'American Horror Story' 2.11 "Spilt Milk" Review

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With only two episodes left after tonight’s installment, American Horror Story starts to close up the Asylum chapter by killing one major character, bringing three free from Briarcliff, and it allowed for the natural villain of this season to truly emerge as a number of themes from the first few episodes came full circle.

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“Spilt Milk” can be most easily divided into three segments: Kit and Grace, Lana and Dr. Thredson, and the beginning of the end of Briarcliff Manor. Despite the flashy visuals and strong sci-fi leanings, I’m not at all invested in the aliens storyline. It continues to be the odd man out of the show’s narrative no matter how often they’re going to insist it upon us as an audience. By the end of the episode it really gets to a new level of eye-rolling ridiculousness when Alma returns with a baby of her own. I’m so glad Ryan Murphy and his husband finally were fortunate enough to have a baby of their own recently because now maybe just maybe season three of American Horror Story won’t be as baby crazy as the first two have been.

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Lana’s ordeal finally seems to turn around as she leaves Briarcliff thanks to the plea of the very woman he put her there in the first place, all without ending up chained in a basement. In fact in a beautifully shot and edited sequence, Lana secures the evidence against Oliver Thredson and escapes the building all right under his nose. Oliver realizing what’s happened all too late and being forced to watch Lana in the back of a taxi with the tape pressed against the car window in one hand and her middle finger raised not only to Thredson, but to Briarcliff itself was a highlight of the season. Lana’s revenge was somewhat lackluster in its execution as much of her scenes with Thredson later on felt like the second half of a Lifetime original movie. You know, the bit where the scorned woman brings hell down on her antagonist. There’s no denying that Thredson deserved her bullet (especially when we were shown what Oliver graphically did with Wendy’s body before its disposal.)

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Despite some of the narrative disappointments, this episode provided some of the best direction, editing, and cinematography of the entire series. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon has provided compelling camerawork that shakes up the proceedings visually. Everything’s unhinged and swaying when Jessica Lange’s Judy Martin tells of the Monsignor. The way the scenes shifted in and out in carefully planned shots that take the events happening in the Thredson residence back and forth from 1965 to the present without missing a beat were a smart choice to show how entwined father and son truly are. Not to mention the sequence with Grace floating in the water was truly stunning. It felt like an entirely different series from what the show was in its first season and for an anthology that’s a good thing.

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It seems we’re getting more of Johnny’s tale next week and Zachary Quinto isn’t quite done on American Horror Story yet so stay tuned for his reappearance that a photo Ryan Murphy tweeted has alluded to. Good thing too because this show can't just lose all of its best performers entirely one after another.The way the stories are winding down so far this season isn’t as satisfying as they were when they were ongoing. Maybe that’s why the Johnny Thredson development is so intriguing and I wish they had more of it in this episode. Just not when Dylan Mcdermott’s lips are coated with breast milk residue.

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I suppose it’s all in the service of coming full circle that the episode begins with his mouth suckling a tit and ends with him as a baby doing the same with Lana who despite all her posturing could not go through with another illicit abortion attempt. A remaining theme throughout the season that was in full force tonight was the idea of strong capable women fighting to take down the patriarchal institutions that seek to ruin lives. Lana and Jude are the only ones left to try and bring down the increasingly corrupt Monsignor Howard but with one leaving Boston behind and the other’s death faked so the questions will stop hounding the Church it seems like something else will stop the madness of Briarcliff.

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As it stands, the events of this episode should have occurred in next week’s episode or the finale itself as figuratively the wind has been taken right out of the sails of almost every story. It’s one thing to have struggle, conflict, and danger but seeing how relatively easy it was for Lana and Kit to get out of Briarcliff in the same episode it lessens the impact of what should be a cathartic moment for both characters. Not to mention the fact that the antagonists are nearly all gone now. Arden, Thredson, the Devil all have been vanquished much too soon. Even Jude herself whose fate seems to be to rot away in the very institution she helped to shape into a system of endless mistreatment and neglect has lost her impact as a threat if Lana never figures out she’s still alive in that hell.  

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It’s going to be hard not to view the next two episodes as the epilogue of a book with a flat ending unless something really phenomenal is yet to be unveiled before the final moments. For as much as I think this season got so many things right, this time last year I was breathlessly anticipating the final episodes of the Harmon family’s drama in a way that I just don’t feel toward the remaining characters and stories of the Asylum arc. Prove me wrong please, Ryan Murphy because for the most part it’s been a fantastic ride and only now it feels like the roller-coaster has slowed on the tracks right when I should be screaming my head off as it speeds downhill.