AHS: Freak Show Season Finale Review: Intensities in Tent Cities (PHOTO RECAP)

American Horror Story S04E13: "Curtain Call"

When it comes to the world of differently abled carnies, at least now we know where the actual horror lies: SHOOTING DEATHS. That one character simply walked around shooting the rest of the characters to death in the season finale of Freak Show kind of underscores why this season was maybe the fourth-best season of American Horror Story to date. It presented an unsettling concept—physical abnormality and outcast culture—but didn't really conceive of a way for those things to translate to horror. Instead we had three or four madmen sort of picking off our beloved freaks one by one, whenever the freaks weren't murdering themselves. That's more of a crime drama, in my opinion. Another problem Freak Show suffered was that in creating these expensive tent sets, it felt as if the show was reluctant to film anywhere else, so a lot of the episodes just sort of seemed the same, week in and week out.

THAT BEING SAID, it feels straight-up ungrateful to write off a season of television this ambitious, insane, creative, emotional, and populated by a roster of actors as incredible as Freak Show's was. For every story idea that maybe didn't work (the con artists, Edward Mordrake), Freak Show had two that really did work. The Dot and Bette special effect; Dandy as a character; the Twisty murders; the Pepper episode; Angela Bassett's entire performance; Jimmy's prostitution business; the score; not one but TWO incredible David Bowie covers; and especially the fact that we were treated to a drama series in which living legend Jessica Lange graced our TV screens every week. What kind of monsters would WE be if we overlooked this bounty of treasure simply to complain that it wasn't as good as American Horror Story: ____________? And again, in what may be a controversial defense of this season, having re-watched Murder House recently... not all of AHS's past seasons are as good as we maybe remember them to be. To the people claiming Murder House was a tightly written story with likable characters: Nope! Sorry. I'll take hermaphrodite Angela Bassett over anyone in the Harmon family any day.

But we're here to talk about Freak Show, not cartwheel on the graves of other seasons. In keeping with tradition, "Curtain Call" was a loose and painful finale dotted with moments of extreme transcendence. I loved it so much; I was a mess during most of it. The massacre scene was absolutely terrifying and gut-wrenching, and those opening chords of "Heroes" will never not trigger extreme emotions in me. Plus I am a total sucker for an afterlife reunion, every time. Did "Curtain Call" make the preceding episodes seem more purposeful or higher-stakes in retrospect? Probably not. But it was still a lovely and legitimately terrifying hour of television that all involved can be proud of.

Let's talk about it!

So as we all know, Elsa left everybody in the lurch last week by selling the circus to a madman and then skipping town like the freak show wasn't her problem anymore. A very unchill thing to do in general. I mean, just look at this banner Amazon Eve had to hang up. Who on earth would show up for THAT? As it turned out, NOBODY. And Dandy wasn't happy about it.

This meant he had to nastily berate everybody for being dumb losers. It did not go over well.

At this point everybody stepped on Dandy and Paul literally spat in his face. I almost never do that to my bosses, but then again I'm not a circus performer. (Yet.) So you can imagine how badly this behavior went over with Mr. Mott.

Meanwhile Elsa was off in Los Angeles having adventures in the entertainment industry!

Her tactic for getting her big break was pretty ingenious. Basically she just showed up to the lobby of a TV network every day asking to speak to the president until one day the receptionist made a harsh burn about Elsa being a second-rate Marlene Dietrich and then Elsa slapped the sh*t out of her. And if THAT doesn't land you a starring role somehow, nothing will.

Neil Patrick Harris's husband played some kind of casting executive with extreme sympathies toward German messes, so the next thing we knew he was lifting a violent woman off the ground and giving her superstardom. This was honestly one of the most reasonable plot twists in AHS history. L.A.!

So, it is really hard to make jokes about this next segment. In what felt like a neverending, 45-minute ordeal, we watched Dandy walk through the circus and systematically murder everybody with a gold-plated gun (that never needed to be reloaded?). Anyway, one can argue that this was just a sensationalistic way to cap off a sleepy season, but keep in mind that the victims—characters with whom we've spent more time on a weekly basis than some of our own friends—were being brutally murdered in front of our eyes. And not in a fake-out way marred with asterisks. Murdered for real. Snuffed out. It was really hard to watch, and the sort of minimal music and Dandy's calm demeanor just made it all that much harder.

Some truly unbearable tension was wrung from his attempt to figure out where Desiree was hiding.

To see such a strong and incredibly likable woman reduced to quivering tears was extremely powerful and unpleasant. This was where all the self-conscious artifice and camp of Freak Show fell away and became gritty and real in a devastating way. At least it was punctuated by the occasional act of heroism, like when Amazon Eve grabbed a hatchet and tried to take Dandy out.

But ultimately not even she could stop him.

Dandy never ended up finding Desiree (phew!) but he was able to whisk away a tied-up Bette and Dot before nightfall. Which led to this horrible moment, when Jimmy ventured out of his rusty shed to eat some bread and look for his friends.

Only to finally find them in the main tent.

And, oh man, the look on Desiree's face when she ran out to hug Jimmy:

I'm telling you, it's easy to sort of compartmentalize AHS for being an exercise in cartoon violence, but I was sort of ugly-gasping during this whole sequence. This stuff just hit me in a deep way and I truly have to give the show credit for being able to wield that kind of power over me. I don't know. Everyone will react differently. But me? I was ruined.

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Moving on...

Can you say DREAM WEDDING? Dandy was finally going to marry Bette and Dot, and only the most V.I.P. stuffed animals were invited. (No two-headed Frances Conroy puppets though.) I loved that Dot was pretending to be all gooey-in-love and Bette was like, "You guys have fun."

But just in case you were worried that the twins had fallen victim to Stockholm Syndrome or something, don't worry. They were just waiting for their moment. And that moment had A LOT to do with drugged champagne.

It was a nice touch that Dot was the one who shot Dandy in the arm, and Bette complimented her on her acting skills for pretending to be in love with him. Love these ladies. But not as much as I loved Dandy's newly hired help:

That's because some sweet, sweet justice was about to unfold. And it would be very wet and very tighty-whities inclusive.

The four remaining freaks just slowly relished in Dandy's torment as his Houdini tank slowly filled up with water. Their friends may've all been dead, but at least they'd get their patented freak-style justice!

YES. I enjoyed this kind of teamwork. I also enjoyed the sight of Angela Bassett eating popcorn while watching someone drown. That is honestly how I hope to go out also, so I was weirdly jealous of Dandy in this moment. Anyway, bye Dandy! You were a bad person but also kind of the most genius part of Freak Show. And if Finn Wittrock isn't a main character next season, then that is just bad decision-making, Ryan Murphy. Do the right thing.

From there we flashed forward a few years to see Elsa Mars at the height of her fame. Not only did she have a hit TV show (on Friday nights, but oh well), she also had a wonderful recording career singing German novelty tunes.

And she also owned Cocker Spaniels!

And she also had a bit of sidewalk named after her:

And if those things weren't proof of her fame, consider that she was now famous enough to throw diva fits on the set of her Instant Coffee commercial:

Also, yeah, she had married Neil Patrick Harris's husband and they shared a very loving relationship:

But Elsa wasn't happy. She was bored. And the network wanted her to do a Halloween special, which was a BIG no-no in Edward Mordrake's book. And to top if off, that one birthday wish for people to love her for real still hadn't come true.

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But then Axeman showed up and she saw one last chance to be loved.

Alas, Axeman was too cancer-y to make her romantic dreams come true. Another mark in the loss column for Elsa. But her day was about to get even worse.

In this world, when dozens of freaks were murdered in a shooting massacre, it probably wouldn't make the news, and definitely not the national news. Because Elsa did NOT know about the circus massacre from two years earlier (Jimmy can't write letters). That, plus the news that Hedda Hopper was about to blow the lid off of Elsa's attempted snuff film (classic Hollywood gossip fodder) meant that Elsa was suddenly feeling pretty okay with the idea of performing on Halloween and letting Edward Mordrake steal her soul. So the next thing we knew...

She was performing "Heroes" on national TV! Is "Heroes" perhaps the only Bowie song better than "Life on Mars"? The answer is yes. As much as I did not enjoy this season's brief flirtation with weekly performances (I'm still groaning about "Criminal" and "Come As You Are"), there is no denying the extreme magic of the premiere's "Life on Mars" moment, which for my money was one of the best TV moments of all time. And this bookending version of "Heroes" absolutely knocked me flat. The pathos!

And this was before "Curtain Call" provided glimpses into the absolutely lovely happy endings our surviving freaks had been given.

Desiree had kids! With Malcolm Jamal-Warner! And she seemed so happy.

But they weren't the only ones to achieve their long-desired wish for normalcy.

Jimmy had knocked up Bette while Dot read a magazine. Ugh, so good.

But alas, it was time for Edward Mordrake to show up and steal a soul. (I loved that he seemed mildly surprised that this particular freak show was transpiring in a TV studio.) Also, he brought along a familiar face.

And in the final, undeniably star-worthy moment of Elsa's career, she died right there on live TV.

I mean, THAT is the stuff of legend. Poignant and powerful in equal measure, it was an exit Elsa Mars truly deserved.

But the episode wasn't over yet. Some may say that this live-TV death was enough of a capper, but you know I am powerless against an afterlife reunion.

Ethel and the other murdered freaks (including Meep!), but not the con artists or Dandy or Dell, greeted Elsa and forgave her for her sins with a rather complicated but meaningful rationalization that in life they'd all been playing parts and it had been merely Elsa's fate to play the villain. Guys, I don't know, but it worked for me.

And we ended with this final shot: Elsa preparing to reprise "Life on Mars," but this time for a packed audience. Yes.

Look, there's no arguing with people who didn't care for this season or its finale. But I very much cared about a lot of these people (mostly owing to the actors' performances) and loved seeing this bit of dream-logic happiness at the end here. Though Freak Show had some issues, it never lacked for ambition. It was an often unpleasant and sometimes meandering journey, but its startlingly emotional highs pretty much redeem it in my eyes. I would definitely be a paying audience member in that packed circus tent; I would definitely be applauding.

Thanks for reading these photo recaps this season! I truly appreciate it.

BYE

QUESTIONS:

... Was "Curtain Call" a fitting ending for these characters?

... Were you disturbed by the shooting sequence?

... What was your favorite element of this season overall?

... Quick! What is your theory for next season's premise?