American Horror Story Asylum: Angels and Demons

The theme song of this week’s American Horror Story: Asylum is clearly “Without Me” (Or, as the chorus so aptly asks, “Guess Who’s Back”), music and lyrics by Sir Eminem Esq. Because you know who’s back at Briarcliff? Freaking everyone, that’s who.

Anyway…

Frances Conroy is back to American Horror Story in general, and better than ever. Seriously. As the angel of death, she looks amazing. Younger, beautiful, and, ironically more full of life than she did last season. Although she is a patient angel, waiting to see if people are ready to be taken away. Lana wasn’t. Jude wasn’t. Grace wasn’t, at first. Then she was. Plus the Miles and Ethan from Lost. They were ready too.

Miles was a patient of Briarcliff, who heard voices in his head telling him to be a hero. Clearly mishearing, he decides to make himself a hero and slices his wrists on the deli slicer down where he is working, which seemed like it was pulled from a scene in Saw V (yes, I’ve seen it. don’t bother). Before he passes out, he writes a name on the wall with his blood that looks like it says “one” but is the name of the angel of death in another language. (Another movie reference—in It, when Stan kills himself to avoid going back to Derry he writes It on the wall with his blood. He just doesn’t use a deli slicer to do it though. Minor details.)

And so comes the angel of death, who has a battle royale with Sister Mary/the devil. Apparently they’re cousins. When they meet, Mary, the real Mary, tries to call to the angel to save her, but is promptly silenced.

Another Sister Mary episode worth noting is when she met up with Arden to tell him to fix his botched hysterectomy he performed on Grace. But, Arden, taking orders from a woman? Homie don’t play that. He slaps her, and the demon sends him flying across the room. Sister Mary is the boss. Not the monsignor. Not Sister Jude. Not Angela or Mona (Look, a Who’s the Boss reference. Topical!)

The only thing is, Arden didn’t perform that surgery. (The aliens did. Obviously.) Arden is furious and patches Grace up so that she can set the record straight. That seems to be a recurring theme—when Thredson first brings Lana to his home, he wants her to write his story. Arden also wants the true story of him to live on. Only, they’re both psychopaths. So, at least they’d be interesting stories, I guess.

Speaking of Thredson, in a horribly disturbing scene, he rapes Lana. Rape is disturbing enough, but last week, Thredson decided Lana would stand in as his mom. Not just a mother figure—he tried to breastfeed. So even though it was incest, it felt incest-y. Later, he comes back in and says they’ve reached an impasse, and he’s going to kill her. But she gets to choose her own adventure—getting her throat slashed or being strangled. (He says he doesn’t believe in guns. Is Bloody Face actually Batman?) Lana breaks free and escapes, running to the street and jumping into a passing car. Unfortunately, Ethan from Lost is driving, and having a manic episode because his wife cheated on him. He pulls a gun (he’s not Batman, clearly), and for a minute it looks like Lana escaped just to be shot by a stranger. Instead, Ethan from Lost kills himself and crashes the car in the process. And Lana wakes up back in Briarcliff.

Jude finds Goodman dead, and finds out Sister Mary is possessed and is framing her for the murder by making it look like Goodman was actually investigating Jude’s hit and run on that innocent (who’s alive, by the way. Surprise!) And Jude goes on a drinking binge, and contemplates killing herself. My favorite line of the episode, when Jude was drunk at the diner, the waitress says, “Poor thing. maybe we should call briarcliff. they can at least give her a bed for the night.” Jude doesn’t end up back in Briarcliff though. She’s the only one. We do also find out before she was a singer her ex-fiance gave her syphilis and made her sterile.

You know who is back in Briarcliff? Kit. He knocked out his public defender and escaped through the Freedom Trail back in to Briarcliff. He’s about the free Grace. But some of Arden’s creatures are let in with Kit, who end up murdering a nun. When Frank comes he shoots. And Grace takes the bullet, literally, for Kit. Don’t feel so bad for Grace though. She did murder her entire family.

So do you think Lana is going to make it through this alive, or will the angel of death pay her another visit? Also, when Jude goes to visit the innocent’s family and finds out she’s alive, the dad looks like he’s on to Jude. Do you think he’ll be a problem for her in future episodes?

-Jessica Fiur