Episode 2: Chutes and Ladders

Welcome back to the Hotel Cortez, kids. Let’s play some games, hmmm?

This week we were introduced to a new character or two, and we learned a few more secrets about the characters living at the Cortez.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW

We open with Sally literally sewing the hapless junkie from last week into a hotel bed (are we to assume this is the same bed that gave the Swedish tourists so many…er…unpleasant dreams? If so, they’re playing with the timeline here because Detective Lowe is already staying in that room). He complains that she lied to him about her setting him free. She says, “It’s your own damn fault, thinking you could cheat death.” But then she starts crying over him.

Nighty night.

We travel down the air duct to the basement where one of the Swedish girls is getting her wrists sucked on by the creepy blond kids. They complain that she tastes gross, and Iris notes that it’s because she’s dead.

Yuck!

Iris and gender-fluid Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) drop her body down the laundry chute, while Mrs. Evers (Mare Winningham) complains about the stained sheets.

Iris collects some blood from the creepy blond kids and delivers it to the Countess (to the tune of “Lakmé: The Flower Duet” by Leo Delibes, another nod to the movie The Hunger), saying “That’s the last of it.” The Countess and Donovan drinks their blood. As they talk, she notices something…different in Donovan, and goes to an art opening alone.

Detective Lowe’s doctor wife, Alex (Chloe Sevigny) makes a house call to a boy with the measles, and gives the boy’s mom a talking-to about vaccinations and trying to make the world as safe as possible for kids. She is obviously still thinking of her own missing/presumed dead son.

Lowe is woken up in room 64 by a clock radio that plays old-timey music, a common occurrence in this show. He is just about to fall asleep again when metal-strap-on demon pops up and scares him–waking him up from this nightmare-within-a-nightmare. He gets out of bed, goes to the bathroom, and pulls back the shower curtain to see two decaying corpses having sex in his shower–and he wakes up again in his bed.

A dream within a dream

He sees his son Holden in the hallway and chases after him. Holden giggles and runs away quickly. Some terrific camerawork here that mimics Lowe’s state of mind, frantically panning up, down, left, right. Lowe ends up in the lobby, looking lost and a little dazed.

Sally’s in the hotel bar and she invites Lowe to join her for a drink. She talks about addiction while Liz pours (Sally knowingly orders a ginger ale for the detective). She’s lived here… “How long?” “Too long.” She recognizes him as a man on the edge, just barely clinging to his own sobriety.

Drink up

Lowe talks about his own last day of drinking. A dead family, a grieving father, and his own missing son. He leaves her with, “I can’t afford to get lost.”

At the precinct, Lowe receives a package from the Hotel Cortez. He reacts as if it’s a bomb, but it turns out to be an Oscar statue covered in blood. Uh…wha…?

New owner Will Drake hosts a fashion show in the hotel lobby, bringing fashion maven Claudia Bankson (Naomi Campbell, overacting like the dickens). Sally tries to get in to the show but is stopped, and sadly is dragged away crying “This is my house!”  Drake’s son Lachlan lures Lowe’s daughter away with the promise of showing her “something really cool.”

Model Tristan Duffy (Finn Wittrock) snorts some drugs, goes apeshit on the catwalk and nearly attacks a bystander, but is stopped by one look from the Countess. After being chastised by Drake backstage, Duffy slashes his own face.

Lachlan leads Scarlett down to the empty hotel pool, where there are four odd, angular, glass-topped coffins. The creepy blond kids are in them.

Children of the night

Back at her house, Scarlett is missing her little brother and looking at videos of them together in happier times.

Duffy breaks into the Countess’s penthouse, looking to steal some coke, and Donovan is about to kill him when she leans in and says calmly “Let him go.”An upshot of the Countess from Duffy’s point of view rings her head in a “blessed mother” halo of light. Duffy races to the elevator.

Holy mother

It gets stuck at the 7th floor and he strong-arms the door open, following ghostly big band music and old sound clips down a hallway, stumbling into the room of James Patrick March (Evan Peters, mixing Howard Hughes and Patrick Bateman to good effect), the builder of the hotel. He’s been dead for many many years.

Her last breath

Marsh tries to introduce Duffy to the joys of killing people, but Duffy freaks and runs back down the hallway and to the elevator. The Countess is waiting there for him.

Scarlett plays hooky from school and comes back to the coffins at the hotel, which are all now open and empty. She starts exploring and (a little too conveniently) finds the secret room. Her brother is waiting there for her, and asks, “What took you so long?”

“Let’s go home now,” she says.

“I am home,” he replies.

She takes a picture of him, and he tries to bite her at the same time. She runs out and runs right into Sally, who laughs as her teeth break off in bloody chunks.

Yep.

Scarlet walks home in slow motion while her family is freaking out about her going missing. She tells her family the good news about her brother, and they understandably freak out even more. She shows them the picture, but her brother’s face is just a big blur.

Is he…?

As has been pretty well foreshadowed all episode, the Countess has now turned the model Duffy into…well, whatever she is. After having sex, she lays out the rules of existence for her new companion. We also learn a few tidbits about her background (Born: 1904. Favorite decade: the 70s).

Donovan is kicked to the curb (rather rudely and demeaningly) after he walks in on the two of them. Detective Lowe confronts Iris about his daughter, and all the high weirdness he’s witnessed in the hotel. She insists he buy her a drink.

She tells him about James Patrick March, an evil, vile man. Shunned by east coast elites, he came west to build and to satisfy his own horrific proclivities.

Like the real-life serial killer H. H. Holmes, March built a perfectly designed torture chamber/house of horrors in the guise of an opulent hotel. Chutes designed for bodies, hidden passageways, hallways with no doors, etc., were in his plans. His very blond wife, not exactly an innocent in all this, is barely glimpsed from behind. Hmmm, wonder why they’re keeping her identity hidden?

“No body, no crime, he’d say.”

And room 64 was his office.

Down the hatch

Lowe begins to put two and two (and two and two more) together regarding the killer he’s tracking, and starts to believe that he’s following the Ten Commandments as a guide to who/how he kills. Shades of Se7en (the detectives of both stories even share the same last name).

And Duffy makes his first bloody spurting kill.

So far (I know, only 2 episodes, but still) I think this is off to a stronger start than Coven, and is definitely just as good as the rest of AHS’s seasons. I can’t wait to check in again next week!