'Flicker'
This episode provides us this with tonnes of answers and a rarity for 'American Horror Story' – only two plot points! Half the cast is missing during this episode, and unless you’re a huge fan of all the whining Matt Bomer has done this season you might not even care. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The Hotel Cortez is being renovated, and nothing will stand in the way of Will Drake’s Paris-inspired vision. That includes a steel wall discovered by construction workers, who are annihilated by the withered vampires-in-everything-but-name. Iris alerts the Countess to the hidden passage, which causes the previously unshakeable bitch queen to show one emotion (of many) we haven’t seen from her before: fear. The old vampires snack on Marcy, the realtor (Christine Estabrook) from 'Murder House'. Oh, the irony: she was one of the few poor souls of season one who avoided death under one haunted roof, but couldn’t escape another.
Flashback to Hollywood in 1925, the age of silent picture epics. The Countess – then known as Ms. Johnson – was merely a wide-eyed extra on the set of an Egyptian epic typical to the time period. She’s a harem girl to the leading man, real-life silent movie dreamboat Rudolph Valentino (Finn Wittrock). The Countess-to-be is stunned when she recieves a note to meet up with the Italian supernova. It is in these flashbacks Lady Gaga shows previously unseen ability as an actress. After six episodes of playing the Countess as a stone-cold beast with decades of practice in only revealing the emotion she wants her lovers/ prey to see, she is convincingly weak-kneed and timid when meeting Valentino. She likely won’t be putting any Emmys next to her Grammy awards, but she does fine work here.
It doesn’t take long for Johnson, Valentino and Valentino’s wife Natacha Rambova (Alexandra Daddario) to bed together. Their trysts continue until the girl discovers during the opening party for the Hotel Cortez that Valentino had died. Mirroring the actual suicides of actual Valentino fans upon hearing the news, Gaga stares out of a stories-high window and is about to kiss the LA concrete before she’s saved by one Mr. James Patrick March. The two tie the knot, and she actively encourages and helps improve his murder game; she was simply drawn to the darkness within the madman.
Side note: that confirms the theory the Countess is March’s widow. Score one for the ol’ re-capper! Just watch me be wrong about everything else this season, like my suspicion that John is the Ten Commandments Killer.
Valentino and Natacha eventually come out as immortals to the Countess-in-training; the man in the coffin Johnson’s been visiting for the last year belongs to Valentino’s stuntman (he defensively notes he did most of his own stunts, though). Valentino explains that during a press tour, he was turned into a bloodsucker by F.W. Murnau, director of the iconic great-granddaddy of all bloodsucker movies Nosferatu.
While conducting research for his film, Murnau encountered a tribe of orgy-happy Carpathian vampires who passed on the ancient blood virus to him. The filmmaker decided to 'preserve' Valentino’s beauty by rendering him ageless; he faked his death and added Natacha to the immortal ranks. They give the virus to the Countess, and plan to run away together. March, however, overhears the plan and traps the old Hollywood power couple in a hidden part of his hotel, where the duo remained right up until the schlubby construction workers found them.
In the present day, the Countess attends her monthly dinner with old hubby March. He fixes a nervous, excited smile onto his face, clearly still carrying a torch for her (along with the haunted houses, Hollywood themes broken families and certain characters, 'Murder House' and 'Hotel' also share Evan Peters as an inexplicably lovesick sociopathic mass murderer). She tells him she’s going to wed Drake, or as March calls him, “the light-in-the-loafers fellow who bought my hotel.” Her Gaganess rejects March’s claims she still loves him; in fact, she says, she never loved him at all. He was a passing phase, essentially making him the Furby of psycho killers.
{youtube}Lqpeq5POxCc{/youtube}
The old boy won’t take that lying down, though; he reveals 'The Great Lover' Valentino and his wifey had been trapped in the hotel since the jazz-era. Those monthly meetings probably won’t be going on too much longer now.
Speaking of the Countess’ old flames, they strut out of the hotel, reverted back to their normal beautiful selves after snacking on some frat boys. The silent film giant is ready to reclaim his place as a modern god. He may be an immortal vampire, but good luck competing with whatever Ryan Gosling is, buddy.
Over at the only other plotline besides the Countess’ to be focused on in every episode, John Lowe has checked himself into a hospital. Instead of getting his chronic sleepwalking face looked at though, he’s here to find the suspected Ten Commandments killer the cops found. He started a fight with his only friend and former partner on the force to find where the suspect is being held, but desperate times, I guess?
John, acting more competent than he has at any other point during the reason, knocks out a guard and finds the suspects’ room, only to find a waifish blonde girl on the other side of the door. She’s Wren, another vampire child the Countess 'saved' from her abusive father in the '80s. Wren helped the TCK commit his crimes, and loved it. When Lowe says he wants her help stopping him, she looks all sorts of confused. Could it be John really is the killer? We’ll have to wait to find out, as John and Wren broke out of the hospital. Wren says they have to go home to the Cortez to find the culprit, and then promptly runs into a semi-truck.
If the Cortez is John’s 'home', could he have originally met March at the hotel, where his inner lunatic was unleashed? Considering the next episode is called 'The Ten Commandments Killer', there’s a good chance we’ll be getting answers shortly.
Some complimentary gifts:
– Wittrock’s double duty as both Tristan and Valentino is only the second time this season an actor has been seen as two different characters, as Lily Rabe rocked a mullet-type hairdo as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the Devil’s Night episode and appeared in a family photo as her 'Murder House' character Nora Montgomery in the last episode.
– Fun fact: Valentino’s note to Ms. Johnson/ Countess instructs her to go to the Garden Of Allah hotel, an actual LA hotel name-dropped in the last season.
