‘American Horror Story: Asylum’ episode 4 review: Anne Frank and the real Arden

One week after its worst episode of the season, “American Horror Story: Asylum” came back with one of the best. They cut out the superfluous stuff in the present, focused entirely on the characters at Briarcliff, and managed to something else that was supremely effective that has not been done yet this season: have some of the sane inmates start to question whether or not they are starting to become crazy courtesy of what this place is doing to them.

Specifically here, we are talking about Kit and Lana, who are each trying desperately now to uncover the means in which they can survive. In the case of the former, there’s really no option to escape; instead, all he really has is to either admit to killing all of the women including his wife in order to get Dr. Thredson to keep him under the asylum’s care, or keep proclaiming his innocence and hope for the best. This has him wondering just whether or not there were any aliens at all, and that he really could have been behind the killings himself. Evan Peters is doing a bang-up job here along with Sarah Paulson, who was genuinely mortified this week after Thredson promised to get her out of the asylum by week’s end, even if meant trying to trick her brain into no longer being attracted to women.

When it came to mysteries, there was only one new one revealed via Anne Frank (Franka Potente), who arrived at the asylum claiming to have known Dr. Adren from his time as a Nazi doctor at a concentration camp. While he has denied, the evidence is there … just like the evidence is there that Anne was really in Germany, even if she is not who she is claiming to be.

There really was not too much this week that was genuinely scary, save for the revelation that Grace was quite a killer herself. We already knew that Shelley had her legs amputated and that Sister Mary Eunice is now a code word for the devil; therefore, there wasn’t much that spooked us. However, having good scares is not as important is having a good story, and this series is starting to pay off in spades here, even if there are still mysteries that could determine whether or not the payoff is worth the effort.

Did you enjoy this episode, in particular when it came to the introduction of the Anne Frank character?