WARNING: Due to the graphic nature of this show, the review that follows is not suitable for young audiences.
American Horror Story has come back for a fourth season, and it’s just as wonderfully twisted as its predecessors. Season four, subtitled Freakshow, delivers on that promise, providing an old-time carnival style curiosity show settled in the tiny town of Jupiter, Florida in late 1952.
Jessica Lange returns to take center stage as the showrunner, one Fraulein Elsa Mars, a former cabaret singer who found herself displaced and a little bit delusional following World War II. She considers herself the pinnacle of grace, style, and talent, while maintaining that wonderfully creepy affect that fans of the show have come to love. Sarah Paulsen plays conjoined twins Bette and Dot, who are found in their parents home by an overly concerned milkman. Their mother and father have been brutally murdered, and the girls’ existence is brought to light for the first time. After an excruciating ten minutes, Bette and Dot make their on-screen debut, showing off their split screen vision and the telepathic link they share while they’re interrogated by Elsa, who has, by the way, kidnapped a candy striper and stolen her uniform to gain access to the hospital where the girls are being kept. The effects employed to create the two-headed woman are seamless and incredibly creepy, so much that if you didn’t know better, you’d think Paulsen really has two heads.
Bette (left) is sour and distrustful, while Dot (right) is an optimist and a dreamer with an eye on the glamorous.
Meanwhile, there’s an unnamed murder clown stalking Jupiter and the surrounding towns. In his first appearance he interrupts a picnic and stabs a man to death on screen before abducting a young woman who, frankly, kind of earned her kidnapping since she trusted a clown. Murder Clown later breaks into a family home, killing a couple and kidnapping their young son, again, with an overabundance of stabbing. It turns out that, while he’s not a very good clown, this guy wishes that he were. He stages a show for his captives, who are caged in a bus, and when he fails to draw laughter from the crowd, he becomes explosively, violently angry.It should be noted that Murder Clown doesn’t talk, probably because he has a mask sewn to his face. He does calm down enough to take a trip to the freakshow though, where he takes a ride on the carousel, seemingly at ease. Murder Clown is probably the scariest character in the episode, and I’m anticipating him being a continual creep-out, much like the gimp suited man from season one.
Murder Clown, A.K.A. Twisty, takes creepy clown to a different level with his sewn on face mask.
Speaking of the freakshow, Bette and Dot join Elsa and her crew after leaving the hospital, though Bette is not happy about the arrangement. As we are introduced to the other performers, the group dynamic becomes clearer. Kathy Bates plays Ethel Darling, the bearded lady and Elsa’s second in command (and a recovering drunk). Ethel plays to Elsa’s delusions, though she doesn’t share them, and she seems to be the kind of salt-of-the-earth character that Bates is known for. Her son Jimmy, the lobster handed boy, shares her understanding that carnival sideshows are a dying form of entertainment, but the boy is a dreamer, and thinks that he will have a better life, equal to normal people, if he just leaves the carnival. Sadly, Jimmy’s side job is providing intimate massages with his deformed hands to the bored housewives of Jupiter, so he probably isn’t very upwardly mobile. The show also features the world’s smallest woman, a giant woman, and the obligatory geeks, pinheads, and deformed characters.
The ladies love Jimmy Darling’s hands, but Elsa is unimpressed by his chosen occupation.
As the performers set themselves up for what Ethel tells them is a sold-out show, a detective shows up looking for the twins, who he plans to arrest under suspicion of murder. His attitude gets him in a bit of trouble with Jimmy, though, when he called the girls freaks. Apparently being part of a freakshow from birth makes a man a bit sensitive to that type of language, because Jimmy kills the cop and uses that act of defense to convince Bette that she is one of the family now. At the same time in a bigger tent, the candy striper that Elsa kidnapped earlier returns, threatening to expose the freakshow for the depraved monsters they are. Elsa is wily though, and proceeds to show the girl a reel of what can only be described as carny porn, featuring the girl participating happily in an orgy with several different partners, and high out of her mind all the while.
Finn Wittrock, mama’s boy extraordinaire.
The show, it turns out, was bought out by an elderly Gloria Mott (you may recognize her as Moira O’Hare, from season one) and her grown up son, Dandy, upon whom she dotes. After a brief showing of some of the freaks, Elsa takes the stage, attempting to regain her glory days with a (completely anachronistic) rendition of David Bowie’s Life on Mars. The twins have an awkward moment on stage as well. Dot, the optimistic dreamer, enjoys the limelight while Bette shies away from the attention, further distancing herself from her sister’s cheerful persona with a surly and negative one. After the show, the man and his mother attempt to buy the twins from Elsa, a moment which she cleverly uses to draw Bette into choosing the freakshow over another life. Jimmy, meanwhile, takes the other freaks to a secluded spot under a tree, where they proceed to bludgeon, chop and stab the detective to bits, affirming their commitment to the carny family.
The episode closes on a startling revelation about Elsa, which I will not be sharing here. It explains a lot about her though, so check out the episode and see what’s really freakish about the Fraulein.
American Horror Story: Freakshow, airs Wednesday nights at 10 on FX.
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