Scream Queens continues with a Halloween-inspired episode.
Ryan Murphy has a thing for Halloween. There’s something about the spooky holiday that gets his creative juices flowing.
Halloween is a staple of the American Horror Story anthologies, and it now has returned my faith in Scream Queens.
The premiere was surprisingly strong in setting the tone of the series, though the follow-up episode was much weaker as its quips weren’t quite on par and the cliffhanger couldn’t even be classified as one. This week, however, the quality has gone back up.
“Haunted House” kicks off with Chanel (Emma Roberts) celebrating “Chanel-O-Ween,” in which she sends packages of razor apples, severed heads and blood to her Instagram fans — all 752 of them.
Doesn’t that seem rather low for someone who seems to be as popular as Chanel?
Also, it’s important to note that in the text that prefaced the montage, the sound that followed the Red Devil’s text messages with Chanel No. 2 in the premiere occurs when the jack-o-lantern emoji is typed. Coincidence? I think not. (This might be my new motto when writing about this show).
The campiness is real.
The montage seemed rather misplaced. It was a spot-on parody of Taylor Swift’s famous “gift giving” video, but it felt like it was just done to be done. It didn’t advance any plot. It provided a ton of laughs — the scene of Chanel riding in a child’s motorized car slays — but its purpose is still being questioned.
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Let’s go back to where the plot left off in last week’s episode. Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) has too many connections in town, so the police don’t believe Wes (Oliver Hudson) and Gigi’s (Nasim Pedrad) claim that she is the killer. Denise (Niecy Nash) thankfully appears early in the episode, announcing that the killer has attacked the Dickie Dollar Scholars. She also delivers a tremendous monologue about how she is going to avenge Shondell, who is in the “Best Buy parking lot in the sky” for her “face stabbing.” Literally amazing. Nash is an all-star, and I’m unbelievably ecstatic she signed onto this show.
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Grace (Skyler Samuels) and Pete (Diego Boneta) arrive at the mysterious Greenwell’s trailer in the woods under the guise of being early trick-or-treaters, as they are dressed like Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It’s their favorite movie, and I hate them even more than before.
Dramatically, Mandy (Grace Phipps) says her life has been split into two: before that 1995 party and afterward. Flashback to that night and Dean Munsch is organizing the disposure of the body. She puts bags over the other girls’ heads, drives them to an unknown location and has them bury the body. She admits to wanting to cover up the death because Munsch is, at the time, the administration’s liaison to Greek life, so that wouldn’t exactly look good if a pledge died on her watch. And one did, so here we are. “I’m protecting you,” she creepily claims.
Back in present time, Mandy calls Munsch a “devil,” and I cannot express enough how much I hate the unceasing accusations that everyone is the Red Devil. The show is campy and, thus, is riddled with close-up shots as haunting music plays, but it doesn’t work when that’s basically all of the shots.
Mandy also reveals that the Bathtub Baby was a girl — and that one of the girls in the group is “doing well” on Fox News. It’s those kinds of throwaway quips that make this show. It’s not exactly a great foundation but it’s hilarious in the moment.
With the sex of the baby revealed, all signs point to Grace being the Bathtub Baby, yet some hesitation for that accusation persists as it seems too obvious. From the beginning, she was the blatant choice, but I’m hoping Murphy and co. will be a little more creative than that. Maybe it’s Chanel or Hester.
Later, Mandy is alone at home when someone begins pounding on all sides of the trailer. This is why trailers are terrifying, especially when they’re surrounded by a creepy forest. Obviously, the Red Devil gets her.
The weirdly British Earl Grey (Lucien Laviscount) — yes that’s his name — wants to join Zayday (Keke Palmer), who is running against Chanel to be Kappa president, to help change the way people think about the Greek system. Of course they have to band together. They’re the only two main black characters on the show. Of course.
At least, Zayday tells Chanel like it is and is able to talk about more than just “pork reins” and calling people “rachet.”
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And doesn't Laviscount totally look like a mix of Drake and the President Barack Obama impersonator on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon?
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Chanel is obviously furious and just casually sharpens some knives in her room before deciding with the other Chanels that she will hold a haunted pumpkin patch to counter Zayday’s haunted house party.
Wes makes his film class watch Children of the Corn and ponders about how one of the greatest fears is that our regrets and mistakes of our youth will come to destroy us as adults. Stop talking. You’re an awful character and are unnecessarily creepy. Please be actually murdered by the Red Devil soon.
After class, Grace confronts her father about possibly being the killer, especially with how convenient it was that her mother died in a fire and all of her possessions — along with Grace’s birth certificate — burned. Coincidence? I think not. If he is the killer, Grace says she’ll never speak to him again. Wow, there’s a lot riding on that.
In more Denise news, she apparently tried to rush Kappa but was essentially denied because she was black. Nash rocked that stereotypical ‘80s look but stop arbitrarily trying to set everyone up as the potential killer. That’s a weak way to tie her into the mystery.
In a random moment of feminism, the Chanels and Hester (Lea Michele) abrasively beat up a bro-y frat guy who objectifies them all in the cafeteria. After having a women’s studies class, Chanel knows what’s up and doesn’t take any of it. The lines are good and what they’re saying is true, but the moment was odd. In just about any other moment of the show, these sorority “sisters” are verbally abusing each other and treating others horribly, and now all of a sudden they band together and battle social inequity? I don’t think so. Ryan Murphy does this all of the time. He is horrible to a minority and then writes one moment to empower that minority to make up for it. Watch just about any scene in Glee for evidence of this point.
via screamqueensfox.tumblr.com and screamqueengifs.tumblr.com, respectively
Zayday plans on hosting her haunted house party at 53 Shady Lane — your friendly, typical, creepy, abandoned house. Legend has it, a “hag” haunted the place in 1995 and “wailed” incessantly about her deceased children. Thank goodness Denise and Pete went to the library. Just in case you needed a further reason to love Nash, she states: “I think it’s incredible what you can find out with just a quick trip to your local library.” Perfect. The quips are killer.
This episode also matches Chad (Glen Powell) and Hester, who both get turned on by dead bodies. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m choppin’ up a body,” Chad states. Like I said last week, Powell is a breakout star and hilariously owns this ridiculous role. On the other hand, Michele as Hester is inconsistent. Also noted last week, Hester is just not as funny without her over-the-top frumpy outfit and neck brace. Now without it, Hester has become an overly sexual version of Rachel Berry. We don’t know who Hester is. It was a little clearer when the costuming helped, but without it, it’s hard to pin down who she’s supposed to be. Is she the nerd? Is she the queen bee? Is she the secret killer? It’s impossible to pin down. Though she can deliver some hilarious lines, it isn’t as funny as it could be because no one knows who she is as a character. There’s no signature style of comedy because there’s no consistency with Hester.
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Chad and Hester meet at the house on Shady Lane to hook up, or as Hester says, get her “crack attacked.” Ugh. That’s just too bizarre to ever work.
Before they can get it on, the duo discovers Ms. Bean’s (Jan Hoag) body — after Hester disgustingly pokes through her leg — and then literally runs into Shondell’s (Deneen Tyler), Chanel No. 2’s (Ariana Grande), Coney’s and Mandy’s — who was “stabled a whole bunch of times” — dead bodies. The bodies are the decorations — exactly what Chanel said while she was in the cafeteria beating up the frat bro — the Red Devil would do at the haunted house. Coincidence? I think not.
Side note, was Lisa Kudrow the inspiration for Coney? Man, I need another season of The Comeback stat.
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The bodies were obviously not there before when Zayday and co. traversed the space earlier in the episode, so where have Boone — yes, still naming him as a Red Devil even if he hasn’t been present since the series premiere — and his accomplice been storing these bodies? Also, now we at least know who is really dead, aka all of them except Boone.
Everyone floods to the haunted house to see the dead bodies, which is less so a commentary on society than it is on the fact that Murphy and co. think that makes sense. Zayday, again breaking that track of stereotypes, calls an incompetent policeman who has the crowd mentality and also thinks the haunted house sounds great. As she is preoccupied on the phone, Zayday is captured by the Red Devil. Just when you think a black woman could finally be a final girl. The token black friend is almost always the first to die in horror films. The reasoning has still yet to be provided but it’s a horrible trope often found in the genre, thus Zayday has made it quite far in comparison to her predecessors in the industry. Thank goodness the trailer assured us she’s all right.
Just like the series premiere, the end of the episode is what kept me wanting more. Last week’s cliffhanger problem was solved! Pete and Grace have found out more about the “hag” of 53 Shady Lane: She didn’t appear until one month after the Bathtub Baby was born, and she stole diapers and milk. Here lies Pete’s only good one-liner: “They still had milkmen in 1995?” The duo now has a new goal to figure out who the hag is or was.
Cut to a wailing noise emitting from the Shady Lane home. The camera moves inside, up the stairs and into the room filled with the dolls the hag stole from neighborhood kids. It slowly moves around the rocking chair the woman is sitting in to reveal that IT IS GIGI. When I asked for Pedrad to get more, I was not expecting this! Remember how Gigi dresses like she’s in the ‘90s because her doctor said a traumatic event in that decade halted her psyche? Remember when the Bathtub Baby was born? Remember that there is a young girl in that group — the one who held the newborn baby as the mother died in the tub — who was a brunette and was the only one who felt guilty and responsible? Everything adds up perfectly. THIS is the kind of twist you throw in, Ryan Murphy. This is a cliffhanger that has fans falling off the edge of their seats because it came as such a surprise. It’s much more meaningful than just accusing all of the dozen main cast members. This makes sense plot-wise and means that the amazingly talented Pedrad will have more to do. Everything is splendid.
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Rating: 4/5
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