3.7 The Dead Tonight’s episode was jam-packed with great things, weird things, and all the fun things we’ve come to expect from American Horror Story, and the script, from writer and creator Brad Falchuk, pulls all the elements together pretty efficiently and very effectively. Madison Montgomery hasn’t been the most relatable of characters this season, but she’s showing some serious signs of life (err, undeath?) since she returned to the mortal realm thanks to Misty Day’s deus ex-machina. Not only does she manage to bond with FrankenKyle over their collective deadness, she also doles out some really effective one-liners in between credenza-humping a dead man and making obscene hand gestures at her pseudo-virginal roommate. All the comic elements on the show crackled tonight, every joke and pop-culture dialogue reference landed solidly, and the show seemed to keep a sustained momentum no matter who was involved and who they were interacting with. Queenie and Delphine, Zoe and Madison, Axeman and Fiona… everything seemed tight and suitably clever. While I don’t care about everything that’s happening, as I’m pretty tired of FrankenKyle even given tonight’s weird episode-ending twist, I like that everyone gets to have a signature moment or some personality quirk to really dig into. The whole episode was full of cool little choices by director Bradley Buecker. From the aforementioned Axeman/Fiona montage onward, there were some great creative choices made. The shot blocking and scene composition in Queenie and Delphine’s fast-food trip is really cool and makes great use of both how similar they are and how different they are; the heart-breaking hard pan in on a screaming LaLaurie trapped in her cage at Laveau’s Voodoo Hair-Dos is only the icing on the cake. There are some very cool camera moves—starting from an overhead shot then slowly dropping down to tracking shot from behind—when Zoe leaves her meeting with Cordelia to discover FrankenKyle and Madison hooking up (there’s a similar shot of Fiona primping in the bathroom until we find out just what happened to the real owner of Axeman’s borrowed apartment). Even the Axeman’s adventures in the jazz club are really interesting to look at, shot just strangely enough to look simultaneously goofy, cool, and vaguely menacing. Speaking of goofy cool menace, Denis O’Hare hasn’t gotten a lot to do this year, but when Spalding shows up, it’s a sign of great things to come. Not only has he hugged a scarecrow and kept a dead Hollywood starlet as a my-size doll, now he’s gotten his tongue back. His tongue, as you might remember, that has been cursed to tell nothing but the truth. They’ve held him back, but when he gets a chance to let loose, he really lets loose. Not only does he do some great physical work—just Spalding enjoying his returned tongue in spectacularly gross fashion—he does some great vocal work as he tries, and fails, not to speak the truth only to have his body betray him against his will. It may be the most effective use of spells this season, and O’Hare sells it like nobody’s business, really bringing the magic to life so to speak. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, The Axeman Cometh, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is glad to see that the Axeman was able to find a club that still plays jazz at the end of the episode, and he definitely loves to hate the cliffhanger ending. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
