The long wait is over and on FX tonight’s their thriller American Horror Story returns for its second season and they have decided to call the second season American Horror Story: Asylum. Nuns, aliens and a smoldering Adam Levine are all in the lineup for season 2 spook-fest. The premiere episode tonight is called, “Welcome To Briarclif.”
If you have not watched the show before this season will take place in a different locale and time period and feature a whole host of different characters – though many will be played by actors from season 1 (Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Lily Rabe, Sarah Paulson and Zachary Quinto).
This season’s show is set in 1964 and Asylum takes us into a Church-run haven for the criminally insane, ruled with an iron fist by Sister Jude (Jessica Lange), a nun with a troubled past. Inside this locked down facility, danger lurks around every corner. From Nazis and serial killers, to mutants and aliens, no one is safe inside these walls.
On tonight’s show we get introduced to Briarcliff Manor, a notorious insane asylum home to the deranged serial killer, Bloody Face. Lurking in the shadows of this “sanctuary of healing” are terrifying evils that blur the boundaries between reality and insanity.
Tonight’s episode is going to be another spooky episode, which you won’t want to miss. So be sure to tune in for our live coverage of FX’s American Horror Story – tonight at 10PM EST! While you wait for our recap, hit the comments and let us know if you are excited about the season premiere of American Horror Story? While you wait for the recap, check out a sneak peek of tonight’s episode below!
LIVE RECAP HERE!
We start out with Adam Levine as Leo and Jenna Dewan-Tatum (Channing’s lovely wife) as Teresa on their honeymoon – happily snapping photos at Briarcliff Manor, a tuberculosis treatment center that’s now a wreck. Apparently these two oddballs are visiting American’s 12 most haunted locals for their honeymoon. Wifey Teresa reads to hubby who’s busily snapping pics that Briarcliff later became an asylum from which no one escaped. Its most famous patient was serial killer “Bloody Face.”
Leo finds a hospital bed and wifey asks to be tied down. He offers her an injection and proceeds to give her one. Then they hear a banging and go to investigate – coitus interruptus. They find a creepy tunnel to investigate and she offers him other sexual favors if he’ll look into the mystery opening. Bad choice Leo – something grabs his arm and rips it off. It is blatantly bloody and I’m not sure if I’m intrigued or just nauseous.
Within the first five minutes of the show, we’ve had simulated copulation, mentions of oral and anal sex and then a brutal dismemberment. Ryan Murphy is at his charming best here…
Back from the break it’s 1964 and I’m jealous because the guy at the gas station filled up for $3!! The attendant (Kit – according to his name tag) closes up shop and is startled by his miscreant buddies who are planning a shenanigan to go scare someone. Kit refuses to go along and says they can’t take his gun with them. The troublemakers depart but make a crack about the new maid he’s hired.
Kit heads home to his new wife (Alma) and they smooch – she’s got dinner ready – it’s a cozy pre-cold War home scene – except for the secret they’re keeping. She’s black and it’s apparently not cool in their neck of the woods in this era to be in an inter-racial marriage. She must be the maid his friends were referencing. He wants to tell everyone about their love, but she says it’s not safe.
Post-coitus, he smokes in bed while the wife goes to cook him dinner. The bedroom is flooded with lights and he grabs his rifle and runs out – telling his wife to stay put. Outside there’s blinding lights and deafening noises – he runs in to save Alma, but is paralyzed by the lights and sound. Then he’s collapsed on the floor and then suddenly stuck to the ceiling. Then he’s nude and there’s tentacles (or something like that) around him – looks like an alien invasion scene.
Across town at Briarcliff, lady reporter Lana (Sarah Paulson) shows up at the asylum to do an interview about their bakery that makes excellent bread. On the way in she meets a tragically deformed woman that pricks her with a rose thorn and apparently is a brother killer and dismemberer.
Jessica Lange as Sister Jude is shaving Shelley’s head (Chloe Sevigny) head and they have an ugly confrontation. The interview begins and the sister tells Lana the Monsignor believes in the 3 Ps: productivity, prayer and purification.
Turns out Lana’s not really there to check out their baked goods – she wants the goods on serial killer Bloody Face who apparently has killed a bunch of women and likes to wear human flesh on his face. Fun!
He’s being dropped off right at that moment and it’s nice boy gas station attendant Kit. What the what? With Kit strapped to a bed, he and Sister Jude have a terrible talk – he tells her he didn’t do it – she mocks him for his stories about the little green men. He spits on the lovely sister and she gives him a spanking as punishment.
Shelley offers to make Kit’s boo-boos all better. Seems he’s both a lady killer and a lady killer… The crazy chicks are all crushing on him. But another male patient (Spivey – played by Kelly Ripa’s cute hubby Mark Consuelos) isn’t so hip on Kit and gives him a beat down and then asks him if he wore the skin of his last victim – his bi-racial wife…
Kit points to the other guy and tells Sister Jude “he started it” but she doesn’t care and has the orderlies haul him off. Lange is as warm and fuzzy in season 2 as she was in season 1… By the way – this show is TV MA LSV – do they make harsher warnings?
Looks like Kit (aka Bloody Face) is in solitary and patient Grace brings him food and shares a smoke with him. He wants to know why she’s being so nice and she says “What you put out into the world comes back to you.” He asks what she put out that got her there and she says they said she chopped up her family. He asks if she did – she says no. She asks if he killed all the women – he says no.
Sister Jude wants access to Dr. Arden’s lab (James Cromwell). He tells her it’s his deal with the Monsignor that she has to butt out of his business. Sister Jude asks him about four patients that have disappeared under his care. He tells her they died. She asks where the bodies are and he says he had them cremated.
She asks why the patients that have died under his care all had no families. She accuses him of being a bigger monster than their patients and tells him “I’ll always win against the patriarchal male.” He’s not impressed and kicks her out of what is surely his mad science lab!
Reporter Lana is chatting with her pal (name not given) played by Franka Potente. By the way – they’re gay in a time that wasn’t cool. They smooch – realize the blinds are open and rush to shut them – the other girl’s a teacher and scared of the PTA. Lana tells her she plans to sneak into the asylum to interview Bloody Face/Kit.
Sister Jude is praying wearing just her wimple and sexy red lacy bra and rubbing herself with perfume. Next she’s having a lovely romantic dinner with the Monsignor (Joseph Fiennes). He tells her that her cooking reveals an “almost decadent palate.”
She says they once agreed that madness was a spiritual ordeal and wants to know where he found Dr. Arden. He tells her the church approved him. He tells her God invented science as well as man. He says it’s a time of miracles, evidenced by a Catholic gaining the White House (Kennedy).
He tells her that if Briarcliff goes well he could be cardinal of New York and maybe the first Anglo-American pope – he tells her she can climb the ladder with him. She indulges in a fantasy where she tosses her wimple and straddles the Monsignor…
Next, back in the evil lab, Dr. Arden is discussing needing to feed the “things.” Next, the nun assisting him Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe) asks what they are and he didn’t answer. She runs out into the grounds and looks like she’s being chased. She runs into reporter Lana and convinces her to run as well.
Dr. Arden comes and grabs Bloody Face/Kit from solitary and says “You don’t belong here” and implies he has much to learn from him. Kit is terrified and we’re at the break…
My theory at this point is that whatever little monsters the not so good doctor has locked up in his lab are both the things that ate Adam Levine’s arm and may be responsible for the gruesome skinning/killings that poor Kit is taking the blame for.
Back in the present, Leo (Adam) says he’s bleeding out. Wife Teresa makes a tourniquet and runs to go get his phone from the car. But she can’t find her way out of the asylum…
Back in 1964, the nun and the reporter are in a hidden area of the asylum. Lana wants to know what Sister Mary was feeding in the woods. She threatens to tell Sister Jude unless she gives her access to Kit.
Back in the lab, Dr. Arden has Kit on a slab. He says he runs the institution and Kit says “I thought Sister Jude ran it” and Arden mocks saying that’s what she thinks. Dr. Arden tells him in ages past, he could have been jailed, killed or castrated for his ideas.
In the men’s wing of the asylum, Spivey (Mark Consuelos) flings some poo at the ladies and the nun bails, leaving the lady reporter alone. She walks in on one of the orderlies making the two backed beast with a female patient who agrees to lead her to the solitary area where Bloody Face is being kept.
Dr. Arden tells Kit he’s not going to use any anesthesia… that’s not good. He’s got Kit strapped down and seems to be ready to carve into his frontal lobe. Kit is under a bright white light and is having alien visions and then he sees Alma screaming. Dr. Arden asks him about how he killed his victims and wants to know his method for skinning them.
The doc finds something hard in Kit’s neck and cuts into it. Kit keeps seeing white lights and weird alien stuff. He cuts a mechanical robotic sort of spider out of him that runs off.
Sister Jude screams at Sister Mary and threatens her with the crop she beats patients with – telling her she’s ruining her and the Monsignor’s work there. Mary grabs a cane out of the closet of torture devices and begs Jude to beat her, calling herself “stupid.” Instead, Jude slaps her and tells her to get out and that if she ever hears Mary call herself stupid again, she’ll cane her bloody. Mary flees.
At this point, I’m okay with the patients, the beatings and even the evil doctor, but the bio-mechanical spider and alien invasion stuff is a little much… Feels like when Indiana Jones found the spaceship in the last movie. Hopefully it will coalesce at some point and won’t seem so disjointed. It’s like I’m watching three or four different shows at once that share a character here and there. Season 1 was much more cohesive – particularly in the beginning.
Reporter Lana wakes up strapped to a bed. Sister Jude says “You can’t move – you’ve got a long recovery.” Lana insists someone will come looking for her. But Sister Jude has gone to see her lady lover and found out that Lana and her family don’t talk. She blackmails her girlfriend with the threat of exposure as a lesbian that won’t go over well at the school board.
Jude tells her that since Lana wanted a look at the inside of a mental ward and she’s going to give her one. She threatens her girlfriend into signing a statement of incompetency so Jude can keep Lana at Briarcliff. She tells her if she doesn’t she’ll be ruined and will never step into a classroom again. Jude shows Lana the notice her girlfriend signed and she said she’s going to cure her unnatural urges.
Sister Mary has pilfered Dr. Arden’s keys – Jude tells her she hopes that’s the only commandment she had to break to get them. She comes into the lab and finds the doc cleaning and disinfecting a mystery room. Jude knows something’s been living in the room. She tells him she’ll ferret out his secret and he said he had a ferret once until it bit him and he broke its neck.
Back in the now, Leo is bleeding out from the arm wound and Teresa can’t find her way out – then she runs into some guy with a bloody face – bloody face killer maybe? She screams and we’re done with Episode 1 of Season 2.
Chills down my spine – not sure if I can handle watching the scenes from next week’s episode!
See you next week for another American Horror Story Live Recap!
