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This week launched Part II of the American Horror Story double feature titled ‘Death Valley’, and from all the promos we know this one is about aliens. The first episode has an interesting structure as it takes us to a few different time periods and back again.
The episode opens in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1954, already seven years after the Roswell incident. A suburban home is turned upside-down when a young boy vanishes while plaing outside after spotting some dust devils in the desert. His mother panics, but then finds herself swept up to the ceiling, stuck there as her son walks in the front door, telling her to take his hand an not be afraid. Her husband comes home from work later to find his wife floating in the living room, her eyes white, and with the flick of her wrist she blows his head off.
In Palm Springs, California (also 1954), president Dwight Eisenhower (Neal McDonough) is golfing with some friends when he is alerted to a ‘situation’ that requires his attention, an incursion into US air space … and it’s not the Russians. Interrupting his vacation, he tells his wife Mamie (Sarah Paulson) that he needs to see a dentist but she’s not buying it (she thinks he’s going to rendezvous with another woman, apparently, but she gives him a wink as he leaves). Arriving at the site, they see a wrecked craft of some kind and a body which appears to be a a child. They find something else too — a nude woman crouched down behind a tree with some odd markings on her back. That woman is … Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 at the age of 39. Eisenhower is certain it’s her because his wife is a fan and has Earhart’s picture in her office. But she should be close to 60 by this point. She reveals the markings are from needles which took things from her body and put things in. When Eisenhower tells her where she is and that he’s the president, she freaks out, not believing him and telling them they aren’t Americans.
While at the same hospital, an autopsy is being performed on the body recovered at the site and now we see it is an alien. Opening up the torso, the doctors find that it’s empty, so sign of organs, bones or anything else. But one doctor notices something in the cavity and when he tried to remove it, the membrane attaches itself to his face while the president and other watch in horror. The second doctor tries to pull it off, but just breaks off a piece that attaches to his face and then both of their heads explode. Needing to get the president to safety, everyone makes tracks to the corridor but they watch in horror as the staff and Secret Service agents’ heads explode. Before anyone else meets the same fate, Eisenhower tells everyone to stand down as he confronts the same possessed housewife. He asks this woman floating in the hallway to stop the killing and listen to him, and she replies that it is he who will listen to them.
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We move into the present and meet a group of entitled friends who we hope to see meet their demises rather quickly because not a one of them are likable (and all are new faces to the franchise, with Kaia Gerber and Nico Greetham having appeared in episodes of American Horror Stories). The most egregious is Cal, who tries his best to shame a waitress at a Japanese restaurant for not having ‘the best’ saki that he had while in Japan. He’s a real douchebag. Kendall is interesting in that she’s gone off the grid after hooking up with a teacher/guru who is against technology. She is a proud member of the Luddites Society, so the only way anyone can contact her is through a landline telephone. Troy is another friend, Jewish, and he reveals that he and Cal are in a relationship, and since Troy is Orthodox Jew his family has hired Cal to be their ‘shabbos goy’, or as Troy calls him the ‘shabbos gay’, to perform certain tasks for them on the Sabbath, like turning lights on. Troy’s family doesn’t know Cal also turns Troy on. The last member of the group is Jamie, recovering from a broken relationship than ended only because she has a condition that makes her allergic to her partner’s sperm. That’s a lot to digest, and the episode gives us cleaver little dossier intros for each character.
Kendall wants them to all spend a weekend together off the grid so they agree to a camping trip in the desert. Everything is going fine until Troy leads them to a watering hole that has suddenly disappeared, and on the way back to their campsite they smell death heavy in the air. They spot a field of dead cows, sliced in half from head to tail. But … there’s no blood anywhere. And when placing her hand on the face of a dead cow, its eye rolls back into place and it moos. That’s enough to put an end to the trip as they frantically pack their stuff and head home. Cal is driving only because Troy can’t (it’s Saturday), and suddenly the car stops dead in the middle of the road. A bright light shines into the car ahead of them and then it rises above, then Jamie sees a figure walking toward them from the darkness — an alien. Suddenly they are attacked by tentacles and everything goes white.
The next thing they know everything is back to normal but Jamie is missing. It also takes them a few minutes to realize that Troy is now in the driver’s seat, Cal the passenger, and Kendall is also on the opposite side of the car. As Troy drives off, they almost hit Jamie who is standing in the middle of the road. Once they get home, Kendall and Jamie are very sick and Jamie remids Kendall that she’s only felt like this one other time — when she was pregnant. Kendall says that’s impossible and she calls her guru/boyfriend to ask if she can use the internet to look up alien abductions. He advises her against it because if she does that this one time, it’s a slippery slope. But Jamie comes over, they take pregnancy tests and find that they are positively pregnant.
Meanwhile, Cal is also feeling sick, thinking it was a result of some certain sexual activity with Troy, who is offended that Cal thinks he’s … dirty back there. Troy isn’t sick but after Cal goes to puke, Troy also is overcome with a wave of nausea. They both make their way to Kendall’s and she’s used Jamie’s phone to do some research about alien abductions, and when the boys also show up feeling ill she convinces them to take pregnancy tests. And against all odd, both Cal and Troy test positive.
And so ends the vacation from Hell and the first of four ‘Death Valley’ episodes.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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