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“American Horror Story: Hotel” recap (5.8): Heart of Darkness

Guys, I just don’t even have the heart for this today. The endless mass shootings and violence that have come to define my experience of being an American have made it too difficult to take pleasure in the violence of American Horror Story. Scary stories aren’t fun if they look just like real life. Plus this episode is light on the Gaga and heavy on Wes Bentley‘s increasingly gaunt face (someone get that man a sandwich), so it’s not exactly relevant to my interests.

But if there’s one thing living in America teaches you, it’s that the show must, and will go on, so let’s get through this week and onto the next one. (Realistically, there will be several more instances of mass gun violence in between now and then, but maybe I will have run out of emotional energy to be upset.)

So, as I predicted, this is the episode where John finds out that he has been the Ten Commandment Killer all along. The signs have been plain as day for a while, but that still didn’t stop me from raising my fist to the sky and shouting. “I AM A TV GENIUS.”

After Ren’s death (which is being treated as an emotional turning point even though we only knew her for five minutes), John finally goes fully bananas in his quest for justice. Which brings him, of course, back to the Cortez, where Sally promises she will take him to the TCK. Rather than just leading him to the nearest mirror, she guides him to his room, which has a secret closet filled with the gruesome trophies of his kills.

I’m confused about how the migrant workers’ teeth are thematically related to “thou shalt not work on the Sabbath” but whatevs. “Vent his spleen” is also a bit of a stretch, and presumes that Detective Lowe knew enough anatomy to accurately identify and remove said organ. John understandably feels a little foolish about having been the lead detective on murders he himself committed, but then he starts to put the pieces together and discovers that he and he are in perfect agreement.

Also, let’s just take a collective moment to mentally high-five Sarah Paulson.

John goes to the morgue to confess to his old partner, which takes us down a dreary rabbit hole of exposition.

Essentially: back in the heady days of old 2010, John wandered into the Hotel Cortez in the middle of an epic bender. It was there that he met Mr. March, who took an immediate interest in this man who was clearly tiptoeing right up to the edge of sanity. The Countess, meanwhile, was interested in John only insofar as it got her out of her dinner obligation and into a situation better-suited to her outfit.

Over the next two days, March indoctrinates Lowe into his sick brand of justice (thank God he died before he could get his hands on an Ayn Rand novel). At the end of that time, March decided John would be the perfect protégé; all he needs is a gentle love tap in the right direction. So he enlists The Countess to kidnap John’s son and relinquish his grasp on sanity. (Evan Peters and his moustache seem to be having the time of their lives, by the way.) In an episode that ties up loose ends as clumsily as a drunken surgeon, this is one of the only neat twists.

For the next five years, he kept coming back to the Cortez, where he would drink and talk justice with March, have sex with Sally, and escape the hellish company of his beautiful wife and child.

So that means that when John showed up at the Cortez at the beginning of this season, everyone was just pretending to be surprised to see him. Right. Sure.

After enough time has passed, March convinced Lowe that the laws of man could never serve justice, and that Lowe could only punish the guilty by going outside the law. March told him that the Oscar blogger (victim number one) was also a pedophile, so John went to his house and beat him to death with his own statuette. (So, he gossip bloggers were…also pedophiles? Or did they deserve to die just because they published the truth about Bryan Singer‘s pool parties?)

After that first murder, Lowe tried to hang himself, out of horror at the pleasure he had taken in the murder. Sally was only too happy to let him die, so they could roam the halls of the Cortez forever , but March insisted he stay alive. (He also references the addiction demon again, who I had hoped the writers had forgotten about. That thing is terrifying as shit.)

So that just about brings us up to the present day, when John decides to make his partner his next victim (for coveting John’s wife).

After that, he returns to the Cortez, where he reassures everyone that even though he has his memory back, he is fine with his new identity as a serial killer, and will continue following the path. (Although I checked the ten commandments, and the remaining two are just coveting more shit, so that sounds boring.)

Join us next week where we get back to the interesting business of The Countess and her exes. (And hopefully we’ll circle back around to the vampire kids at some point, because those little dudes were terrifying.)

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