American Horror Story Review: Chapter 2 (Season 6 Episode 2)

I hate to begin with negativity but, I’m still uncertain about this season and if we are being told the truth.

First off, where is the title sequence? If American Horror Story: Roanoke is the official name and there are no more games, other than literally every little thing being a secret, then why didn’t we get an official title sequence like every other season?

Second, why no episode titles? I get wanting to keep this season a big mystery but do they really think giving fans an episode title will reveal anything major? I’m not asking for an episode description, I would just like some things to be the way they used to be during previous seasons.

It’s obvious that me and change aren’t the best of friends.

The episode begins where we left off last week, with Shelby out in the woods confronted by a guy with half of his head missing. She then runs into a good ole fashioned human sacrificing. Instead of being any normal person, I forget that normal isn’t a thing on this show, and running away as fast as she can she decides to stay and watch all the horror happening in front of her.

We finally get a good glimpse at Lady Gaga and Kathy Bates’ characters. It seems as if Bates’ character is the leader of the colonist ghosts, with Gaga’s character being her sidekick.

The human sacrificing is the least of Shelby, Matt, and Lee’s worries this episode though.

This episode reveals what’s plaguing the house that they all live in, and it’s worse than what they imagined.

Shelby and Matt find a home video while exploring a secret cellar that they found in the woods near their house. The guy on the videotape? None other than our favorite American Horror Story actor — Dennis O’Hare.

O’Hare portrays Dr. Elias Cunningham. Cunningham moved into the house during 1997 to research the murderous nurses who had lived there before for his book he was working on before realizing what forces were at play inside the home.

Both nurses, who were also sisters, got a kick out of killing elderly who had no chance of fighting back.

After quitting their first job, before being found out, they decided to open up a retirement facility that only accepted the elderly who families wanted rid of. The sisters thought that for each kill they gained some sort of new power that helped them. They were grade A nut jobs, to say the least.

The nurses killed based on the first letter in the name of their victims. After every murder, they would spray paint the wall with the next letter they needed to spell out “Murder,” but before they could finish the word the nurses up and vanished. They ended up only having “Murde” spray painted on the wall.

The police thought that the two had fled the country before getting caught, but Cunningham had other theories.

He theorized that something way worse than the two of them had taken them out, resulting in their deaths inside the house. If this season has anything to do with Murder House then it would only make sense that the nurses died inside and that’s why they are still there haunting the people who inhabit it.

We saw the nurses in the first episode when they walked through the hall, scaring Shelby half to death, and then in this week’s episode where we see them standing over Lee’s bed, and showing Matt how they killed Margaret, in graphic detail, and began spelling out the word, Murder.

Watching the nurses kill the poor old woman, Margaret, is enough for me to get a bit emotional. American Horror Story is a dark and twisted show, that we all already know, but when you’ve worked in nursing homes before you gain a real soft spot when it comes to the elderly and things like that just really get to you.

Not only are the nurses a problem when it comes to the haunting of the house, but now Flora, Lee’s daughter, has made a new “imaginary” friend named Priscilla. Having an imaginary friend is all fun and games until your life is threatened by said “friend.”

Flora tries to warn both Lee and Mason, Lee’s ex-husband, about Priscilla’s intentions, but neither listen to her. That ends with Flora going missing at the end of the episode. The question is — who or what took her? It’s not quite clear on what kind of ghost she is, but if I were to guess i’d say she was one of the colonists as well since the nurses didn’t kill children inside the home.

Other thoughts:

1. Is Cunningham still alive or did he die at the end of the video he made, like it seems to be? What malevolent entity did we see attacking him at the end of the video? It definitely wasn’t the weird pig man that we had seen before. I think that it’s only a matter of time before we see Cunningham’s ghost show up to have a chat with the Millers.
2. Did Priscilla really take Flora and kill her? Last we heard from Flora’s imaginary friend was that she was going to be saved for last but that isn’t the case in the closing scene of this week’s episode.
3. Is Wes Bentley’s character truly an evil character? He seems to be one of the colonist ghosts but during the sacrifice he didn’t look very pleased. In fact, he looked a little upset at what was happening before him.
4. Where is Evan Peters and Cheyenne Jackson? Once again the two were credited in this week’s episode, and once again there was no site of either of them. Is it possible that one of them could in fact be the pig headed man we keep seeing?
5. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Lily Rabe and Adina Porter’s faces on my screen but at the same time I’m ready for these little flashbacks to the present day characters to be over with. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the annoying voice overs as well. I really think it would flow smoother without them included.

What did you think of this episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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American Horror Story airs Wednesday’s at 10/9c on FX.

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