4.8 Blood Bath When Jimmy and the gang recover Ma Petite’s bloody, shredded clothing after a cold opening of Gloria speaking to her faceless therapist, Elsa Mars is in fine form. She’s sobbing, she’s grasping at the mangled dress, she’s staring at a complete emotional breakdown. Everyone’s pulled in almost immediately by this, except for Ethel, who knows better. Later on in the episode, when Ethel’s body is discovered after she’s decapitated during a suspicious car crash suicide that’s way too well plotted out to have been conducted by someone like Ethel, Elsa has another huge emotional breakdown, dropping to her knees at the crash scene and wailing in German to the heavens about Ethel and how she’s lost her best friend and all that stuff. Unlike the earlier scene, Elsa’s emotions ring hollow. It’s hammy, like watching a child pretend to be upset to avoid getting in trouble, and it’s because we see it through the eyes of Stanley and Maggie. They’re con artists who make their living being able to convincingly lie to those around them and Elsa, the supposed Hollywood attraction, is only able to fool the most naïve of her followers (Jimmy, tellingly, rushes over to comfort her while the rest of her coterie hangs back a bit). In those few scenes, Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange establish Elsa’s true character. Ethel is her best… possibly her only friend, but Elsa’s true only friend is herself, and she’ll do anything for her own career. Including, of course, multiple murders. Stanley has Dell on one hand and Elsa on the other, and both of them have proven their willingness to kill to protect themselves in some specific way. It’s nothing new to know that about Elsa, since she sold off her best attraction and has tried to replace them with a mutilated Penny and the newly-arrived fat lady Barbara/Ima Wiggles (Chrissy Metz) See also Gloria and Dandy Mott, who fill out the B plot with some wonderful depravity. There’s not a lot of them this week, but what we do get is pretty surprising, fun, unpleasant stuff. It’s the little details in Dandy’s plot line that really make it pop; he decorates his tree with cat skulls, it’s white with blood-red lights, and his answers when Dr. Feinbloom gives him an ink blot test are just hilarious, thanks to Finn Wittrock’s delivery. Of course, when Dandy is finally pushed too far and he has to take active measures to protect himself, because Gloria is no longer willing to hide her twisted child’s affectations from the world, he does so despite the cost to himself. It’s chilling how Dandy simply connects the dots and eliminates his mother when she says she’s unwilling to protect him and doesn’t want to go on without him, either. That whole twisted relationship, particularly in this episode, has been really entertaining stuff, thanks to Wittrock and the wonderful Frances Conroy, who is as dry as a martini when given odd tasks like disparaging the Roosevelts for their cousin-marrying. Dandy Mott has killed the last person willing to stand in his way, if only slightly. He’s completely free to do whatever he wants now, and that should be terrifying for Bette and Dot Tattler, Jimmy, Elsa, and everyone else he’s ever come into contact with. Given his obsession with freaks, it looks like Stanley isn’t the only lurking danger near the Cabinet of Curiosities. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Test Of Strength, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan just has to wonder what Dandy would need to clean that blood out of the tub once he’s tired of bathing in it. That’s going to be a mess, and with no Dora and no Mother to clean it up, they’re going to have to throw out that tub when he’s done. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
