AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON 1 EP. 1: FAMILY VALUES

Time for me to (finally) respond to Simon Abrams previous post in our ongoing discussion of the "Home Invasion" episode of American Horror Story. You can pick up the threads of this conversation in its entirety by clicking on any of the links below:

"HOME INVASION" POST #1
"HOME INVASION" POST #2

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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Hey, Simon,

My apologies to you and anyone following this exchange for my tardiness in responding to your last post. As you’ve already implied, it’s been one of those weeks for me too.

I’ve never seen Nip/Tuck, though I have certainly heard plenty about its inconsistencies of tone and intent, so I can’t speak directly to that show. But given my relatively vast experience with Glee, the other hit show spawned from the creative loins of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, one of the reasons why I resisted even watching American Horror Story for as long as I did (I only began looking at the episodes near the beginning of this summer) was because I wasn’t sure I needed a similarly flip take on a beloved genre. Horror has already been run perilously close to the ground with self-reflexive deconstructionism and a simple dearth of ideas on how to make overly familiar tropes scary and resonant again, and what I had seen from Mssrs. Murphy and Falchuk didn’t go far in making me think they were the ones that were going to make an enterprise like this work.
“Home Invasion” didn’t inspire grand hopes for me either, particularly at first. (I remember stumbling across a portion of it while channel surfing when it actually aired and thinking, nah, this probably isn’t for me. ) It’s not establishing ground the way “Pilot” did, but there’s still a sense of the show trying to find its way, trying to worm its way into the grander picture. And even accounting for the allusion to Vivien’s pregnancy and the reappearance of the severely burned Larry, “Home Invasion” feels like the most “stand-alone” of the episodes. It almost seems to portend a sort of “serial killer of the week” approach to the horror anthology format, which is, I think, something that I either consciously or unconsciously presumed when I changed the channel after running across it back in October.

Physical beauty and image is most definitely a theme here, and I don’t think it’s improper to read the show, at least in part, as Murphy and Falchuk’s take on that, particularly as it relates to Constance and Addy, but also Constance in general and other characters who will emerge in the show later. And there are definite threads here connecting personal horror in its many forms to an absence of conformity to standards of physical beauty. But Constance’s perspective on her daughter is, I believe, more ambivalent than what you suggested in your previous post, and, significantly, her ambivalence is not that of the show itself. I think it was Alan Sepinwall who, in reviewing this episode when it first aired, regretted the apparent damage that Murphy and Falchuk had done to all the good work Glee was responsible for in assimilating a Down’s syndrome character into that show and deflecting the usual uncomfortable reaction in viewers (and people in general) in encountering someone with this affliction. Were the Constance-Addy relationship to basically stop at the point where the mother shows her regret at stuffing her into a closet full of mirrors and then soberly returning to her lover, I might think there was something to this reaction. (I realize here that I’m operating with knowledge of what’s coming in episodes yet to be discussed, so I’ll try not to give away too much.)

Where I don’t think the show goes in its implications of specificity toward the use of the word “American” is that deformity itself is, as you put it, “a uniquely American curse.” Though it’s probably true that Americans are perhaps more pathologically image conscious than just about any other nation on Earth, I don’t think, in this age of global culture, we’ve necessarily got the corner on that market. (The recent Olympics illustrated this fairly well, while at the same time pointing up that America-centric coverage was as alive and suppurating as ever at NBC.) I don’t think the conflation of deformity and curse is a conclusion that AHS itself reaches, though I will admit that if one were to see only “Home Invasion” it might more easily appear this way. What Constance does reflect is a curiously American way of reacting to the unfortunate physical circumstances of her daughter’s birth in a way that translates and equates the daughter’s misfortune into the (greater) hardship of the mother, who must endure not only the slings and arrows of everyone else’s confused, repulsed response to Addy but also the mixture of disgust and love churning around in her own heart. (“A mother never turns her back on her child.”) I think in some way Constance sees her burden as proof of the sturdiness of her own stock, despite her own womb being “cursed.” Her way of dealing with this adversity (and most certainly others) relates her to a long line of women who have taken great pride in their ability to withstand whatever life throws in their path and equate that strength with their own lineage and geographical history. This quality in itself is not exactly a trait exclusive to being American, but to hear some people tell it, it most certainly is.


I don’t think you can conclude that the tainted dessert Constance brings over to the Harmons is her way of attempting to preempt further deformities either. At this point, unless we are assuming that Constance is even more perceptive (that is, psychic) than anyone-- certainly Vivien-- would suspect, Constance would have no reason to conclude that the baby she has just sensed inside Vivien would be any more at risk of a birth defect than through any other “normal” pregnancy. (She has no reason even to suspect, as we do, that the father of the child is not Ben.) But more to the point, Constance repeatedly deflects Vivien’s attempt to eat the cupcakes herself, despite Vivien’s claim (rooted in the health consciousness she’s already shown to be part of her character) that she’s “not a cupcake girl.”

No, the cupcakes, with their lovely candied purple flower toppings, are intended for Violet, for reasons having nothing to do with prevention of deformity and everything to do with simple payback. As we have both noted, Constance has already rather deliciously expressed her seething anger at Vivien having laid hands on Addy in trying to emphasize to her the impropriety of breaking into the Harmon house. So I think, under the guise of neighborly détente, Constance brings over the ipecac –laced delights (with a little extra added Addy spit for binding) ostensibly as a peace gesture but really as revenge from one mother’s daughter to another for a perceived humiliation. Violet has nothing to do with Vivien’s transgression, but in Constance’s eyes that’s not the point—this is Constance’s way of making Vivien understand a little bit of her (Constance’s) own pain. As she says to Vivien in explaining the apparently hominess of the gesture, in those similarly poisoned-honey tones Lange has down so perfectly, “I’m a sucker for penance.” (This, in case you were wondering, is my favorite line of the series that I alluded to in the previous post.)

To your other point, there is an element that I think Murphy and Falchuk and their writers do recognize, and that is the sort of fame-mongering which characterizes their band of modern-day serial killer copycats, who themselves revere and fetishize folks like Richard Speck (here, R. Franklin) or that culture-changing Charlie Manson and their evil deeds. But I don’t get the sense that, other that the heinous activities of the aforementioned murderers being aspects (or symptoms, as some would insist) of their countercultural times, AHS wants us to draw distinctions between these generations of killers. (Hindsight certainly wasn’t a requirement for folks in 1969 to draw their own conclusions as to what was to blame for the rise of Manson and his insidious influence.) Nor do I think the show is in any way shrugging off Fiona, Bianca and Dallas based on the relative paucity of their motivations. These three may be shallow copycats, because they are also, according to the detectives who indicate this was not their first foray, successful copycats, purveyors of their own genuine evil. And by reenacting “great” atrocities from L.A.’s murderous past, they are certainly consciously courting their own sort of notoriety, but that’s precisely what a megalomaniac like Manson did as well. He simply may not have been as aware of a system that would be so eager to chime in with its own complicity in helping him achieve his goals, whereas his sociopathic ancestors certainly have media awareness on their side.

It may not be a particularly original idea, but I do think the show is up to, on one level at least, a critique of the nature of a culture where such horrors are not bound by temporal or sociological demarcations but instead part of the fabric of the savagery of American culture and its self-mythology. I would agree with you about the dead-end of fetishizing the past if I also agreed that Murphy and Falchuk are really saying that one generation of killers is worse than the others. But I don’t, because I don’t think Murphy and Falchuk, whatever flaws they have as storytellers, are quite as smug as that (and they can be smug). But it’s also in part because within the walls of the Harmon house I think American Horror Story is on its way to illustrating the extent to which its creators want to take the idea that, in an exception what the usual purveyors of “family values” would suggest, murderers and victims and deviants from the norm one and all constitute an American family that just ain’t what it used to be, and that might be, after all is said and done, a good thing.

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AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON 1 EP.1: REFLECTIONS IN A CRACKED MIRROR

Simon Abrams checks in on "Home Invasion" in the following post. You can read the recap and catch up on the entirety of our discussion so far via the following links:

"HOME INVASION" POST #1

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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Hey, Dennis,

You'll have to forgive this post's lack of focus; last week was not so good and today got off to a bit of a rough start. Also my notes on "Home Invasion" are on my laptop, which is currently in the shop for repairs. Guh.

Anyway, I think what makes Falchuk and Murphy's thematic concerns uniquely "American" kinda speaks to what irritates me about the show's flip attitude. American Horror Story is set in Los Angeles because, so far, it's a story about our morbid conflation or celebrity and macabre crime. The fact that, as you said, "Home Invasion" is the first proper episode of the show is telling. Here is where Falchuk and Murphy, the co-creators of Nip/Tuck, start to explain why physical beauty and fears of birth defects are a concern in this L.A.-based show. Simply put, it's because image is everything. We already know that Constance failed as an actress and that she almost exclusively disdains Addy for her physical deformities, as is shown with the mirror-lined closet. If nothing else, that closet is Constance's evil way of punishing Addy for reminding Constance of her failure to make it as a star.

So within the context of American Horror Story (as I understand it now), being born deformed is a uniquely American curse. We are image-conscious, whether we're talking about Constance or the copycat killers that want to get famous by repeating the senseless and cartoonishly Evil violence of the past (they just had to massacre chaste, Christ-worshipping medical students whose idea of a good time is studying and watching Laugh-In!). So the poisoned cupcake is Constance's way of trying to prevent any further mistakes. No more births in the Harmons' house presumably means no more deformed children (I haven't watched beyond episode two, nor have I read anything about the show, but I can only imagine the house makes monsters).

I find that to be fairly insufferable. The invocation of the killers interest in slayings like the Black Dahlia murders is an especially smug way of insisting that the concerns of serial killers and never-was starlets like Constance are eerily similar. This reading gives the scene where Constance asks Tate if the killing of the copycats was his handiwork a goofy new meaning: Constance regrets being involved with Tate, a monstrous little brat and a killer. But she can only affect what happens in Harmons' house so much. And ultimately, it doesn't really matter who did the killing. The only thing that distinguishes Tate and the copycats is that they hail from different generations of killers (I think I mentioned this last time, but I assume Tate is a ghost). And the first generation of killers are being treated as real monsters while the copycats are just insecure because the copycats are only enacting their fantasy of what true Evil really is.

That philosophy is essentially what I object to in an otherwise moody and intriguing show. As I understand/anticipate the direction that Falchuk and Murphy are taking American Horror Story, the show's drama fetishizes serial killers of the '60s and '70s like Manson because, well, it wasn't a different time, Dennis! Manson-like killers are, in the show, counter-cultural signs of the time but only thanks to the magic of warped hindsight. I'm saying this as someone that considers the Serial Killer Museum in Florence to be one of the city's most diverting attractions. I think it's dangerous to assume that simply acknowledging the cyclical nature of our mythic monster-making culture is a sufficient cultural critique. Because Falchuk and Murphy are assuming that one generation of killers is worse than the another and that's just another form of fetishizing the past.

Anyway. What do you think, Dennis? I know I ranted a bit too much this time out, but without my notes, that is basically what came to mind. What do you think of the episode in general?

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AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON 1, EP. 1: "HOME INVASION" RECAP

Back into the house we go. Simon Abrams and I resume our conversation about American Horror Story on our respective blogs—both ends of the give and take will be published, as was our discussion of the “Pilot” episode, here and at Simon’s home away from home, Extended Cut. This week we dig into the first official episode, entitled “Home Invasion,” beginning with my detailed recap of the events of the hour. (Please be warned if you haven’t yet seen the episode, I will be making no attempt to avoid spoilers.) You can catch up with the previous week’s musings via the following links:

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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As I said, back into the house we go. Not unlike the beginning of the pilot episode, which set us down immediately at the threshold of a key event from the past, specifically in 1978, once again we viewers find ourselves looking backward at the now familiar Harmon house, this time from 1968. The Fifth Dimension’s hit single version of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” is heard on the soundtrack as we come upon the outside of the house at dusk. It’s hard to tell if it’s just because we know we’re watching American Horror Story, but the use of the song takes on unaccountably, inevitably sinister vibes as we’re introduced to three young women descending the stairs, talking about being late and rushing out to see the Doors at the Hollywood Bowl. We realize, as they encounter two other women, Maria and Gladys, in the living room that the house is at this point in its history being used as a dormitory for nursing students. Maria and Gladys are invited to the concert by the three, but they opt to stay home—Maria is studying, Gladys (in uniform) looking as though she’s just spent a long day on an internship, is watching Laugh-In on television.

Sometime later (the TV is still on, but we’ve moved on to either an old movie or some generic drama) there’s a knock at the door. When she opens it (Yet another clue that we’re in the past—who would do such a thing in 2012?), a man, blood trickling from a wound on his head, pleads with Maria for assistance. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says to her in a soft, sincere-sounding voice, “I don’t want to bother you, but I’m hurt and needing some help.” Maria hesitates but takes her calling seriously enough to allow him inside and begin treating his wound. While he lies on his back on the couch he notices the cross dangling from her neck and asks insinuatingly, “You think Jesus is going to save you?” She and Gladys, who is looking on, both smile and Maria responds that they’re both already saved. “We all are,” she says, implying that the school is obviously some sort of Catholic institution. There’s a (quick) shot of the man’s somewhat untrackable reaction as he looks not to Maria, who is attending him, but instead across to Gladys, before Maria realizes that she cannot find the wound from which the blood on the man’s head is ostensibly oozing. Gladys registers this observation as something more than just curious, but by then it’s too late. The man picks up an ashtray, slams it against Maria’s skull and proceeds on what he has interpreted as an invitation to the slaughter of these innocent, “already saved” lambs.


With Gladys knocked unconscious as well, the man forces Maria to put on a nurse’s uniform, hogties her on the couch and then sits back in the chair Gladys was seated in previously. “I told you,” she says, rephrasing his earlier question, “Jesus can’t save me.” Maria begins praying and the man approaches her, apparently curious about the woman’s acceptance of what she assumes is his impending death. He then retreats out of the room for a few moments, and Maria looks up from her position, as if to wonder, in terror, if this is an opportunity to escape. But before she has a chance to wonder further, the man reappears and begins stabbing her repeatedly in the back, her screams intercut with the innocuous drama playing out on the television.

There’s a quick cut to the present and a by-now familiar scene: Tate sitting quietly in the patient’s chair in Ben’s office, almost taunting Ben with a stare while Ben ignores his buzzing cell phone. The taunt is verbalized when Tate accuses Ben of thinking about sex rather than the needs of his patient. When Ben redirects the taunt and asks Tate if he thinks about sex, Tate seizes the opportunity to let Ben know just how much he thinks about it, especially what he wants to do with Ben’s daughter Violet, and how he jerks off as a way of distracting himself from the constant thoughts of blood and carnage conjured in his fantasies. Ben remains outwardly sympathetic, but when Tate reveals that Violet has told him about Ben’s affair with “the girl in Boston,” the psychologist abruptly ends the session. Immediately Ben’s phone begins buzzing again—it’s “the girl from Boston,” Hayden (Kate Mara), who reveals that she’s pregnant.

Violet has a conversation with her high school nemesis Leah, who is so rattled by the attack in the basement of the house that she has taken up smoking. (Her initial self-righteous snit began with her disgust at Violet for smoking in school.) Violet insists that the thing that attacked Leah was just Tate trying to freak them both out, but Leah remains shattered and unconvinced. “Do you believe in the devil?” she asks Violet, who says no. “Well, I do,” Leah responds. “I’ve looked into his eyes.”

Later that night, the Harmons are awakened by the house alarm going off. Ben creeps, baseball bat in hand, into the basement, where he finds Addy, Constance’s Down’s-afflicted daughter, sitting and giggling and sends her home. Describing the situation to Vivien, he calls Addy “a little freak,” and Vivien’s emotional response (“You shouldn’t call her that!”) reveals that she’s worried about her new pregnancy because, unlike the others, including her miscarriage, she’s not been nauseous or otherwise incapacitated. Ben tries to reassure her that he thinks this baby is the reason the Harmons moved to Los Angeles, to this house, so that they could be reunited, healed, saved by another child.

We’re then introduced to Bianca (Mageina Tovah), a new patient of Ben’s who, after describing a recurring dream in which she is gruesomely bisected in an elevator door, reveals that she was attracted to his practice when she realized it was in “the Murder House.” He shrugs off her morbid interest and redirects the conversation to a rather banal interpretation of her dream, but she dryly responds that she thinks she’s just afraid of being cut in half. Ben steps into the kitchen to call Tate’s mother about ceasing his treatment due to Tate’s insinuation about Violet, but the call is interrupted when Bianca wanders into the kitchen, apparently having lost her way trying to find the front door. As she leaves, Ben resumes the conversation: “I’m just not comfortable continuing Tate’s treatment in my home.”


Cut to Constance, in her kitchen as she stirs up some cake batter in a bowl while Addy looks on. Addy is thumbing through a Vogue magazine and wonders aloud why she doesn’t look like the girls on the glossy pages. “Because you don’t,” responds Constance lovingly but matter-of-factly. “But you were hatched with other gifts.” Constance asks Addy for some ipecac syrup off the shelf to add to the mix, and when Addy asks if it’ll make the cupcakes taste good, Constance tells her, in tones reminiscent of a poison-laced Barbara Billingsley, “You can’t actually taste it. It causes violent stomach upset and sometimes… internal bleeding.” (Lange’s emphasis.) Then, reminding us of Addy’s own typical wrinkle on a recipe mentioned in the previous episode, she invites her daughter to spit in it.

While out on a run, Ben again meets up with Larry (“People will say we’re in love!”) who insists that whatever is eating at Ben, the house will use it against him. (Remember, Larry told Ben how forces inside the house drove him to set himself and his family on fire.) But ben responds that this isn’t about the house, it’s about his own guilt over nearly destroying his marriage over his affair with Hayden. Larry takes a surprisingly moralistic stance, telling Ben that even though he burned three people alive at least he was never unfaithful. Cutting directly to the heart of Ben’s current dilemma about Hayden’s pregnancy, Larry declares that Ben has no choice but to do the only honorable thing, which is to lie to Vivien about it. Ben proceeds to do exactly this, concocting a story for his wife about having to return to Boston to assist an ex-patient who is threatening suicide.


Vivien is soon interrupted in her own kitchen by Constance, who comes in the side door from outside with a plate bearing two enormous cupcakes-- “A peace offering for Addy disturbing your slumber—I think I’m gonna have to start strapping her in at night again.” Vivien thanks her but politely refuses (does she remember Constance telling her of Addy’s little baking proclivity?) on grounds that she’s “not much of a cupcake girl.” Constance reveals that the cupcakes are for Violet, then stops short, looks at Vivien with some sort of curious amazement, and says, “You’re with child.” Vivien, shocked, then invites her to sit down and asks her, revealing her own prenatal fears, about what Constance said in the previous episode regarding what she might have done had she known Addy would be born with Down’s syndrome. Constance admits to thoughts of abandoning “the little bug-eye,” but then tells Vivien that she ultimately did not because “a mother never turns her back on her child,” and then of the beleaguered history of her own children, of which there were four. All had Down’s “or some such other malady,” except one, a model of physical perfection who was “lost to… other things.”

At this point both Ben and Moira enter the kitchen. When Ben makes a grab for the cupcakes, Constance pulls them away and hands them to Moira, again emphasizing that they are only for Violet and that sternly directing that they be delivered directly to her, but only after Moira has cleaned the table properly. “Moira and I go way back,” Constance reveals. “Why, I even employed her for a time. I hope her dusting has improved.” Then, as she leaves, Constance turns to Vivien, but also to Ben, who stands between them and says, “Is there anything more wonderful than the promise of a new child… or more heartbreaking when that promise is broken?” Ben laughs off Constance’s portentousness and hugs Vivien. “I wish you could come with me,” he tells her, but the look on his face reveals that’s the last thing he wants.

Vivien brings the cupcakes up to Violet, who’s studying in her room, and means to tell her about the pregnancy, but Violet has already guessed and openly, harshly questions both Vivien’s strength and the presumed idea that another child will be the Band-Aid that fixes the various rifts and mistrust in the family caused by Ben’s infidelity. Hurt, Vivien tries to call Ben, but he doesn’t pick up because he’s in Hayden’s Boston apartment, trying to support her and keep himself out of another sexual situation. Hayden claims she just needs him there to help her through the abortion she’s decided to have. She says she has resolved to refocus on her college classes (she’s a psych major) and relegate their relationship to the past. But when she catches Ben checking his phone messages she becomes irrationally angry, and her insecurities, as well as her continuing desire for his love, come exploding to the surface.


Back in Los Angeles, the doorbell rings and Vivien cautiously answers through the peephole. It’s a young woman: “Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t want to bother you,” she says flatly, “but I’m hurt and need some help.” Vivien presses for details and becomes increasingly suspicious when the woman flatly repeats the same phrase (“I’m hurt… and needing some help”) and becomes agitated at not being let into the house. Vivien eventually leaves to call 911 when the woman begins pounding on the door, shouting about how she’s fearful she’s about to be attacked. We see someone pass behind Vivien—there’s already someone inside beside Violet and herself. She tells Violet to hide in her room, and when she returns to the front door peephole she sees the woman now wearing a black mask. Suddenly we see someone behind Vivien wearing a similar mask. She screams.


Violet and Vivien have both been subdued by three home invaders, who have taken off their masks. One of them is revealed to be Bianca, Ben’s new patient, who has apparently used her therapy session with him as a recon mission for planning this attack. The three turn out to be thrill-killing copycat cult killers who intend to recreate the 1968 murders that opened the episode, with Vivien and Violet standing in for the nurses. The leader reveals that her obsessiveness goes so far that she has obtained (from eBay) the actual ashtray the original killer used to violently subdue Maria. And Bianca admiringly opines that the killer, R. Franklin (an obvious stand-in for Richard Speck), was the first great serial killer, before the great Charles Manson even. “He changed the culture,” she explains. “We’re paying tribute to him.” And that means assigning roles—Violet is Gladys, who was murdered first, drowned in the upstairs bathtub, and Vivien is to be the prayerful and violently penetrated Maria.

Violet manages to break away, and while running through the halls she’s grabbed by Tate, who is somehow inside the house already. (Was he the one we saw initially passing behind Vivien?) He tells Violet to get them to the basement, where he will presumably unleash on these invaders some of the same thrills he had in store for Leah. The killers catch up to her and drag her to the upstairs bathroom in preparation for their own twist on a “dramatic recreation” of the crime. While the leader Fiona, watches Violet run the tub water, Bianca walks in munching a cupcake she found downstairs and soon goes into unexplainable convulsions. Fiona is rattled, and Violet takes advantage, appealing to Fiona’s sense of egotistical completism in the knowledge of the murders by revealing that the upstairs bathroom had years ago been remodeled and that the actual bathtub in which Gladys died is now in the basement. Fiona senses a ruse, but the spell is broken—she takes Violet to the basement, her jones for historical accuracy taking precedence over simply getting the job done.

Meanwhile, Addy, having trespassed yet again into the Harmon house (Was it her who passed behind Vivien?) tries to tell Constance that something’s wrong next door, but Constance is entertaining a young man and does not want to be interrupted. When Addy insists, Constance takes her to a closet and locks her inside. We see that the closet, a place of punishment with which Addy is well familiar, has been lined with mirrors which reflect back to her not the Vogue-derived image of perfection with which she is clearly fascinated but instead the image of her imperfect self, the one that has been for so long the butt of her mother’s derision and misguided love, and she screams in terror and self-disgust. Constance hears the screams and on some level cannot abide her own actions, but she submits to her own desires and returns to the bedroom where the young man awaits.


Bianca roams the halls of the Harmon house, now in significant pain from the ipecac-laced snack, and she comes upon Tate, who slams her midsection with an ax. Bleeding profusely, she moves down the hallway, leaving a trail of blood on the walls which she leans against to keep herself standing. Vivien, taunted by Dallas, the lone male among the trio of killers, manages to knock him cold with the prized ashtray. And Fiona is led to the basement, where Tate has arranged a surprise that trumps even the one he sprung on Leah. She approaches the tub which, to her shock, inside which a victim is already floating. It’s Gladys, who sits up from her submerged position and glares at Fiona. Vivien hears Fiona scream, but she disregards it, having already discovered Violet not in the upstairs bathroom but instead on the staircase. They run out of the house, where Constance sees them flying down the street in a panic.

Dallas, still lying on the floor, wakes up. A figure in a white nurse’s dressed has passed down the hallway behind him, unnoticed. She addressed another unseen person. “What the hell? Why aren’t you dead?” He then proceeds down to the basement where he discovers Fiona lying on the pavement, her throat slit from ear to ear, at the feet of the erect figures of Gladys and Maria. We then see Dallas from the reverse angle, multiple knife wounds clearly visible through the back of Maria’s dress.


Back to Boston, where Ben sits waiting with Hayden before the procedure. As she walks away (“See you when I get out”), Ben gets another call, looks at his phone and sees the phone displaying 13 missed calls, of which this is the latest. Realizing that something’s wrong back home, perhaps with his wife’s pregnancy, he rushes out of the clinic, leaving Hayden behind.

Back inside the Harmon house, Tate, Constance and Moira preside in the basement over the corpses of Fiona and Dallas. “Was this your handiwork?” Constance asks Tate. (We’ve never seen them together before.) “No,” he replies, and Moira adds, vaguely, “It was them,” the shot cutting again to the corpses who obviously did not orchestrate their own grim demise. “We have to get rid of the bodies,” Tate intones, “if you want him to keep treating me.” Then, as a good housekeeper would, Moira adds, “I’ll get the shovel, you get the bleach.”

Ben has returned home, where it is revealed to him by detectives that one of the perpetrators, who was been found down the street more or less cut in half, was Bianca, his patient. One of the detectives surmises that Bianca couldn’t go through with it, so her friends went after her and “attempted to do a Black Dahlia on her,” and that the three were a “club” obsessed with recreating famous L.A. murders. Ben is also horrified to find out that Tate was in the house and helped Violet escape. When Ben pointedly questions Violet about why Tate was inside, she says she doesn’t know. “But I’m glad he was,” she retorts witheringly. “You weren’t.” She then turns to Vivien, as if in apology for her previous harshness, and says to her, “You were really brave, Mom.” She then shoots a glance at Ben and leaves the room. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Ben offers to Vivien. She replies, “Me too,” and before the salt can creep entirely into the wound she adds, “But you’re here now.” Ben, relieved, responds, “That’s right. I’m home.” “No, you’re not,” Vivien says as she gets up and walks away from him. “We’re selling this house.”

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I’ve taken up far more space here than I expected I would, Simon, but I want to leave with a couple of questions to start the conversation. The first one is one I ended with last time that I will reiterate: What do you think it is about the way American Horror Story has been structured and played and has resonated so far that makes it a particularly American horror story? What do you think Murphy and Falchuk are up to with that appellation? Or are they just looking for a hooky title? And do the scenes with Constance and Addy make you think there’s something else going on here in regard to Addy’s affliction and Constance’s pointed ambivalence toward her daughter because of it? What about Constance’s line to Vivien about her own beauty and that of her husband (“He was a dead ringer for Van Johnson!”) being, as she puts it, “an affront to the gods”? (Lange, is, again, stupendous in her brief scenes here, and do remind me to tell you about my favorite line in the series so far, which occurs in this episode.)

You have the conn.

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FOR CHARLIE... WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN 15 IN THE YEAR 2012

Another year has come and gone, Charlie. There’s hardly a day that passes in which at some point I don’t imagine what you would be like if you were here today to make me laugh, to teach me things about you, and myself, to keep me company and challenge me to ever loosen the restraints that hold adolescence back from adulthood. I often think of all of the stages of a life that never was, what you would have loved, what you would never have abided, the quirks of humor and temper and curiosity that would have made you instantly recognizable as a sibling to your sisters, both of whom make me scratch my head and radiate wonderment with regularity. And I consider it a blessing that even though you never laid eyes on your parents, the pain that arrives on schedule this time of year continues as a reminder that you’re still growing in our hearts, that the grim reality of your brief visit here does not hold complete sway over our vision of you.

There’s a movie that I haven’t seen called Moonrise Kingdom, directed by a guy named Wes Anderson, and some of those I know who have seen it have suggested that Sam, the boy played by Jared Gilman, is a ringer for what I was like when I was Sam’s age (12), both in looks and disposition. But, not surprisingly, I suppose, I look at pictures of Sam and it’s not myself I see, but instead a projection of another possible you. Perhaps one day I’ll see Moonrise Kingdom and see Jared Gilman, with his slightly Amerasian features (I don’t know if he actually is Amerasian), and think again of you.

But for all the things I find insufferable and wonderful in Anderson’s movies, the one I think I’m probably most grateful for is Rushmore, which stars Jason Schwartzman as the precocious (and insufferable, and wonderful) Max Fischer, renaissance man, perpetual student, unrequited lover, unconscious seeker of self-knowledge. Your mom and I saw it about a year and a half after we lost you, a time when we were still spinning in despair and heartbreak, and though the movie has really nothing to do with loss or any similarity to the circumstances surrounding your death, I’ll never forget the feeling of being visited by your spirit as the movie came to its graceful, forgiving conclusion. An unlikely group of people, united by the cracked vision of this most unlikely romantic protagonist, join together in a celebratory dance, first at normal speed and then magically slowed down to a kind of nirvana of unchoreographed motion, a joyous nod to dreams both tangible and unattainable. The song to which they dance, laid down on Anderson’s soundtrack and lingering over the end credits, is “Ooh La La,” a tune about the ways of love from the perspective of a boy too young to heed the bitter, wistful experience of his “poor ol’ granddad,” written by Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood and performed by their band Faces on their final album from 1973. It’s one of those sublime moments for which Anderson is known, the perfect marriage of pre-existing pop music and lush, pregnant imagery which teases out the inexplicable emotion lying just beneath the surface. As the blue velvet curtains closed on that first screening of Rushmore and the suddenly graceful, blissful Max Fischer, dancing with the woman he’ll never have, I found myself awash in tears that I didn’t entirely understand. And then came the refrain:

I wish that I knew what I know now/When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now/When I was stronger

I’ve never tried to explicate exactly why I cannot watch the ending of this movie without being reduced to a heap. But I know it has something to do with Max Fischer being yet another projection of you, Charlie, of the hopes I once had for you as a son, the hope that you would be so much your own person, with all the possible flaws made apparent in Schwartzman’s great performance, and yet smart and intuitive enough to know when it was time to expand horizons, contract others and make your way toward becoming a good man. Something in the plaintive clarity of Ronnie Lane’s voice, combined with Anderson’s irony-free concession to the bittersweet triumph of fundamental human connection, cuts directly to the bone here for me, containing, as it seems to, the essence of what I confidently believe would have been your sweet, tough, searching personality.

I’m sure my own experience of this ending would have been profoundly different had you lived to one day see it with me. And I would trade every ounce of what I now treasure in Rushmore for the simple chance to find out what I would have thought of it, knowing that your mom and I had a tiny little boy to come home to once we got back from seeing it that night in December of 1998.

Today would have been your 15th birthday, Charlie. I love you very much.

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20 MOVIES THAT MEAN "THE MOVIES"

How easily this list, submitted for the upcoming Skandies/Muriels Greatest Movies Ever Made poll, could have been a top 24, or a top 67, or top 200!

But whatever this list is, it is in no way calculated to impress. It should not be considered a rejoinder to either the recent (and somewhat controversial) Sight and Sound poll (Hey, they didn't ask me to participate either! Imagine that!), or to the Internet writers who tend to favor American movies made no earlier than the '80s, or to obscurists who might top-load their lists with foreign films or hard-to-find titles.

And of course it's not my list of the Greatest Movies Ever Made. (How could I possibly know what 20 movies would go on such a list?) But I do believe that every movie on my list is a "great" movie, accounting for all the subtle shades of meaning in such an adjective. These are the movies that I think of when I hear the word "cinema," or "movies," or "film," the ones that compose the myriad reasons I've loved the movies for as long as I can remember, the ones that constantly remind me, as I'm luxuriating in each and every one of them, of all that I have yet to see.

Yet I never begrudge returning to any of them over something new, because in addition to the pleasures they've already provided and will continue to provide, I know that they'll also lead me to unexpected places, reveal something interesting, make a connection to another part of cinema history each time I see them, and that discovery will serve to propel me forward into the as-yet unknown.

The other thing I love about making a list like this is that I already know, even as I am compiling it, that it cannot possibly be definitive, that minutes after I've finished it has already begun the process of changing, morphing, adding, subtracting, sparking thoughts of films that should have been included and remembrances of films that once would have been yet are, this time, more easily replaced.This is the glory of list-making for me personally; for others who might read it, maybe I can remind them of what may yet still be missing from their own experience, perhaps prompt them to step outside that circle into an unfamiliar world in the hopes of finding a new love. I've written at length about some of these already, and I'll soon do so about some of the others. For now, let me show you what makes me swoon...


1) NASHVILLE (1975; Robert Altman)


2) ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969; Sergio Leone)



3) THE GODFATHER/THE GODFATHER PART II (1972/1974; Francis Ford Coppola)


4) THE LADY EVE (1941; Preston Sturges)


5) RULES OF THE GAME (1939; Jean Renoir)


6) NOTORIOUS (1946; Alfred Hitchcock)


7) SANSHO DAYU (1954; Kenji Mizoguchi)


8) HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940; Howard Hawks)


9) ONE TWO THREE (1961; Billy Wilder)


10) DRESSED TO KILL (1980; Brian De Palma)


11) NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957; Federico Fellini)


12) 1941 (1979; Steven Spielberg)


13) THE DEVILS (1971; Ken Russell)


14) GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953; Howard Hawks)


15) AGUIRRE THE WRATH OF GOD (1972; Werner Herzog)


16) SPEED RACER (2008; Andy and Lana Wachowski)


17) CHARLEY VARRICK (1973; Don Siegel)


18) THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962; Luis Bunuel)


19) GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990; Joe Dante)


20) KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949; Robert Hamer)

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AMERICAN HORROR STORY EPISODE 1 RECAP COMING NEXT WEEK!

Due to circumstances beyond our control, Simon Abrams and I will not be able to begin our conversation on American Horror Story's first official season one episode, entitled "Home Invasion," until this time next week. There are several other things coming up on this blog this week in the meantime, so please do stand by. Our regularly scheduled programming will return in short fashion.

In the meantime, enjoy this video of guys reeling in steelhead on the McKenzie River...



...or, in honor of the Dodgers' weekend sweep of the Chicago Cubs, this memorable 18-pitch at-bat by Alex Cora against Matt Clement from May 2004...



...or this trailer from the fascinating new documentary The Imposter, now playing in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theater...



...or perhaps this trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, another movie actually worth looking forward to.



Simon and I will be back next week with American Horror Story's "Home Invasion" episode. Stay tuned here for God knows what else in the meantime!

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AMERICAN HORROR STORY SEASON 1: "PILOT" HERRMANN IN THE WIND

With this post Simon Abrams and I wrap up our discussion of the pilot episode of American Horror Story. Links to all points of the conversation can be accessed below, or you can just scroll down and pick up the thread from the beginning. Tomorrow, episode #1, “Home Invasion.”

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

Simon,

I tend to agree about the use of the Twisted Nerve cue in the sequence involving Tate and the imagined (or are they?) high school murders. It’s distracting not because of the fact that it’s a recognizable sampling of Bernard Herrmann’s music, but because it’s already been appropriated and now associated strongly with Tarantino’s movie, so it’s like a reflection of a reflection. I would argue that it’s now, since the release of Kill Bill, probably even more strongly associated with that movie, and with the shot of Daryl Hannah moving down the hospital corridor toward the immobile Uma Thurman, than with the film for which it was originally written, which I’m guessing 99% percent of the appreciative Tarantino audience has never even seen (or at least never heard of before they saw Kill Bill Vol. 1).

It doesn’t seem so much a clever choice on the part of Murphy and Falchuk to include it either, largely I think because it now seems too obvious, but also because it also plays a little lazy, as if they’re going for a quick and easy bit of pop culture cachet rather than searching out another sample or, heaven forbid, a piece of original music that could evoke the same emotional response they’re going for. I think they miss an opportunity to define themselves more acutely by using the Herrmann cue, and I think, as you suggest, they fall short of understanding here what separates Tarantino from the usual suspects when it comes to this kind of borrowing. It’s the meaning of the scene that is, if not entirely missing, then at least confused by their easy grab of Herrmann’s odd little theme.

Chunks of Herrmann have been showing up a lot these days. In addition to the Twisted Nerve soundtrack, the score from Vertigo is once again appropriated by Murphy and Falchuk for a bit of emotionally shoring up during the scene in which Ben has his first conversation with Larry, the mysterious man with the seriously burned flesh who has been tailing him. I would think that the hue and cry in the wake of The Artist lifting a huge section of Vertigo to underline its climactic drama would have given the creators of AHS more than a little pause in using a different section of the score for the same essential purpose. Is it a cheap shortcut? In a way I think you have to say yes, especially since there is no official acknowledgment of Herrmann, for this or for Twisted Nerve, anywhere in the credits. There’s no denying that the music works as an aural foundation for Larry’s fundamental pathos of Larry’s character and the tragic story he spins to Ben. What I suppose I object to, apart from the possible misunderstanding on the part of audiences who may not know the music isn’t original for the series, is the lack of audacity in the choice to use it in the first place. It doesn’t make you sit up and say, “Oh, my God, I never thought this piece of music could be used in this context to say this, or make me feel this,” the way you often react when Tarantino clicks on his mental iPod. (Lack of audacity is not a charge you could level against QT in any arena, I’m thinking.) So even though Herrmann’s Vertigo themes are effective here, I still am rather jarred when I’m left to consider why the creators of American Horror Story would opt for the easy swing (and risk the ire of those who can tell the difference between Herrmann and a more routine musical choice) instead of attempting to swim the emotional undercurrents with original material.

But then again, accessing and riffing on, and hopefully adding to the depth of familiar horror tropes is, as you say, at least suggested in the very title of the series, and perhaps some justification for the sampling of music can be found in this line of thinking. (There’s not quite enough of it throughout the episodes I’ve seen to be considered a motif, however.) What’s more interesting to me is how Murphy and Falchuk begin to explore the other implication of their rather loftily titled show. What is it about the way that AHS is structured and played and resonates that makes it a particularly American horror story? That’s a question that I think the show begins to address right away in the first regular season episode, entitled “Home Invasion,” which (segue, segue, segue) we will begin talking about tomorrow!

See ya then, Simon!

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