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It’s the third to last episode of the season and now we’re getting more new characters?! Of course we are. But, more importantly, we’ve looped around and are being re-introduced to characters we first met after the Apocalypse. We’ll get to them in a minute.
This week’s episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse picks up right where we left off after the incineration of two warlocks and Ms. Mead, and Michael discovering their remains. In his despair, Cordelia offers to help him not follow in his father’s footsteps and he seems to actually consider her offer. Instead he assures her that he will destroy her and her coven.
But without the cover of the warlocks and the maternal care of Ms. Mead, what’s the Anti-Christ to do? It seems that even his father has forsaken him as Michael spends several days in the forest awaiting some guidance. Tired and hungry, he begins to experience visions of children but he has no idea what to do. He stumbles back into the city and finds himself inside a Satanic church fronted by Hannah (Sandra Bernhard). Could dear old dad have actually led Michael to this place?
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Michael, in obvious need of food and maybe even a shoulder to cry on, is befriended by one of the parishioners, Madeline (the great Harriet Sansom Harris), who feeds him and tries to cheer him up by explaining all she’s gotten by selling her soul to the Devil in a Black Mass. When Michael reveals the Mark of the Beast to her, it’s like she met a celebrity — and that’s saying something considering Brad Pitt comes to her place every Thursday for sex (another of the perks of selling your soul). Madeline rushes Michael back to the church as a Black Mass is about to take place, complete with human sacrifices, and Hannah allows Michael to do the honor after she sees the mark. Hail Satan. And then they enjoy a nice pot luck dinner. But,as Michael tells the congregation, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. Being the Anti-Christ doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
But Madeline was touched by Michael’s story of losing Ms. Mead, and the next day she takes him to a facility to meet a couple of guys who just may be able to help him out. It’s not clear what this place is but there are a couple of key elements here that tie it to The Cooperative. Michael is here to meet with two geniuses who turn out to be sex-obsessed coke heads. But they are also geniuses in the robotics field. They also have ridiculous Dumb & Dumber haircuts and are played by Evan Peters and Billy Eichner. The facility where they work plays soft rock music, like ‘The Morning After’, that soothes Jeff (Peters) but Mutt (Eichner) hates it. Of course that was one of the songs that played on the radio at The Outpost after the Apocalypse. The duo also have an executive assistant — Ms. Venable, who has a thing for the color purple as she did when dividing the haves and have nots in The Outpost. So it’s going to be interesting to see how all of this ties into The Cooperative.
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Mutt and Jeff aren’t sure they believe Michael’s mark is real, so he incinerates a young woman who had been ‘working’ for Mutt earlier after she freaks out and starts to run, sensing evil personified. That’s enough to convince the boys he’s the real deal. And after they take a lunch and hear Michael’s story, they assure him they can give him exactly what he wants. And they do, creating a perfect, robotic replica of Ms. Mead … and now we know why she was programmed to take orders from him and where she came from. When she’s activated — and Michael was warned not to tell her she’s a robot because it may not end well — she recognizes him immediately. And scene.
In what’s been a pretty terrific season, this was the weakest episode even though it gave us Bernhard and Harris and those key moments with the music, Venable and Mead. But there are still a Hell of a lot of questions to answer in two weeks.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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