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Never trust a drunk. That’s something Sister Jude says to our very special guest star, returning S1 cast member Frances Conroy as the Angel of Death, this week on American Horror Story: Asylum and drunk is how you feel during this episode in terms of your own sense of not knowing what the hell is going to happen next.
What we really should come away thinking after tonight’s events are that, much in the same way this was so in season one with the murder house, you can leave Briarcliff but you can never really be free of it. The entire hour played out like a hazy collection of vignettes with little to hold them together except for the "Dark Cousin" of the episode’s title and an overall season theme that’s really starting to make itself known.
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We spent more time with Jude this week than we have recently, and despite the raves that Lange has received for her boozy monologues I felt that her more subdued work opposite Frances Conroy’s character should be what wins her awards all next season. Conroy gave an ethereal and slightly sinister performance that was a real treat to behold. It was also delightful to see Conroy opposite Lange whose character last year had all the power instead. Jude faced her grandest demon and I think as a result she’s going to come back with her faith restored and fight for the soul of Briarcliff itself now that Devil!Eunice is running the asylum. It’s always such a mistake for the devil to make itself known and after the phone-call between it and Jude I’m sure it’s the beginning of the end for whatever demon has taken hold of the purest nun in the place.
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Some of you may have started to wonder from how the show liked to dwell on Jude dwelling on her possible identity as a murderess if she actually killed the little girl so perhaps that wasn’t as much of a shock as what happened with Kit and Lana this week. For a show that revels in providing jaw-dropping moments there couldn’t have been anything that felt more earned than the stunning reveal of Lana winding up back in Briarcliff. In fact, she wasn’t the only one as accused murderer Kit Walker also ended up back in the place he once wanted to escape in order to save Grace. Unfortunately for both of these characters they’re up against a force that is greater than themselves as an overall theme of this season is truly on display in ‘Dark Cousin’.
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Women all across the board on this show are trying to find peace, they’re trying to find happiness and they’re trying to have lives where they can be free to make their own decisions. Nearly every act or character arc can ultimately be put toward the struggle of women in that time period. Just think about how Lana finally gets away from her worst nightmare and the car she winds up in is driven by a woman-hating divorcee whose actions result in her winding up right back in Briarcliff. Think about Jude’s struggles with the patriarchy of the Catholic Church and how that mixed with her demons led to her nearly taking her own life tonight. Kit Walker is being accused of the same brutal crimes against women that are the work of Oliver Thredson, and his need to liberate a woman has led to her death and his re-imprisoning at Briarcliff as well at least until the police arrive.
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You can also see a bit of this struggle for women’s rights (which would actually become a real movement in the years after 1964) metaphorically in what happens to Grace before she meets her fatal end. She is found after what on the show seemed to be an alien abduction that left her without her reproductive organs. A procedure she was due for on her own thanks to an order from Jude herself when she and Kit were caught fornicating in the bakery. If you remove the aliens part of her story, then Grace could fill the shoes of any young woman of that time who sought back-alley means in a world where safe and available reproductive health-care was still not an option for many women just yet.
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One of the show’s biggest monsters, Dr. Arden, winds up treating her and treating her well enough that by the episode’s end she’s doing far better. As she would have been had the procedure occurred under his knife in the first place because despite his mad scientist-esque traits when he’s given the chance to perform a medical procedure he is still very much a professional.
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Arden isn’t the only one of this show’s monsters to be shown balancing his professional commitments with his more malicious actions as another facet of Quinto’s stellar performance was highlighted this week when he gave us more of Dr. Thredson the medical professional. He was quite proud of his tenacity and how it served himself and his patients. Seeing Lana as his patient not his victim meant that she was subject to the same terms as someone seeking out his ‘help’ voluntarily and all treatment eventually reaches a conclusion. Of course, when your therapist is a psycho killer that doesn’t mean you get to seek out other options instead your options are death by strangulation or a slit throat. Oliver doesn’t believe in guns mind you, they’re such wretchedly dangerous weapons and he’s a really amusingly progressive man for the time period other than the whole he kills women brutally thing. The hypocrisy is delicious as Oliver truly believes he’s being decent by providing Lana with some form of choice that’s all her own even if it’s choosing how he should end her life--limiting her options to fit under his purview of what she’s fit to decide for herself. He’s a one-man Briarcliff Manor in this scene in that his brutal dehumanizing actions represent the kind of oppression these women face within the system.
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If you think about how the season could end through that perspective of women struggling to free themselves from the limitations of society it’s worth noting that the two people who seem poised to be as close as possible to the ones who can end all the evil of this season are both going to be in Briarcliff by next week. Maybe Sister Jude couldn’t put a stop to Dr. Arden but she might be a little inclined to listen to Lana’s warnings about Dr. Thredson with whom she’s already tousled but I think that fight is one that’s still ongoing. Everyone’s already assuming that Oliver will come in and just take Lana or worse but the show knows that playing with expectations is what keeps people coming back every week. I think that their story is going to be put in a position where he’s a respected male professional in the eyes of society and she’s just a loony lesbian making up stories for attention. Again, the battle of the sexes this year is very real and it can be very deadly for all involved. But as long as you fight like Jude and Lana have been able to do, all is never truly lost.
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