'American Horror Story: Asylum' 205 Review 'Oliver Thredson shows Lana his hobby'

“God always answers our prayers, Judy it’s just rarely the answer we’re looking for.”

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From the onset of this second season, everyone was placed into certain roles that fit into the dramatic archetypes we’ve all come to expect. There’s a mad scientist doctor, there’s a wrongly accused killer, there’s a sexy French free spirit—it’s all right there but five episodes in it’s clear that expectations are one thing and results are something entirely different altogether. This show loves to take what you think you’re sure of and drop it through a trapdoor into harsh reality.

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"I Am Anne Frank Pt. 2" closed up last week’s storyline with a woman claiming to be the adult version of the titular author as she threw around accusations about the veracity of Dr. Arden’s background claims. He said Scottsdale, she said Germany, and the two struggled against one another as a potentially lethal seed of doubt was planted in Jude’s mind to once again go after Dr. Arden.

She contacts a renowned Nazi hunter, (played by Mark ‘ding ding’ Margolis recently of Breaking Bad notoriety) to sniff out the truth about Arthur Arden. Before that storyline can fully blossom, Dr. Arden limps into Jude’s office threatening legal action against her for allowing last week’s shooting by ‘Anne’ to even take place. She’s shaken up enough by the doctor’s threats to fall right off the wagon hard and go straight back to boozing, whoring Judy. I love that gal. So dismayed is Jude that she doesn’t even realize the other various evils that have lurked under her nose almost since day one of the second season. One of which she lets walk right out of the asylum’s gates.

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The downfall of Sister Jude in this episode is just one of the many tales told that have to do with the plight of women on this series, be it because of the time period they’re in or the circumstances they’re part of. How the story of ‘Anne Frank’ wraps up is a huge downer, but it’s handled with cinematic aplomb as the crew of this episode brought out some very fancy tricks to make some flashback scenes actually resemble the format of an old ‘60s television show, all the way down to the bad color saturation and glitchy sound effects. Essentially, this plot served to underline that women this season, outspoken ones especially, are going to suffer time and again at the hands of men and those who are ruled by them. When we do see the looks into Charlotte Brown’s life, it’s easy to see why she retreated into a world of outlandish fantasy and dangerous obsession. 

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Not only were the expectations of her gender roles as wife and mother stressful and stifling, but she clearly today would have been diagnosed (as the oh so helpful Dr. Thredson said) with a severe case of postpartum depression as well. By the end of the episode, thanks to a procedure by Dr. Arden, her husband has consented for Charlotte Brown to be turned into a Stepford Wife version of Charlotte against her will compliments of a trans-orbital lobotomy. That puts the scoreboard with another ‘win’ for the men column in the men vs. women struggle for liberation on this show. The storyline also teased, then later confirmed, that just because Charlotte Brown was not really Anne Frank that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t right about Dr. Arden aka Hans Gruper.  A glimpse of a single photo proves that he truly is a former S.S. doctor in hiding in the States so I can’t wait to see the Nazi hunter come back into play.

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There’s a great scene where the opening quote of this review comes from wherein Sister Jude and Frank the security guard are commiserating together as Jude realizes she very well could lose everything she’s worked for at Briarcliff Manor. When Jessica Lange finishes one of her award-worthy Jude monologues, Frank may as well tell her that it’s, Chinatown Jude as he regretfully explains she’s probably never going to win despite the fact that she’s a strong independent woman and usually in the right. Frank is actually the most (only) decent character in a position of authority on this show—never has he done anything outside of the realm of his job to any of the patients.

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Many people thought prayed that Dr. Oliver Thredson would be the beacon of hope to poor Lana Winters that he presented himself as. He was kind, he listened to her, and he went so far as to promise to free her from Briarcliff when his work wrapped up with the Kit Walker case. Every promise was fulfilled and by the episode’s end, Lana is free from the asylum. When a secret comes to light on this show, however, it’s as ugly as the image of Rasper!Shelley dragging her leg-less body up along the steps of an elementary school.  American Horror Story loves to take what should right there be a happy ending for this character and turn into a literal fall into the depths of hell. Or a well-appointed kill room as the case may be because yes, Dr. Oliver Thredson is in fact the 1964 Bloody Face. 

We called it last week but the shock of seeing just how twisted he is makes the reveal scene work--each moment of unease building up to the grand conclusion. People are going to say, ‘oh big surprise that Zachary Quinto is playing another serial killer’. But those people need to take a good look at the twisted layers Quinto’s performance displays when he calmly with only a twinge of menace explains that his hobby deals with making lampshades…out of skin. Oh, and candy bowls out of skull caps—likely an actual nod to that other fictional serial killer in his oeuvre. Zachary Quinto is going to have a total blast playing this character and we're all going to benefit from just holding on tight as the season progresses and Lana's personal horror story grows from bad to worse.

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This is a really gutsy (no pun intended) move on the behalf of the creative minds behind American Horror Story: Asylum to have the top-billed actor be the man behind the patchwork flesh mask. It isn’t like with a show such as Dexter, sure we’re following a serial killer as a lead character but Dexter Morgan only ever kills by a strict code and they’re all bad people. Oliver is now a lead character who’ll be putting another lead (tragic hero figure) character through living waking hell. Already in the few minutes of Quinto as Bloody Face we have this sick mixture of sadist and concerned medical authority. He is both the doctor and the psychopath and that is going to make things extremely unsettling such as his command for Lana to kiss the lips of her frozen dead girlfriend, Wendy in order to ‘continue her treatment’ from before.

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Bloody Face himself feels like a mix of the charming trusting demeanor of Ted Bundy, the penchant for unconventional cuisine of Jeffrey Dahmer (watch the promo for next week and tell me Wendy isn’t on the menu), and the upholstery and fabrication skills of Ed Gein. It also finds the show toying with the idea of authority figures and how much trust we put in them--sometimes at our own detriment. Other than the fact that he skins and tortures women, Oliver is the model of '60s refinement. Just look at how nice his place and car were if you want to see how he disguises his primal urges in a haze of polished civility and consumerism. With Bloody Face we now have a villain that takes the same ‘throw everything against the wall and see what sticks’ plotting that this season wholeheartedly embraces. Even if I can’t yet for the life of me see why they really had to have aliens this season. 

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Nevertheless, as hopeless as Lana's story may look right now just keep in mind that all it takes is one victim getting away and telling their story for a monster to be taken down. But as we've seen already with the story of Charlotte Brown, the patriarchy of 1960s America is completely stacked against women so much that even the ones that tell the truth haven't got a prayer. So she's in for more of a fight than she realizes if Lana can manage to get out alive.