American Horror Story: “Ten Commandments Killer” Review

“Death is your art.”

While this season of American Horror Story has been a big ol’ filthy mess, I do love me some Evan Peters as Mr. March. It’s just such a grotesque and fun character for him to play and he livens up every scene he’s in. On top of this, I’ve discovered that watching flashbacks on Hotel has been way more interesting than watching any of the current-day storylines. So this week’s episode, “The Ten Commandments Killer,” was able to put both of these seasonal strengths to good use.

Like the Countess origin episode, “Flicker,” this chapter took us back through the past five years, revealing that John was, in fact, the very murderous serial killer he’d been chasing. And as mentioned, it’s more fun to take a look back on this show than it is to stare 2015 in the face. That being said…this was also an unfortunately obvious twist. One that many of us saw weeks back. If not early on in the season, then definitely by the episode “Devil’s Night.” With John being March’s VIP guest at a table full of infamous maniacs. And March expecting him to know the reason why.

So, yes, it was a bore that this swerve had to sort of drag on for a few more episodes, but that’s the risk TV takes when it tries to get ahead of its audience. We’ve got too much time to ruminate and analyze. Not to mention that the “hero is actually the villain” idea is a tired twist in its own right.

Still, this episode went ALL IN with the flashback. John, for most of the hour, stood and spoke to Andy (Richard T. Jones, reprising his Murder House role), confessing the entire five-year ordeal. That he’d been drinking and cavorting at the Cortez for years, and knew the entire staff. And that he’d mystically forget about these meetings with March thanks to the Countess’ enchantments (I think that was the deal). In exchange for her getting Holden. Which happened, like, the very afternoon John got home after his two-day binge and initial dinner with March.

And all the while, March was driving him to become his Ten Commandments successor – as he’d previously tried with the likes of Gacy, Dahmer, etc. March used John’s pain and suffering over the loss of Holden to drive him toward his first kill – the Oscar-bludgeoning/sodomising murder of a guy John was led to believe was a pedophile. From there, it was all downhill for John. Or uphill, if you were to buy into March’s lust for lavish horror. And fixation on John’s pitch black aura.

John also had been carrying on a torrid affair with Sally the entire time. And Wren was sent out into the world by Sally to look after John. So all the major dots got connected here as the tale really did take up the whole episode. Like, I was expecting maybe a ten, fifteen minute flashback – but this one filled up the entire run time. Which was a good thing, but only because Hotel has failed to make so many of its other stories interesting. So this has sort of become the show’s form of fallback entertainment. Which qualifies as “good enough.”