“Eternity can be tedious.”
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
So. Many. Butts.
This may have been the butts-iest buttfest American Horror Story has ever tried to get away with. Between Tristan, Will, the Countess, John, the Swedish ghost girls, and that dude they killed, “Room 33” was full of keisters. It was also a mess, story-wise, though that part’s not new to those who’ve been watching Hotel. A trudging, unfocused experience.
Though I will say it was fun to see Season 1’s Murder House, and Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), return for a brief spell. I’m not someone who needs these worlds to be connected, but I also won’t shoo it away. Here, The Countess – aka “Mrs. Johnson” – went to see Charles for an abortion in 1926. Already a vampire, going through an accelerated pregnancy, she was gifted with the instantly murderous Bartholomew. I guess my question – by the end of all of this – is…was Bart born without a nose? Looking all bat-like? Or did John shoot it off when the baby stowed away in his luggage and started creeping around his house?
Either way, the reveal that the Countess has – at least – one thing she cares about was decent. Because as much as Ramona and Iris teamed up this week, looking to gut the Countess’ other kids, including Holden, I never got the impression she loved them all that much. So the baby’s the prize here, it would seem.
“Room 33” introduced us to an out-of-nowhere love affair between Liz and Tristan. A romp that had been going on for a few weeks but that we were just now diving into. A coupling that marked Liz’s first big experience with love and a betrayal that cost Tristan his life. Just like that. After all the time we spent with Tristan. Watching him on the runway. Seeing him get made and then displace Donovan. Watching him make his first kill. Now he’s just been dropped. So what was the point of any of that?
All of the Countess vampire stuff is grossly dull. Gaga’s unimpressively monotone and her dreariness just trickles down into everything else. This is not a world I care about. It’s dizzyingly uninteresting, filled with predictable nudity and blood to the point of exhaustion. “Eternity can be tedious,” Donovan warned the Swedish ghost girls. And he’s very very right.
Catching the wave here, seeing those Swedes return was kind of fun. As was watching them, basically, turn to murder just so they could do something different with their afterlives. Basically, it’s either be caught in a loop or spill some blood. In the end, right when it looked like Alex was setting John up to be murdered, the girls got in on the “drive him insane” game so that he’d leave the hotel. Which was great to see. It was three episodes too late – on top of the fact that he never should have wanted to stay there in the first place – but I’ll take it.
We want to hear it.
I know the idea here is that the Countess leaves a trail of broken, vengeful vampire hearts in her wake, but I don’t care about any of that. Or any of them. They’re all wretched people. The only thing that helped elevate this episode on an emotional level was Denis O’Hare’s Liz and his aching for Tristan. And that’s because Liz is one of the few slightly sympathetic characters the show has to offer. Still, we knew nothing of Liz and Tristan’s love affair before this episode so it was hard to invest on such short notice.
“Room 33” may have played upon out sympathies for Liz (as last week’s episode did with Iris) but it was still a flat outing with little to offer other than the Murder House opening.
