‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ episode 3 review: Matt Bomer, Kathy Bates kill it with complex Iris – Donovan story
The third episode of “American Horror Story” aired on FX Wednesday night, and it did not take us very long at all to start to realize that this was a show that had changed far and away for the better after last week’s utter nonsense.
The biggest issue with the show to date is a lack of focus and clear narrative, but that changed slightly in this hour courtesy of the continuing story of John and Alex Lowe. He is a man tortured by many things, whether it be the loss of a child or now, the departure of his wife. Nothing could make Alex stay … or could it? The discovery of Holden may be a dramatic change in the relationship, and hopefully one that will carry through from week to week. His investigation into the Ten Commandments killings is clearly weighing on him rather heavily.
Another fantastic addition this time around? Angela Bassett, whose character of Ramona Royale is instantly interesting thanks to her having an ax to grind with the Countess. The more we know about the past of Lady Gaga’s character, the more we start to feel like her story may be a little less of letdown. Right now, it feels like we’re really not seeing enough dimensions from her, though we are happy now to understand her motivations with Drake: She wants to convince him to marry her, kill him, and then get back on her feat following what happened with Bernie Madoff. That is one name we didn’t expect to see on this show at all.
Ramona is wanting to work with Donovan, who had a powerful series of scenes tonight with Iris, who started to feel like her life was no longer worth living thanks to everything that has happened between her and her son. Matt Bomer and Kathy Bates absolutely killed it in their scenes together, which makes us just want to see a whole season of those two working together. The unfortunate thing is that by the time Donovan realized that he shouldn’t let his mother die, she almost was. It took him trying to infect her in order to bring her back; he never cared for her much of his life, but couldn’t bear to be without her. This was a crazy ending to a pretty crazy episode, but one that was far more polished and consistent than either that came before it. Grade: B.
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