After a disappointing first few episodes, AHS: Hotel proves it’s not done yet.
After four disappointing episodes, I wasn’t expecting much else for this season. It had almost become a chore to sit down and suffer through the bad plot line and predictable scenes of Hotel.
With “Room Service,” I was proven wrong.
Maybe it was just a slow start that Ryan Murphy decided to take, or maybe it’s just me. But after this episode, I’m starting to get a little more excited about this season.
Now, it wasn’t the GREATEST episode, but it wasn’t as bad as the other ones.
Here’s what happened:
Alex (Chloë Sevigny) is in the hospital when she takes her temperature. The thermometer reads 75.5 degrees. After the final scene of the last episode (where Gaga has her drink her blood), we know the transition has been successful. Alex walks through the hospital to Max Ellison’s (Anton Lee Starkman) room, where he is not doing too hot. His measles have turned into pneumonia, which has turned into a full-blown staph infection. Mrs. Ellison asks if she should sign the DNR (do-not-resuscitate) order. Alex tells her to leave and get some coffee. All the while, Alex is hungry and in a fog, staring at the pulsating veins of Mrs. Ellison and Max.
Alex is then seen in the blood bank, feasting on bags of blood. She’s not even drinking them as much as she’s just pouring them all over herself. She’s making it rain blood.
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After her feast, she goes into Max’s room. She takes her own blood out of her arm via syringe and injects it into Max’s IV bag. He starts seizing and the scene switches.
We then see Donovan (Matt Bomer) and whiny Iris (Kathy Bates) violently knocking on Ramona Royale’s (Angela Bassett) door in the middle of the night. The butler, Reeves (lol, like Jeeves), answers and pretty much tells them to F-Off. Ramona is pissed, but she’s a vampire. She’s not going to be sleeping at 4 a.m. Donovan tells Ramona that he knows how to take down the Countess, and the newly turned Iris is their inside man. She’s practically invisible, so who would be better to do it than her? And so the plot thickens…
Max, after a miraculous recovery, is preparing for discharge. He has no scars from the measles and is hungry and completely fine. No one seems surprised or anything. I would be calling Ellen or Oprah or someone if something that crazy happened.
Iris then returns to the Hotel, looking like complete shit. I’ve seen some junkies in withdrawal before (think Intervention), and she looked exactly like that. Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) questions her and realizes what’s up. She gives her some of Gaga’s “private stock” (obviously the blood of the children) with a little bit of triple sec mixed in. Iris takes it and loves it. When she finds out it’s blood, she’s disgusted. But here’s the thing: Iris, you knew you were becoming a vampire. Why would you be surprised that you had to drink blood?? Anyways, she finishes, and asks for more. Liz tells her that she needs to feed regularly. She then contemplates her dark, little meaningless soul and how old people are invisible. Can you say pity party?
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We then see blood all over a kitchen floor and realize it is Max Ellison's parents. Max killed them and drank all their blood up. You think Alex would have told Gaga or done something to prevent this, but I guess not. Max runs to catch the bus in a pirate costume. Murphy, you missed an opportunity for an awful joke here. Max could’ve totally been a vampire! When he gets to school, he rubs his sticky little kid hands all over the food set out for the class. He then takes his presumed girlfriend, Maddy, into the closet in the back of the room. He talks about how he almost died and leans in for a kiss from her. Here’s the thing, these kids are like 11 years old. Why are they sneaking off and being all touchy-touchy to each other? That’s not even the worst part. When they kiss, Max bites her lip. Maddy yells at him, but when he offers for her to drink some of his blood, SHE DOES IT. YOU ARE A CHILD. Murphy is getting a little too kinky with kids and it’s kind of messed up.
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The teacher is chilling at the front of the class when she notices the couple is missing. The class giggles and tells her that they are in the back closet. When she comes in, Max slices her throat and tells Maddy to drink her blood. Either Max spilled his blood on the snacks or he had them all drink his blood, but both are equally terrifying. He turned a class of around 30 into a tiny newborn vampire army like Twilight. He turned from a sick little baby into a true savage in a short amount of time. I guess that’s what this disease will do to you. The principal is walking down the hallway and the door to the classroom opens and a bloody school kid comes out. They try to kill the principal and have him for snack time, but he barely escapes. The scene goes to the office where the old hen secretaries are chattering about something meaningless. Just as one of them is looking outside, the bloody principal predictably smacks into the glass and scares the shit out of the old ladies. The secretaries put the school on lockdown and panic ensues. The SWAT team then comes in and sees a massacre worse than a slaughterhouse. There’s blood everywhere and all while I’m like:
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The kids come up with a rehearsed story about some “masked man” in black that they couldn’t see, and the vampire army lives on.
John Lowe (Wes Bentley) is chattering insanely about some crazy idea that there’s a group of copycat serial killers that look just like the real ones from “Devil’s Night” at the hotel. He talks about how James March (who is dead) is the commandment killer. He yells about how “nothing is safe,” and sounds just like Sylvester Stallone. John is fired for his insane ramblings, and I couldn’t be happier that he’s not involved with the investigation anymore.
We then see two hipsters enter into the hotel, one an ex-photographer from some french sounding snooty magazine and his girlfriend (both are from previous Murphy shows). They want to stay in the hotel because of its renovation by Will Drake. They ask for a discount because they are “social media tastemakers” or something stupid that only hipsters would coin as an actual reason to be famous. They’re being rude to the sweaty, withdrawing Iris and she has no idea what to do. After she gives them the key, Gaga and Tristan (Finn Wittrock) come down in their Halloween garb. Gaga is a Lady Antoinette look-alike and Tristan is some sad, steampunk English gentleman. They walk up to Iris and Gaga tells her she smells different and is acting weird. Iris says it just the holiday, and Gaga leaves as if nothing happened.
Back in 64, the asshole hipsters are giving an extensive list of food that they want from room service. After Iris says that they don’t have grilled romaine or a cheese tray, they change their order to paté. Iris goes downstairs and cries to Liz because of how mean they’re being to her. Liz decides to give them cat food instead of paté, and Iris stops crying for a little bit (thank GOD). Iris says that she’s not a homophobe, and Liz replies that she’s not gay.
We then are shown the backstory of Liz. From the start of this season Liz has been my favorite character. Her wardrobe and aura make her a FANTASTIC character. She explains how she was a married man in Topeka, Kansas back in 1984. She only married the girl because they were the same dress size. She had a kid and was a medical representative that took her clients all around the country. Instead of going to strip clubs and bars with them, she would stay in her room and dress as a woman and be free for a night or two. Liz goes to the Hotel Cortez with a few of her coworkers and stays in the room for the night. She puts on stockings, a slip, heels and some fur and feels beautiful once and for all. She says she is “Trans-Formed!” She orders a bottle of champagne and tells the waiter to leave it outside. When Liz brings it inside, Gaga is waiting for her. Liz is stunned and tells her to leave. Gaga tells her that her blood smells like a woman, despite being a man. Liz breaks down and cries to Gaga telling her how ugly she is compared to Gaga. Gaga tells Liz that she “doesn’t lack beauty, you lack commitment.” Liz then becomes Gaga’s doll and makes her over into something she has never seen before. She names her “Liz Taylor” and tells her that goddesses don’t speak in whispers, they scream. You could tell that she finally felt beautiful and empowered, and I was brought to tears by not only the acting but how this translates to real life for transgender people and what they go through. Way to go, Murphy!
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Gaga offers to take her to the Roxy and show her off. Liz is too nervous, and Gaga says to take a trial run and grab some ice before they go out for good. Taylor grabs the ice and is walking back when her business partners come around the corner. They hound her and ask if she has AIDS and HIV and if she gave it to them. They follow her, and Gaga comes out and ends their taunts by slicing them open. Thank god.
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Liz then explains how she never went back to Topeka, but still sent the money she was making at the hotel to her son until he turned 18. Liz insists that Iris should teach the couple a lesson. She brings the paté up to their room, and they eat it, saying it’s “decent.” They keep complaining and Iris can’t take enough. She snaps and stabs the girl with the wine opener, and then turns on the guy. She kills them both and feasts on their blood and finally feels like a normal person (as much as she can be).
We then see John in bed with Hypodermic Sally (Sarah Paulson). She tells him how after many drinks at the bar, he dragged her back to their room and they got it on. He says he needs to leave, but Sally insists that they need to keep doing it again and again, and that it’s their destiny. What is up with Murphy and having sex with dead people. It’s WEIRD.
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Iris and Taylor put the bodies down the chute and finish their wine. Iris says how she had to be dead first to be alive. And I still hate Kathy Bates’ character.
We then see Alex, Gaga and Holden in the countess’s suite. Gaga states how Alex is the new governess, and all I could think about was Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music." Gaga has made a new double-wide coffin for them in the pool, and they go to sleep together in it very weirdly, with Alex continuously smelling his head. And that’s the episode.
After this episode, I can’t wait to see what happens next week with the army of vampire children, and how Alex takes her new position as governess. Overall, it was the strongest episode of the season. We’ll see how it goes from here.
rating: 3.5/5
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