‘American Horror Story’: Confessional

American Horror Story
“Chapter 8”
November 2, 2016

Sorry this entry is so late, I’ve been a little distracted by our real American Horror Story, AMIRITE?

~weeping~

We begin where we left off: with Dominic and Shelby watching from the master bedroom as The Real Butcher splits the fake Butcher’s head in two with her ghost cleaver. Dominic begins, understandably, to freak out, screaming at Toothy to GET THEM OUT NOW, but Shelby’s like, “Yeah, no one is coming to help. That’s not how this works.”

They decide to try to run for it through the tunnels, which is not a terrible idea except for the whole “having to walk around the headless corpse of her husband whom she killed in a weird and not-believable fit of rage” thing. But they eventually make it into the tunnels only to be chased back out by the Chen Grudge ghosts.

Dominic and Shelby run right back upstairs, and Dominic somehow manages to shut the basement door on his hand like a dumbass. As he is icing it down, Pigman appears out of nowhere, and begins attacking them joined by the murder nurses. And then as if being chased by the Chens, Pigman and the Murder Nurses weren’t bad enough, somehow the chandelier collapses, landing on Shelby’s ankle. Despite this bit of bad luck, Dominic manages to get Shelby upstairs and into the master bathroom where they barricade themselves inside.

But then, having survived all of that, Shelby’s all, “Oh yeah, I killed my husband. I suck,” and she proceeds to slit her own throat.

R.I.P. Shelby. In the end you were the victim of bad writing choices.

Over at the hillbilly shed, Momma Polk orders Jether to cut out a “nice filet” from Sister’s leg, and Sister protests that people don’t eat people. Momma counters that Sister isn’t “people” before going into a long and frankly silly story about how they became cannibals. Basically, during the depression some itinerants ate the Polks’ pigs, so the Polks decided to eat the itinerants. Fair’s fair or something. But then they kept eating people because … tradition? They’d never go hungry again? Some dumb reason.

So, Momma leaves Jether to the business of carving up Sister, which he does, taking a piece of her leg and her right ear. But then they have a nice chat while he cauterises her wounds. Seems Momma is sleeping with all the Polk menfolk, but Jether isn’t quite old enough yet to his great disappointment, and you can understand why.

Jether then tells Sister how jealous he is that his brothers were featured on My Roanoke Nightmare, and Sister is surprised he watched the show. “WE’RE A PART OF THE UNITED STATES. WE GET TV,” Jether snaps, hilariously. I mean someone is watching Duck Dynasty, after all. Sister is like, “Hey! Guess what! I’m on a new show, and you can be on it, too, if you just free me!”

Jether explains that there has only been one famous Polk, Cain, back in the 1800s. He took the pigs to Chicago for slaughter, and for some reason decided to recreate the Roanoke Pigman by wearing one of the pig’s heads and killing folks in his bathtub. You have to entertain yourself on business trips somehow. And that’s how Eric Stonestreet’s Piggy Man from season one was born, so, WHEW! that non-mystery is solved.

Sister promises that Jether could be the hero of this new series she is in, but he is less than impressed and screams at her to shut it.

Later, Jether generously offers Sister some of the Oxycontin he’s sniffing: it’ll help take the edge off when he starts carving her up again. Sister wonders why he doesn’t just kill her outright, and he explains that Momma thinks that fear gives the jerky a certain “tang.” This, not surprisingly, encourages Sister to take him up on his Oxy offer.

Sister then asks Jether to help her film a message for her daughter, and he agrees, which just makes good sense: why wouldn’t he create more evidence of his crimes, right?

Anyway, on camera, Sister tells her daughter that she loves her and that she wants Flora to know the truth: Sister killed Ex-Husband. “It’s on me and me alone. No one else helped me.”

Finished with that bit of nonsense, Sister then encourages Jether to touch her, which he does, grinding up against her (gross). She suggests that he untie her hand so that she can take care of pants business, and he foolishly does, and she promptly crushes his manbits because WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, JETHER? Anyway, Sister escapes, but not before killing Jether because NO, REALLY, WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, JETHER?

Meanwhile, in another room somewhere, Audrey and Monet are busy being terrorized by the other Polk men. Audrey and Monet try, unsuccessfully, to convince these idiot hill people that they are merely actors, not the real people with whom they might have something of a beef after getting their children confiscated by the state. (Which, come to think of it, why aren’t they being prosecuted for child abuse or endangerment? I get that the police are in their pocket, but it sure seems like after the children are reported and taken away by CPS, the state would want to maybe prosecute, right?)

ANYWAY. Now that the Blood Moon is coming, the Polk men are busy making tooth necklaces which are supposed to protect them from The Butcher. And that’s why it rained teeth that one time even though that actually makes no sense whatsoever but OK! The point is: MOAR TEETH. But in the process of trying to take Monet’s teeth, both the pliers and her chair break, giving her a chance to run away.

Audrey, however, is still tied to her chair when Momma comes in, investigating the commotion. Momma sends the Polk men off to go catch Monet, and busies herself with the teeth project, taking one of Audrey’s teeth for her collection. Fortunately for Audrey, Sister arrives, bops Momma in the head and frees Audrey before Momma can take any more teeth. But Audrey, not thrilled with her impromptu oral surgery, isn’t done with Momma, and proceeds to bash Momma’s head in with a hammer.

Days Without Someone Having Their Head Bashed In: 7 0

Sister and Audrey return to the house via the tunnels, which also means they are greeted by Matt’s headless body in the basement. Welcome home, guys! Sister, understandably, loses it, but Audrey drags her away, leading her through the chaos downstairs and up into the master bedroom.

There, Audrey and Sister find Dominic and Shelby’s corpse. Dominic explains that Shelby bashed Matt’s head in before killing herself, but Sister and Audrey, they are less than convinced.

They shove him out into the hallway, and Sister, for one, is unmoved when Pigman appears and murders Dominic outside her door.

R.I.P. Dominic.

The next morning, the women wake up alive and well and ready to get the hell out of this place. But first, Sister wants to swing by the Polk house to pick up a few things, namely her video confession. Audrey takes some convincing, but when Sister reminds her that she murdered Momma on camera as well, Audrey suddenly becomes much more amenable to the idea.

And just as they are about to walk out the front door, they are confronted by Pigman — as played by Audrey’s fellow actor, Dylan, a.k.a., The Butcher’s son, Ambrose White. Oh hai!

Cool pig head! Not needlessly terrifying at all!

Alright. Because this entry is so late and because the next episode has already aired and we have already learned who the sole survivor is — and I say “we” but I mean “you” because I actually haven’t watched it just yet as I have been too busy mourning the country for the past 60 hours or so — I’m just going to skip over the part where I speculate who survives.

But it’s Sister, right? Sister survives and then she’s going to be arrested because they have her confession on tape? And then next week’s episode will be an interview with Lana from “Asylum” and we might actually learn what actually happened when Matt and Shelby were alive? That’s what it’s going to be, right? I mean, that would make the most sense, but this show being this show, logic doesn’t amount to much.

Instead, let’s speculate needlessly about Sister’s confession. What was THAT about? Why on EARTH would she tell her young daughter that her mother killed her father? HOW WOULD THAT HELP ANYTHING? Some speculate that Sister confessed the truth to keep Flora from ever returning to the house seeking answers to her father’s murder, which I suppose is possible. But the way Sister worded the confession, that she alone was responsible, that no one else was involved, it feels … fishy. And way too open and shut for a series like this one. I’m going with: Sister is lying and we will find out the truth in the final episode next week. Unless, haha, they have already cleared all of that up in the episode that I have still not watched because I have been curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth for the past two days, wondering how hard it would be to get my hands on a four year Xanax prescription.

OK! I’m off to watch the next episode! Don’t tell me what happens!

American Horror Story airs on FX Wednesdays at 9/10 p.m.