Photo Courtest of FX
“It’s not a carnation, silly – it’s a dahlia.”
Big dreams of acting, being famous and murder – like always – seemed to be the theme of this week’s American Horror Story. The Black Dahlia made an appearance, as did Constance’s young boyfriend, Travis, as well as Ben’s ex-affair, Hayden.
Elizabeth Short comes to this now famous “Murder House” back in 1947. Dressed to the nines in black and a beautiful dahlia flower in her hair, she seeks out dentist David Curan’s help. She has no money, but offers her body instead. She has dreams of being the next big star, ya see?
After the good doctor puts her under and rapes her, he finds her dead – by accident of course. In panic, he drags her cold body to the basement. While wondering what to do with the body, the spirit of Dr. Charles Montgomery comes to save the day. Dismembering her body, draining the blood and giving her a smile that very much looks like the Joker, her once beautiful body is found by a women a few days later.
Back to present day, Ben comes to find the housekeeper, Moira hard at work. After asking her to make a sandwich for Violet, Moira tries and fails yet again to seduce him. When Ben tells her he wants a normal life, you can’t help but feel for the guy. Sure he’s screwed up majorly…several times…but he really is trying.
When we see Constance, she’s in her nightgown, painting a crazy picture and drinking, when her young boyfriend, Travis gets home. She’s furious with him for being lazy and taking her money. Sending him to go grab cigarettes and walk the dog, an angry Travis stumbles upon, dead!Hayden and they end up having meaningless sex.
When Elizabeth Short comes to visit Ben and ask for help, she again, even as a poltergeist tries to give her body to Ben as payment. Though Ben hallucinates that he does take her up on the offer, he is able to resist. Not understanding why Ben doesn’t want her, Elizabeth is devastated. Mena Suvari does great work playing the desperate girl, with big dreams, not to mention she completely looks the part of the Black Dahlia.
Moira and Constance have it out again, she reveals to Constance that Vivian’s twin’s have two fathers. Constance goes to the basement to find Tate, and confronts him. When Tate admits to having sex with Vivian, he begs his mother not to tell Violet, because he loves her. Constance yells at him, and begins to slap the crap out of him, sending Tate to the floor in a crying mess. Somebody definitely has some Mommy issues…but who could blame him?
After another failed attempted to seduce Ben, with a little girl-on-girl action between Moira and Elizabeth, Ben fires Moira, and Elizabeth freaks out because now Ben won’t treat her. With a visit from Hayden, she tells Elizabeth of her death, and how she was on the front pages of the papers for two weeks. She was famous after all.
After finding out that he is only the father of one a Vivian’s babies, a furious Ben goes to visit her at the mental hospital. Tied down and drugged, Ben as a little heart-to-heart with his sick wife, blaming her for “shitting” all over his life. Though he comes from a place of anger, you can’t help but want to slap Ben across the face and give Vivian a hug. When Hayden confronts Ben, he seems a little more sympathetic to her about everything that happened between them. He tells her however, that he will never love her, to which Hayden then makes him believe his wife was having an affair with the cop.
Instead of being angry with Travis about sleeping with another woman, Constance decides that they should marry and raise Tate’s child together. Travis immediately recoils and claims he has yet to fulfill his dreams of being famous. Constance immediately shoots him down, letting him know that she once had dreams too, and that if she couldn’t make it in Hollywood, he couldn’t either. Upset, Travis leaves and has angry sex with Hayden again the basement. Afterwards Travis tries to ditch Hayden, and decides to go back to Constance. Not about to be rejected again, Hayden asks for a hug and ends up stabbing Travis to death. In a nice scene between Hayden, Travis, Elizabeth and Charles Montgomery, they decide what to do with the body. Dr. Montgomery copies the murder of Elizabeth and Larry the burn victim, dumps the body. Ghost!Travis is happy because now he’s famous too.
Constance visits Vivian to get her good side, Ben confronts the cop – who tells him he didn’t sleep with Vivian — and he starts to realize, maybe his wife isn’t crazy after all.
At the very end Moira confronts Ben again, who has found the mask of the Rubber Man. When her sexual come-ons fail…again…, Ben confesses that he believes he made a horrible mistake putting his wife in the hospital, that maybe she wasn’t imagining things. To which Moira replies, “Congratulations, Dr. Harmon. You’re finally starting to see things as they are,” to which he then begins to see the true, old version of Moira with her wonky-eye, rather than the young, hot version.
Oh but the fun doesn’t end there. Constance’s friend, Billie the Lifetime Psychic, is eating a lovely bunt cake and telling Constance about new television pilot. Constance asks Billie what would happen if a baby were to be born of spirit and human decent. To which she basically says, you better run, because that baby is going to bring the end of the world.
So basically what we learned from American Horror Story this week is: The end of the world is coming in the form of a baby, that house keeps adding dead-people collectables to its basement, and Ben is finally starting to see what is going on around him. Also, on a completely different note, I will be very upset if Jessica Lange doesn’t win an Emmy for her performance as Constance. That woman is a genius.
Did you like this week’s episode? Are you excited to find out what happens next week? Let us know in the comments below.
Tune into American Horror Story, Wednesday’s on FX at 10/9c.
