'American Horror Story' 3.07 "The Dead" Review

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Trying to find a connection in this world whether you’re human or of supernatural design can be a dangerous endeavor. Every time someone opens their heart and mind up to another it leaves them incredibly vulnerable. For some, this is an excellent opportunity to take a chance and broaden their own life experience. While others find it to be a great mistake that leads to immeasurable future harm. Taking this metaphor into the literal everyone on Coven tonight found the relationships in their lives tested, shifting, or reinvigorating. Some even all three as was the case with Fiona and the Axeman’s newly kindled bad romance of murderous proportions. Unlike the show, however I’m not going to spend way too much time on them when there were quite a few interesting developments down in New Orleans in ‘The Dead’.

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Let’s go ahead and start with the new development that had non-enchanted tongues wagging all over social media the second it went down--Zoe, Kyle, and Madison. Now that Madison’s back from the dead she’s dealing with the ennui that comes with being resurrected out of the pitch-black nothingness that was her brief time on the other side. She’s numb and nothing can fix it; except making a connection with her fellow undead in the form of Kyle. I mean an actual physical connection as Zoe walks in on the pair of them screwing in her bedroom. Instead of Madison proclaiming that Kyle is all hers now and hot-shit witch Zoe can’t do anything about it, instead the show decides to go into another more progressive place with this situation.

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How many times have you seen a fic or read a post that encouraged the members of a love triangle to just get it on with one another? I’ve seen it in quite a few show fandoms and so here’s the type of show that would actually go there. There’s no loser in this scenario if you look at this calmly and rationally: Madison gets to feel something again, Kyle seems to be much more at peace with his situation, and Zoe can express her sexuality with two people who wouldn’t get harmed from her initial power. Sexual antics aside, who really needs to see another ‘the boy/girl is mine’ scenario on a genre show? Sometimes life is far more complicated than that and I think American Horror Story made the right choice in allowing this to happen. Plus we get to tick the box of ‘threesome’ on our AHS bingo cards--a series first.

The real shame here is that it was only alluded to without being shown a little more. FX is

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never one to pull the punches and for this progressive act to not get even a little bit of screentime when Sarah Paulson all but deep-throated a snake and Gabourey Sidibe fingered herself before a Minotaur this year seemed a bit strange. It only made it worse that what was immediately cut away to involved Fiona and the Axeman. Listen, I love Jessica Lange but Ryan Murphy’s clear favoritism of her is starting to impact the way the show is produced. You could have cut out half of her scenes tonight and still gotten the gist of what Fiona was going through by daring to embrace her love affair with the man who’s happened to have stalked her most of her life. Or at least spread it out over a few episodes when we only had a few scenes with her daughter, Delia, as she steeled herself for the oncoming war against her mother when she learned the truth about Madison. It just feels like some stories are getting short-changed because they really love the sight of Lange’s Fiona smoking in that little black dress.

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Not all of this episode’s attempts at building connections worked out for our characters though as Queenie made a choice that will likely impact the remaining episodes in a major way. Fed up with feeling like an outcast, Queenie visits Marie LaVeau and a deal is struck: if she’ll bring her Delphine LaLaurie then she can join up with them where she’ll finally belong. I doubt the validity of LaVeau’s claim as there’s no true guarantee Queenie will find true kinship with the voodoo clan either. As for LaLaurie’s fate, she’s clearly going to suffer a prolonged taste of the bitter medicine she fed to so many in her house of horrors.

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I enjoy the idea of karma coming for LaLaurie in a much more visceral way than immortal live burial but I can’t help but feel Queenie signed her own death warrant when she gave her over to Laveau. The ones that switch sides never survive a battle. It was also tragic in a way that Queenie and LaLaurie’s own blossoming friendship was effectively shut down. Of course what Madame LaLaurie did to her slaves and to her family was atrocious and of course she should pay for these acts. What’s heartrending is her desire for true redemption; she wants to be rehabilitated and learn from all of her past mistakes but may not get the chance to now.

Coven is doing an excellent job at advancing the journeys of its characters at a faster pace than last year's Asylum arc did. Even seeing

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something like the cold open with Kyle pre-patchwork body parts helped to inform on his character so that we could truly feel his agony at what he’s become laer on. This kid had a bright future and fell in with a bad crowd. Now his life, or afterlife really, is forever altered and that’s the kind of character journey that’s compelling to watch. Zoe too has had a fantastic transformation from the reluctant witch to quite possibly the future Supreme. She took serious charge against Spalding when trying to prove the claim that Fiona killed Madison and she certainly didn’t hesitate to get her hands dirty in the process. I hope that maybe Denis O’Hare’s creepy butler can take the place of the Axeman as the ghost that haunts Miss Robichaux’s Academy now. Misty Day wasn’t anywhere near this one so it seems like he’ll truly stay dead--pretty sure the coming back card is mostly reserved for actual witches and their possible love interests like Kyle.

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If the zombie advance on Halloween could be considered the first advance then this is the time in battle when both sides regroup. The sides are firming up and from what it looks like in next week’s promo alone, things are about to blow up in all the right ways. The coven is turning against Fiona, Fiona has an ally now in her new lover, and Marie might get sidelined with her new caged ‘pet’ while that internal battle rages on. Don’t forget about Hank either. He had quite the artillery and he looked ready to use it. That said, bullets don’t tend to stand a chance against magic so if he’s smart he’ll shoot from a distance unless he wants to die once and for good. Wife or not, Cordelia is at the point where she will gladly tear him apart if he tries to harm another witch under wing. Witches fight or they burn and it seems like now the witches are finally ready to brawl.