ve never seen, have suddenly fallen in love. After Liz’s backstory was revealed last week, it’s a touching development. He has finally found someone who loves him… excuse me, “her”… for who she is. “I’m not gay,” Tristan keeps saying. Liz replies, “You’re not gay for being with me. I’m a hetero girl. Thank you for seeing the girl.”
The problem is that Tristan belongs to the Countess. Although many men (and women) belong to the Countess, she doesn’t like to share. In a tense scene near the end of the episode, Liz and Tristan try to convince her to make an exception. After telling them that betrayal smells like “the char on a piece of burnt meat,” she seems to acquiesce. Then the scene turns tragic and, speaking of characters coming and going, it could be the last we see of Tristan.
The other subplot that advances in Room 33 is that of John Lowe (Wes Bentley). When he discovers Alex sleeping in one of the glass coffins in the old swimming pool, now referred to as “the sleeping chamber,” he naturally freaks out. So Alex hatches a scheme with the ghosts of the two Swedish girls from the first episode that will kill two birds with one stone: give them their “purpose” for roaming the halls of the hotel and break John’s mind completely.
Meanwhile, the Countess is romancing Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) and jetting off to Paris with him so that Donovan (Matt Bomer) and Ramona (Angela Bassett) can sneak in to kill the children, which they think will serve their revenge to the Countess. Since Liz helped Alex move the glass coffins, Ramona and Iris (Kathy Bates – more below) don’t find them and Ramona heads for room 33, where she identifies the infant as “Bartholomew.”
Unless I blinked and missed something, American Horror Story made its most blatant continuity error yet. One moment, Ramona and Donovan are on the elevator to the basement and the next, it’s Ramona and Iris who are staring at the empty swimming pool. Where did Donovan go? How did Iris get there?
This turns out for the best, though, because Iris once again delivers the episode’s best line. When Ramona asks her, “What’s got into you?” she replies, “About six pints of O-Negative from a couple smart alecks in room 36.” It’s the only time we see Iris, and Bates always elevates her scenes beyond any from the rest of the episode.
Her brief appearance reminds me that Hotel has done a good job of defining its characters. Though they may not appear in every episode or when they do it’s simply to provide a barb, they aren’t one-dimensional. Perhaps the way to look at American Horror Story is not as a gory thriller with inconsistent plotting, but instead as a more subtle drama driven by its rich characters. Don’t focus on the evolution of the story, but the evolution of its characters.
Finally, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention the careless abandon with which Room 33 showcased the bare male posterior. I shouldn’t say careless, because on television, to show a man’s ass, you have to position them in unnatural ways so that nothing else is revealed. Nearly every male character appeared in various states of undress and the moon was shining brightly for John, Liz, Tristan, and, most spectacularly, Will. Good or bad? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
