AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON 1, EP. 8: "SPOOKY LITTLE GIRL" RECAP

Simon Abrams is back to kick off our look at American Horror Story's official episode #8, entitled "Spooky Little Girl." Simon?

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What is happening, my man, Dennis?

Having watched this week's episode just before reading your impassioned "Flaws? PFFF! SO IT'S GOT FLAWS" defense, I'm afraid I have bad news: "Spooky Little Girl" is business as usual for American Horror Story. Meaning: while I may roll my eyes more strenuously at this episode's revelations, it's realistically nothing new or especially surprising given what the show's writers have been building toward. 

That having been said, "Spooky Little Girl" is a major disappointment after "Rubber Man." As you just wrote, there's nothing necessarily wrong with shock tactics, and it makes sense that the show's shocks are soapy given since, as you wrote, Dark Shadows is definitely a major influence. At the same time, I'm pretty exasperated by some of the show's sudsier plot twists. There's no sense of fun to them, nor do they seem to accomplish anything beyond building toward more ludicrous revelations. And with three episodes left in the season, I'm kind of exhausted.

Ok, so "Spooky Little Girl" starts in 1947 where we're introduced to the spook of the week: Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia killer's victim, visits a dentist and tries to sell sex for healthcare. She fails. She fails so hard that she gets diced up and turned into a real-life horror story. What this has to do with anything going on in this week's episode is questionable. Is it just another illustration of "wrong place, wrong time," thinking? Do we just have to wait and see, again? I'm thinking the latter as I doubt this week's episode is the last time we'll see Ms. Short. Presumably, a link is being drawn between her actions and Constance's subplot with Travis, wherein Constance laughs at Travis's dreams of becoming a star. Like Elizabeth before her, Constance also wanted to become a starlet. Again, mayhaps this is the uniquely "American" part of our show, the drive towards fame and fortune in our image-driven society? If so, ugh. Seriously, ugh, how many times do we need people to patly cross their arms and tsk-tsk the poor, vain unfortunates that trek out to Ho-Wood, as Steve Boone calls it, to get their 15 minutes? Haven't we all listened to "All the Way to Reno" by now? Why is this a thing? Because it's still a thing in real-life? Not good enough! Next!

This goes back to what we were initially talking about when we discussed "Murder House:" the fetishization of the horrors of the past, like when Murphy and Falchuk randomly name-checked Sal Mineo's sordid murder, is tacky and more than a little inexplicable. I don't think that we still need to worry about that episode's double standard of pitting bumbling modern-day copy-cats against the more dangerous, motive-free psychos of yesteryear. The Infantata are arguably just as ridiculous as Tate and his Rubber Man schtick. But there is also something inherently sleazy about tactlessly throwing Elizabeth Short into the mix of this week's episode for no immediately apparent reason. She gets sliced up, her body is found and then she appears again in the present-day and tries to talk Ben into letting her become his patient. Maybe, she reasons, she can stop what happened to her from happening. This is sadly impossible, as Hayden points out when she bumps into Elizabeth. But Hayden and Elizabeth's brief chat does raise an interesting question: "Don't you know who you are," Hayden asks Elizabeth. We, the presumably educated viewer, do: she's a real-life victim. But if you can tell me who she's supposed to be within the context of this week's episode beyond yet another sign of how history has a habit of repeating itself, I'd love to hear it. 

Really, I'm not just being combatively snide, I want to know what you make of this, Dennis, because it makes me chafe. Seriously, we've got that swing music piece that was most recently used in...is it The Aviator or Shutter Island? One of the recent Scorsese/Dicaprio historical dramas...and when Elizabeth tries to seduce Ben, she fails, just as Moira fails. Presumably, this is the lesson: history doesn't always have to repeat itself. Ben doesn't cheat on Vivien, just as he slowly comes to realize that he isn't the monster Vivien believes he is. This is because, as Vivien's OBGYN tells Ben, Ben's not the father of both of Vivien's twins. Apparently, within the same 48 hour ovulation cycle that Ben got his wife pregnant during, somebody else schtupped Vivien. We know that this someone is the Rubber Man/Tate. But Ben immediately goes off half-cocked, if you'll pardon the bad pun, and goes after Luke. But Luke didn't schtup Vivien, and he's miraculously able to defuse that canned tension immediately in the same episode! 

Which just brings us to the one thing I do like about "Spooky Little Girl:" Ben finally has to get his shit together. Never mind that a new Black Dahlia victim shows up and Larry discovers her body. Never mind that Hayden has sex with Travis just to prove that she can have sex with a living kid (she even says this). And never mind that Travis randomly re-appears and predictably rebuffs Constance's heart-felt request for him to marry her and raise their unborn child together. Never mind all that stuff, ok? That stuff is clunky, and it's go no finesse to it and it's irritating, but as long as we're accepting the show's rote flaws as such, they're fine, ok?! OK. What matters here is that Ben is finally starting to get his shit together: he's not the monster patriarch that his bad behavior had heretofore defined him as. He can stop seeing a tarted-up hussy when he looks at Moira. And he's even able to push past Hayden's usual manipulative BS, like when she pouts to him, "I don't know if we have a future together but I've always been there for you." Yeah, that seems fair, why didn't we think of that before...

Anyway, look: Ben! He's making perfunctory steps away from the abyss and towards some semblance of recovery from being a domineering but wracked sex-addicted alpha male! He's doing it! The show's plot isn't just a downward spiral of characters obliviously lost in a web of hideously contrived plot twists anymore! There is a momentary calm before the upcoming storm! It's not just homogeneous bullshit, it's a little heterogeneous, too! Yes, that was a terrible pun, and what are you going to do about it, this show's going to break me, Dennis, I JUST KNOW!

But what did you think of this week's episode, man? I'll get into it a little more soon, but for now, eh, I think this is a good opener. Kinda hungry. Dinner soon. Later.

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Catch up on the American Horror Story conversation between Simon and me by clicking on the following links:

"RUBBER MAN" POST #3

"RUBBER MAN" POST #2
"RUBBER MAN" POST #1

"OPEN HOUSE" POST #2

"OPEN HOUSE" POST #1

"PIGGY, PIGGY" POST #4 
"PIGGY, PIGGY" POST #3
"PIGGY, PIGGY" POST #2
"PIGGY, PIGGY" POST #1

"HALLOWEEN, PT. 2" POST #1
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 2" POST #2
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 2" POST #3
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 2 POST #4

"HALLOWEEN, PT. 1" POST #1
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 1" POST #2
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 1" POST #3
"HALLOWEEN, PT. 1" POST #4

"MURDER HOUSE" POST #1
"MURDER HOUSE" POST #2

"HOME INVASION" POST #1
"HOME INVASION" POST #2
"HOME INVASION" POST #3
"HOME INVASION" POST #4

PILOT EPISODE POST #1
PILOT EPISODE POST #2
PILOT EPISODE POST #3
PILOT EPISODE POST #4
PILOT EPISODE POST #5
PILOT EPISODE POST #6

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