‘American Horror Story: Coven’ episode 7 review: Toil and lots of trouble
The problem with “American Horror Story” as a franchise is that they sometimes love to shock you so much that they forget to actually tell a story along the way that makes a modicum of sense. This is the issue that Ryan Murphy and company really ran into on Wednesday night’s new episode is that while it featured some significant moves, they were ones that felt at times to more motivated by shock than any real motivation.
The worst offender of the entire episode was Queenie, who decided to lend a helping hand to Lavaeu by bringing her LaLaurie, who she had formed some sort of surprising / unusual bond with. We don’t know if we would call them friends based on the fact that Kathy Bates’ character was a murderer and a racist, but she seemed to be an ally of Queenie’s thanks to her saving her life. While we know that there are similarities in ethnicity here between her and Angela Bassett’s group, what have they really done for her so far? If we were to equate this to a game, it’s like Queenie decided to make herself a target rather than floating under the radar.
As for the other key decisions of the episode, we’re able to at least look at these as moves within a similar sort of game of alliances and planning ahead. We’re going to try and best to believe that Zoe slept with Madison and Kyle just because they are allies that she needs on her side to take down Fiona, even though Fiona seems like more trouble than she’s worth. Meanwhile, Fiona finally seems to realize that there could be value in the Axeman; while we don’t believe she is aware of what Cordelia found out about her and Madison, it doesn’t hurt to keep someone devoted to you around.
The unfortunate thing here is that almost all of this storytelling this time, save for maybe the “death” (who really dies on this show?) of Spalding, seems more designed to carry over into the story airing in a week and a half rather than provide any sort of relief now. Therefore, this is why this is a particularly tough episode to grade. We want to take the show at its worth and imagine that these moves will all pay off, but we don’t know if they will just yet. So instead, we have a couple of things that make little sense, and a few that are interesting. We never thought that a horror franchise would make us do so much to question the motivations of some of its characters. Grade: C+.
You can watch a preview for the next “American Horror Story: Coven” episode at the link here, which will hopefully mark the hour in which the vast majority of this is adequately explained.
Photo: NBC