American Horror Story: Freak Show Finale

Warning: this post contains spoilers.

"Freaks shall inherit the earth"

Hello my lovelies! Anyone that follows me on twitter knows that I am a huge fan of the horror anthology series, American Horror Story. The latest season American Horror Story: Freak Show is no exception.

Today, I am going to share a review of last night's finale episode - sharing a recap along with my thoughts along the way. I will also share my thoughts on this season over all. This is actually my very first time reviewing an episode of a show. I took careful notes as to not let you dear readers down. I am doing my best to keep in order of appearance of scenes, but that is quite difficult. This episode was all over the place, even more so than usual.

The episode starts with some of the freaks discussing leaving the freak show now that Dandy has taken over. Paul (the seal man in case you aren't good with the names) discourages it saying that as freaks they have nowhere else to go and that he'll stay since Dandy is rich. Boy, they sure made the wrong decision!

Dandy is having a tantrum (as usual) trying to perfect the lights for his act and Paul gets into an argument with him. It seems that since Dandy took over the show, absolutely no one attends. He gets cocky and gets Dandy on the ground (I think he hit him?), surrounding him with some of the other freaks. He tells Dandy that he is nothing special and is in fact boring. That they (meaning the freaks) are all freaks and he will never become one of them. He says to Dandy that he does not own them, then proceeds to spit in his face. The freaks all then quit the show and walk away. Very, very bad idea freaks. Paul, you're stupid. This of course does not sit well with Dandy (surprise, surprise). I predicted this as soon as I saw Dandy start to become angry: he goes on a rampage. One by one, Dandy chases and slaughters the freaks. Nice going, Paul! 

Elsa is shown trying to meet what I assume is a network executive. She speaks with the receptionist who will not do anything to assist her (though claiming she will, which of course is bullshit). Elsa waits around until closing when the receptionist shows up with a  cop, trying to see her out. The receptionist informs Elsa that the executive snuck out of the back entrance to avoid seeing her and  makes a catty remake about needing to freshen up her act.

Elsa then snaps and bitch slaps the receptionist, going after her. Typical Elsa! But DAMN the slap!  A man shows up, talking to Elsa trying to help and be kind. He shares his name, Michael Beck which he had to change from Beckenbower (I think? Beckenbower is what it sounded like to me) as he was a communist. He reveals that he is the jr. vice president of casting of the network. At first impression, I felt something was off with this man. Though nothing major happened to reveal my suspicion.

Back to the psychotic Dandy and his murder spree. Amazon Eve sees Dandy murdering her friends so she grabs an ax. Dandy is on the hunt for Desiree, looking for her in her trailer where she is actually hiding. It's a good thing Dandy didn't have the sense or intelligence to look beside the bed. As usual, he throws a temper tantrum like a child when he can't find her. I miss Mrs. Mott. I would've loved to see her reaction to that!

Eve shows up and wrestles Dandy, trying to take him down. After a struggle Dandy sadly wins the fight and shoots her dead. I was very mad and screaming at my TV. I loved Amazon Eve! We then find Bette and Dot tied up and gagged. Dandy comes along and tells them to come with him.

Jimmy suddenly appears out of nowhere, walking around the freak show camp to find it deserted. He finally walks into the big tend to find the bodies of the freaks all laying in a pattern leading up to the stage. Jimmy collapses and cries when he sees Amazon Eve, his dear friend dead and he closes her eyes out of respect. Desi then comes along and nudging him, letting him know she's still alive and they hug. Everyone close to Jimmy dies and he never seems to witness it. He was always elsewhere which disappointed me, I wanted some dramatic scenes. He seemed like the poor tragic character the whole season (then again, aren't just about all of Evan Peters' roles in this show like that?)

The next scene was a HUGE mind fuck. I thought for sure it was a dream and I along with many others were very confused. The scene started off in a dream like state of the twins walking down the isle, marrying Dandy. It is in fact Bette marrying dandy, oddly enough looking happy and in love as she says her vows. Dot is not happy (as usual, but who could blame her now?!). Dot was pretty much just like "whatever" to the whole situation. Dandy discusses with them about wedding night shenanigans. Saying that he doesn't want Dot to be the third wheel. Dot says she can go away and then Dandy pretty much says he wants a threesome. Oh boy. My reaction to this entire scene was a big what the fuck.

Bette mentions a grand feast she has prepared to celebrate their marriage and mentions that she hired a french maid to cook for them. As they are having dinner, there is a strangely happy conversation about making (of course Dandy would mention freak) children and their marriage. Suddenly it is obvious that Dandy has been drugged by the wine he was drinking.

Desi walks into the room and sits down, she is their maid. Wait...what? Desi proceeds to say that their wedding night has been cancelled. The twins reveal that the wedding in fact was a ruse and they were acting the entire time. This is glorious! Dandy tried to shoot the twins, but they have a gun of their own and shoots him. They yell at Dandy to sit down and Desi calls for a butler, saying that it is time for the next course. Jimmy happens to be the butler. Oh, it gets even better my friends.

Dandy passes out, then waking up in his tighty whities in a tank, dampened by water. The same pair that we've seen all season. Eww. I would much rather see Evan Peters' (Jimmy's actor) butt in those tighty whities! 

At least Dandy eventually got rid of those two little bitch curls he had going on. Hahaha, Dandy is not amused by this blog. Can you tell I despise him? I wished so hard with every episode that someone would kill him.  Desi informs us that Dandy is in Houdini's famous escape tank.

After some back and forth angry conversation and some pleading from Dandy, Bette tells Dandy she hates him. Jimmy turns on the water, filling the tank. Desi tells Dandy he is the biggest freak of all. Dandy pleads and begs to be let out. Jimmy tells him he will die and that freaks shall inherit the earth.
In the next oh so beautiful, glorious scene Dandy is drowning as the twins, Desi and Jimmy are sitting in chairs eating popcorn while watching him struggle. As he dies, dandy yells "I hate you, I hate you" over and over until his last breath. When he is finally (FINALLY! HALLELUJAH!!) dead, Desiree comments "That boy is a star". Ding dong the witch is dead!! That entire scene was hilarious to me. I cheered and laughed throughout the entire thing.

The focus (as usual and with just about every episode) shifts back to Elsa. She is in Hollywood, famous and married to Mr. Beck. Although her dream has come true, she is unhappy realizing the woes of stardom and her husband is unfaithful. There is some back and forth arguing about Elsa refusing to a Halloween show. 

Elsa then meets with her friend (and past love interest) Dr. Mossimo, the prosthetic doctor we saw in the last episode. She wants to run away with him and be with him but he is dying from a disease and only has about a month to live. (How convenient.) He came to say goodbye. It was a rather pointless scene, but they wrapped up the whole thing with those two...wish I could say the same for some other things. 

Elsa is drinking in her room and 2 men in suits show up, one is the head of the network. They make Elsa aware that they have discovered the snuff films she was in, where she had lost her legs. They also know that she ran a freak show and that all of those freaks were slaughtered. They talk about "morals" and threaten to end her contract, but then Elsa agrees to do a Halloween show and all is good again. Haha, not really! I knew she would cave eventually.

Elsa gets on stage on Halloween night and begins to sing in front of a live camera. We see Desi walking down the street in front of a shop window with her boyfriend (the man from earlier in the season) watching Elsa briefly on a tv. We then see Jimmy sitting in front of a tv watching Elsa and surprise, the twins are there and very pregnant!

As I totally thought would happen: Edward Mordrake and Twisty (Yay!!) return along with some other ghosts.

 Twisty is hands down my favorite character on the show. He creeped me out at first (clowns scare me) but I grew to love him (as I did Pennywise and of course Captain Spaulding). I was so happy to have my Twisty back!!

While still on live tv, Mordrake and Twisty kill Elsa. Unexpectedly Mordrake says "your place is not with us". I totally thought they were going to take Elsa with them, so this was a huge shock to me. Elsa is shown walking around the freak show in some sort of afterlife. She is greeted by Ma Petit (I screamed with excitement, I love Ma Petit she's so cute!) and all of the other dead freaks.

Ethel talks to Elsa, letting her know that they're happy but they missed their star. Elsa takes the stage one last time after an introduction by Ethel. She begins to sing, her performance reminding me a lot of the scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where Frankenfurter sings "I'm going home" and hallucinates an audience of people watching.

[I apologize for the video quality, this was the best I could find on Youtube of the actual movie]


Then the screen goes black.  The curtain has closed and Freak Show has come to an end.

It was a crazy episode and this season went out with a bang. I was hoping to see a connection to Murder House, but I guess there's always next season. I loved seeing the connections become more obvious between Freak Show and Asylum. Should I write about that and my theories? This episode was all over the place and a little difficult to review but I enjoyed it. I was very happy that they killed Dandy, finally! They should have killed his annoying ass a long time ago. They wrapped up most of the loose ends, but I'm still left with questions. What happened to Chester and Marjorie?!?!! The episode completely ignored their existence.

 Also what happened to Stanley? Last we saw, he was turned into a chicken creature and locked in a cage but we do not know what became of him. Did Dandy kill him? Or was he left to die? Or was he dead before the slaughter?

I do feel the need to point out that a lot of this season was reminiscent of the 1932 movie, Freaks. Any of this look familiar? Though it has been years since I've seen the film, I still found a lot of parallels. 

Hey, look it's Meep from the 1930's!

I do have some (ok, probably a lot) of complaints about this season and to clarify, I'm not normally one to knit pick. For one I'm so happy to be done with Elsa Mars' character. I enjoy Jessica Lange and think she is a fantastic actress and I respect her. But Elsa just got on my nerves after a while, especially when at least half (if not more) of the spotlight of the show had to be all about her. The thing I was most scared of this season were her eyebrows. 

With every season, I feel like the writers do not think through the plot. Ever season starts strong then usually goes downhill towards the middle and slams on the gas speeding up the plot until the very end. This season was no exception. The beginning was amazing, but it wasn't as good after Twisty died. They also could have done so much with Twisty but he died after like what, 4 episodes? Such a waste. He was the most terrifying character. There wasn't truly a clear plot this season. There were many, many story lines but no major over lying plot. Some say it is that society is the true freaks, but again it isn't clear. I feel like they just took any little idea they had and went with it, regardless if it went anywhere. I feel like the writers thought "Hey, let's see how much weird things we can cram into this season".

Of course, I did like a lot about this season. I loved Twisty and Edward Mordrake. Those characters were genius. Plus Seneca Crane from the Hunger Games plays Mordrake. Did you know Edward Mordrake was a real person? Or at least is rumored to be. I loved that it was a very disturbing season, we got so much more shock value and gore this season. I feel like they tried to make up for lack of that in Coven. It made me a very happy ghoul. There were funny moments. I did like the music at first, but then it got like the show was trying too hard to be the American Horror Glee Show to me. I really enjoyed Bette and Dot's Fiona Apple cover....but I hated Jimmy's Nirvana cover. I loved the whole creepy freak show theme and of course...the opening credits! They changed the theme song up a bit and I absolutely love it.

This despite my many complaints has become my second favorite season (after Coven). I even got my mom hooked this season. Now, I sadly wait until next October for my beloved show to return. At least I have Game of Thrones in April! There were clues dropped throughout the season as to what the topic of season 5 will be. Did you catch any? I know one of the most talked about and most obvious is the top hat. Anyone have any theories?  I need to watch the entire season again to form a clear theory. What I am seeing from most people is speculation about Operation Top hat and something atomic. It is also important to note that AHS alternates between this present era and the past (Murder House: present, Asylum: past, Coven: present, Freak Show: past). It has been confirmed that the next season will take place in the present. A lot of people were also speculating space, but Ryan Murphy (the creator of the show) has confirmed it won't be space. 

Thank you for reading this review, I hope you enjoyed it! What did you think of the finale? Please comment below! I apologize for the length, there was a lot that happened and of course I as usual have a lot of opinions. It literally took me close to two hours to just type on my phone. Also please See my last post for a poll and help me decide what my next topic will be!

Xoxo
Stay creepy