AHS: Freak Show "Massacres and Matinees" Review: Bigmouth Strikes Again (PHOTO RECAP)

American Horror Story S04E02: "Massacres and Matinees"

Whenever you or I need to build a world, we stick with the basics: papier-mâché and dark magic. But television shows operate differently. Building a world means slowly introducing new characters and expanding the universe enough to give it scope and stakes, but not so quickly as to overwhelm and consequently bore the audience. You know? When there's too much to pay attention to, sometimes none of it seems interesting. Previous seasons of American Horror Story could fairly be criticized for introducing too many characters, concepts, and storylines too soon, but Freak Show has felt comparatively relaxed so far. A half-dozen of the major actors we've come to expect from the series have yet to make their Freak Show debuts, and when characters have been incorporated into the storyline it's been noticeably more organic and story-driven than before. Whereas last week's premiere episode was tasked primarily with introducing us to the various goings-on within the Jupiter, Florida carny scene, "Massacres and Matinees" gave us a chance to spend some real time with these people and to truly get a sense of the geography of the carnival as well as the surrounding town. Similarly, some key relationships became both elucidated or complicated while we were also gifted with a couple of solid nightmare sequences, mostly clown-related. But yeah, in general, great episode! Let's talk about it!

First off, you could tell by the swirling, insane camera work that this episode marked the return of TV's preeminent directorial madman, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. The opening shot was like a slow-mo roller-coaster ride across the freak show campus, and it ended on a panic-stricken radio broadcast:

From here we flashed around town as word began to spread that multiple unsolved murders had been committed. And, of course, all fingers and crab-hands pointed to a certain gaggle of outcasts.

For some reason these detectives found it suspicious that their detective friend had disappeared after paying a visit to this carnival, but the performers' story was airtight: They didn't know nuthin'.

Meanwhile this local toy store employee guy was not having a great day:

!!!

THIS is my favorite kind of horror scare. The something's-in-the-background moment where not even the camerawork or music points it out. You just sort of see it on your own and it's so so so scary. Anyway, then this happened:

His boss had been decapitated! Which would ordinarily be a good news, bad news situation, because at least the store would get to close early that day. But this ended up being a mostly bad news situation.

Whoops, sorry guy. Maybe pay better attention to clowns that look like walking corpses standing in plain sight? (Because let's be real, Twisty is not even coming close to passing for a non-nightmare creature, regardless of what this town full of crazies thinks clowns actually look like.)

Meanwhile the gang was all back at the tents having a great time.

Except at least one of them was feeling too guilty to be enjoying himself.

As it turned out, Jimmy Darling had been quick to razor-blade that one cop, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it or was proud of it or was cool with it in any way.

So they decided to dig up the guy's remains (cleverly concealed on the other side of a mud puddle from their tents) and burn the body. Except for the police badge, which Jimmy would be keeping as a souvenir. OR WOULD HE? He would not. He would be using that for something later, don't worry about it.

Meanwhile we got this very long and juicy scene between Dandy and his mom and their maid, Patti LaBelle.

There were a lot of amazing elements to this scene, including the fact that Dandy drank bourbon from a crystal baby bottle and also everything about Frances Conroy's performance. But also we finally started to learn the true extent of his mental problems when he announced he wanted to become a star.

Of course, merely wanting to be an actor wasn't the biggest indicator that Dandy was criminally insane. That would be the pile of cat parts he'd left behind the shed! For someone who really hated to be bored, he sure was practicing the most boring serial killer clichés possible.

Elsewhere, Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities welcomed two new members! This strong man dude and his wife, Angela Bassett! Apparently they were kind of on the run after she made love to a homosexual and her husband found out and overreacted:

Also if you were wondering what made this lady a "freak," this might answer your question:

Also she was a hermaphrodite downtown if you catch my drift. My drift means penis AND vagina. Anyway, they needed a job, so Elsa hired them if only so that the strong man could protect the troupe from rabble. He was basically going to be Steve from The Jerry Springer Show.

I mean, I'm not sure I felt like this was a good idea on the part of Dandy's mom:

And furthermore I'm not sure I felt like this was a good idea on the part of Patti LaBelle:

Is that a whole salmon wrapped in pickles with an olive eyeball? You're fired, Patti LaBelle.

But anyway, Dandy's mom had brought the clown home as a gift to her troubled son, which was perfectly timed considering Dandy had just tried to get a job at Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities only to be brutally reminded that he was not a physical freak in any way except for maybe his haircut.

And needless to say it was love at first nightmare for Dandy and Twisty. Who can blame those two? Don't judge! Dandy and Twisty's love is pure.

As it turned out, the bearded lady from Baltimore had some old beef with the strong man:

Apparently their feud had been one of those arguments that started with a small thing and blew up into a huge thing. In this case the small thing was the guy tried to murder Jimmy when he was a baby.

Yikes! Carnies were pretty mean to each other back in the day. Also the bearded lady had a better beard when she was younger. Maybe she should look into beard Propecia?

Then there was this scene that was all about trying to figure out what talent Bette and Dot could perform for the freak shows (because standing awkwardly as conjoined twins wasn't sensational enough). Bette felt that she had the most star power, so she demonstrated it by singing very terribly!

Everybody in the tent nearly collapsed from the horrible noise. At first Angela Bassett suggested that the twins just focus on maybe firing ping-pong balls out of their downstairs timeshare, but then, you guessed it, the reluctant Dot opened her mouth and she had a very beautiful singing voice!

But right away Dot's beautiful singing voice spelled trouble for Elsa. Would Elsa be upstaged?! Yes probably, she only has the one head for starters. And David Bowie songs only get you so far when you perform them several decades before they are written.

So back to Dandy and Twisty's playdate. At first it went well when Dandy treated the clown to a marionette version of The King & I, but then things took a turn when Dandy decided to go through Twisty's sh*t.

The main thing to know about hanging out with ghoulish nightmare clowns is that you should never, ever go through their sh*t. They really hate that.

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Meanwhile Jimmy decided that the town needed to see him and his friends for what they really were: FIENDING FOR CHEESEBURGERS!

But let me tell you something, 1950s diner diners did NOT appreciate the sudden appearance of malformed humans while they were trying to eat their hash browns. Not one bit.

Things took a poignant turn when Pepper tried to order meat loaf but then the strong man showed up to kick everybody out on account of them giving the town a "free show."

So rather than have a delicious diner meal, everybody had to stand at the window and watch the strong man beat Jimmy UPPP.

Haha look at Pepper in that photo. ENHANCE:

Still thinkin' about that meat loaf. We've all been there bb.

Meanwhile back in Twisty's very unsanitary trailer:

He'd brought his captives a nice toy robot and also this:

That's when the girl decided to use some quick thinking and club Twisty in the face with a 2x4!

She clobbered him good and it knocked his mask off and it looked like this underneath:

It truly did not look great. Twisty has definitely been through some stuff, I'll just say that right now.

But even though the girl and the little boy escaped the trailer, they didn't quite get away fast enough. For example, there was the wealthy sociopath who had followed Twisty home.

Aw, dang. Sorry, captives. You had the right idea but this was just not your day.

Meanwhile Jimmy's face was all beat up and he tried to convince Elsa to kick the strong man to the curb. Unfortunately she wasn't having it.

That is, of course, until he pointed out that the strong man had listed her at the bottom of the posters he'd been putting up around town!

So she immediately changed her mind and they agreed to team up and get rid of Michael Chiklis.

At that day's matinee (all the shows had to happen during the daytime now that there was a townwide curfew), you guessed it, there was another anachronistic musical number!

They sang "Criminal" by Fiona Apple—which, I'm just going to level with you, only barely makes the Top 10 best Fiona Apple songs. Call me old, but that song was played out in the late '90s and never stopped being played out. Also, you know, the thrill of surprise after last week's "Life on Mars" just wasn't there for me this week. Oh well. At least there was a crowd-surfing little person:

And Elsa was NOT happy about how much everyone loved Dot.

That's what's called "mixed feelings," seeing as Elsa had hoped the twins would attract a bigger crowd. Elsa is so complicated.

Meanwhile the police returned claiming they'd received an anonymous tip about the dead detective. Jimmy and Elsa directed the cops to the strong man's trailer (presumably because Jimmy had planted that badge in there), but guess where the badge had been re-planted? In the Geek's trailer!

Aw, poor Meep. Wrongfully accused Meep, who was only guilty of systematically murdering livestock, was sent to jail where he had to spend the night with a bunch of intolerant murderers!

Poor Meep!

How much do you wish YOU could be woken up in the middle of the night by this face?

Elsa had dropped by the twins' tent to plant seeds in Bette's head about how SHE was the true star, not Dot. Kinda weird how Bette immediately agreed, seeing as earlier in the day it was made very clear that Bette was an untalented piece of garbage. Just kidding, she was merely just untalented. Still, she believed Elsa and seemed happy to hear these warm fuzzies.

I liked that Dot has a telepathic link with Bette and is also four inches away from her, but didn't seem to care what was being said right in front of her. Also she didn't see the knife that Elsa left behind for Dot as a gift.

Uh-oh. This does not seem like it's leading anywhere good.

Speaking of not good, the gang received a special delivery!

It was Meep! Dead Meep!

Oh, if Jimmy Darling wasn't already becoming the Malcolm X of sideshow attractions, this was certainly going to push him over the edge. Because that was pretty cold-blooded on the part of those jail bullies. Murder is wrong in most situations and that was especially true here. Unless one or more of them was just very sympathetic to all the chickens that Meep bit the heads off of? I can't be sure about that. But Meep was now dead and that was just the reality of the situation.

"Massacres and Matinees" was both scary and relaxed and set up a lot of very compelling threads that will probably be tugged on for the next few episodes. See what I'm saying about how the new characters were eased in and efficiently set up with goals and adversaries? Plus I'm loving the Town That Dreaded Sundown vibe that Freak Show has going on, with everyone retreating home before curfew and the burgeoning conflict between the locals and the "freaks." Bad times are definitely on the way. Can't wait!

BYE

QUESTIONS

... Poor Meep.

... Is Dandy a little bit deranged? Be honest.

... What is your favorite Fiona Apple song?

... Should Twisty keep his mask on, why or why not?