American Horror Story Season 4 Episode 11 – TV Review

Is the season finished yet?

TL;DR Neil Patrick Harris shows up to give us yet another shallow character who is neither shocking, nor worth caring about; the Paulsons become promiscuous; Jimmy did indeed sell his hands; Elsa kills Dell for his killing of Ma Petite.

But would she be so kind as to put a bullet in the head of this show?

The two major plotlines this episode focus on Jimmy and NPH. Jimmy totally took up Stanley’s offer of selling his body for lawyer money, but was under the impression it would only be one hand. Stanley, naturally, took both and then left Jimmy to be collected again by the police (Stanley had to jailbreak Jimmy first in order to perform the surgery). Dell learns what’s happened, and teams up with Amazon Eve to rescue Jimmy from the police while he’s being transported from hospital back to jail. They succeed, but then Desiree shows up and forces Dell to confess to murdering Ma Petite. Elsa eavedrops and shoots Dell in the head. Case closed. Meanwhile, NPH is a travelling chameleon salesman who visits the freak show. He’s also an aspiring magician and ventriloquist, with a touch of psychosis (he thinks his dummy is real, and she makes him murder people). Elsa hires him first as a bookkeeper for the freak show, and then offers him ownership when she is sure he’s good with money. Meanwhile, the Paulsons decide to open themselves up to absolute pleasure. They set their lusty sights on NPH, which doesn’t make Dandy, or NPH’s dummy, very happy.

Dandy should just give up on the Paulsons and go for the dummy. She won’t refuse you, baby.

But really, I don’t care what happens anymore.

And in light of the eleventh hour inclusion of yet another supposedly vital but actually hollow character, neither does American Horror Story.

Let us cruise towards the finale.

 

Why I hate this episode:

NPH is a creepy ventriloquist whose dummy appears to him as a real person and tells him to kill people. Wow. So scary. The horror.

It clearly doesn’t scare Elsa, who is happy to sell the fucking freak show to him about a day after meeting him. Even Elsa can’t wait to get away from this shitpile of a show.

It’s just too absurd that Jimmy would agree to cutting off one of his hands to pay for a lawyer. Just no.

Bette has changed her hair back to match with Dot’s. I mean, it’s nice that she’s committed to providing that twincest fetish, but blonde definitely was better on her.

Dandy needs to do something drastic, or just fuck off. His big diabolical scheme is to make NPH think Marjorie (the puppet) is commanding him to murder the Paulsons. Why don’t you just murder them, and everyone else in the freak show, yourself, Dandy? Twisty would have. You’re a terrible apprentice.

Oh, and Elsa is willing to promptly execute Dell on his confession of killing Ma Petite, but we don’t see her take any action against Esmerelda, who has been purposely working for weeks (months?) toward the goal of murdering freaks. That’s not very fair.

 

But it’s not all bad:

With Esmerelda being the only character I give half a shit about left alive, I suppose I’ll have to take that as a good thing for now.

The highlight of the episode is Jamie Brewer’s (Nan from Coven, Adelaide from season 1) return as the hammer-happy Marjorie. She’s gleefully cruel to NPH, including in the flashbacks to the murder of his wife and her lesbian lover. NPH’s memory of the event is finding Marjorie bludgeoning them to death on his bed. Marjorie knows how to take care of business.

NPH ends his part of the episode with Marjorie commanding him to saw the Paulsons in half. It’s finally happening, people.

For what it’s worth, the Paulsons do an admirable job of slingin’ their booty. They get that sweet NPH dick, and they enjoy it. Snaps for them.

Jimmy’s reaction to being handless is amusing.

Dell tries to be a good dad. Good dads murder police transport escort officers, right?

Oh, and I really do believe Dandy and Marjorie would be a perfect match.