American Horror Story: NYC :: Smoke Signals / Black Out

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Let’s Talk About ‘Smoke Signals’:  

• Fran reveals to Dr. Hannah Wells that the government is behind the mysterious virus afflicting the deer on Fire Island and the gay men in NYC, and that the original experiments began in 1952.
• The young man in Sam’s sex dungeon cage escapes … but was he ever really a prisoner?
• Sam sniffs out Patrick’s truth.
• Gino has a composite drawing made of the man who abducted and tortured him, but Patrick is reluctant to offer any police assistance.
• Patrick eventually conducts an unsanctioned stakeout at the pay phone outside the leather bar.
• Hans Henkes has a disturbing encounter in the subway.
• Adam meets Theo at an exclusive members only club, The Ascension Bar, for a date, but talk turns to the Mai Tai killer.
• Gino returns to The Brownstone to question Henry about the Mai Tai he was given the night of his abduction.
• The Ascension Bar goes up in flames.
• Hannah seeks permission to run tests to determine the origin of the mysterious outbreak but her request is denied.
• Patrick and Gino play a game of cat and mouse with Whitely, aka the Mai Tai Killer, at the hospital.

The first of this week’s two new American Horror Story: NYC episodes is titled ‘Smoke Signals’ and starts the momentum that carries over into the following episode. I’ve been seeing a lot of hate for the season so far — but that just seems to be typical for the series at this point in time — but I think the season so far has been compelling (and no, I have not seen the movie Cruising, but I know much about it, which this season obviously draws inspiration from) and these two episodes in particular are filled with tension and terror.

At the top of the episode, we pick up with Fran and Hannah at a diner after they met in the park in the previous episode, as Fran reveals to Hannah that the weird infections she’s been seeing in the deer and gay men in NYC is government created, something that had been developed in 1952 during the Cold War. She makes a pretty compelling case, and she suggests that if anyone knew she was telling Hannah any of this she’d be dead, and she urges Hannah to do further research and raise the warning flags within the community. The only problem is, as Hannah points out, she can’t just go around spreading what sounds like a conspiracy theory without any proof. Fran tells her to get the proof. Try as she might, Hannah’s superior refuses to allow to her draw blood from a select number of patients for secret testing, comparing what she’s suggesting to the Tuskeegee Institute (which secretly and intentionally infected 600 African American male volunteers, who thought they were getting free medical care, with syphilis in order to study the effects and find a cure). As she is about to abandon hope, a shocking event puts a handful of volunteers practically at her doorstep.

The real driving force of the episode is actually the young man Sam had lured to his apartment and then held captive in a cell in his sex dungeon. Sam always told the man that he wasn’t a prisoner and he was there voluntarily, and it seems he may have been right … or he was just finished with him as the man awoke to find his cell door slightly open, allowing him to escape, not even being stopped by the large hooded man outside the apartment door — who may or may not be the ‘Big Daddy’ everyone thinks is killing men in the park. But telling his story to the police comes with complications, the biggest that he doesn’t want to publicly out himself. But Patrick and another officer pay Sam a visit, but it gets a little too personal for Patrick as Sam seems to know all of his secrets, careful enough to not say anything loud enough for his partner to hear but it certain has rattled him. If Sam can sniff him out that easily, how secure can he be at work as he fights to keep up his straight facade?

Things don’t get much easier at home when Gino shows Patrick the composite drawing he had made of the man who abducted and tortured him, dubbing the man the Mai Tai Killer. Gino keeps pressing Patrick to do something since he is a cop, after all, but Patrick just can’t put his career on the line like that. Gino has to remind him that his ex-wife brought a box of Patrick’s hidden leather gear to him and Patrick finally admits that yes he did go to leather bars, and Gino asked why he had to lie to him about that? Patrick said he has to lie to everybody. It’s not like he can just come out as gay at the station, but Gino doesn’t seem to understand that Patrick has to remain closeted (I think Gino is being a bit harsh with Patrick on this matter). Patrick thought maybe he had a lead with Sam but he doesn’t believe in any way that Sam is a murderer. But Patrick does start to feel a bit guilty about not doing enough and gets in his gear to conduct his own off-the-books investigation at the pay phone outside the leather bar … which apparently never stops ringing. After dozens of calls and propositions from passers-by, he’s about to give up when the phone rings one more time. Someone has been watching him and invites him to meet at a specific place in 20 minutes. He does and finds the guy who called, but Patrick loses a bit of himself in the dungeon area of the bar and gives the man what he really wants. Whoever the man is, he is not the Mai Tai Killer. The encounter, however, unleashes Patrick’s buried desires and he goes home to break out his old leather gear.

The next day, Gino and Adam form a plan to distribute the flyers with the composite drawing. Gino goes to his local hangout and the owner reluctantly allows him to hang some on the walls — but don’t damage the paint (the walls are all brick!). Gino also returns to The Brownstone to talk to Henry again, and Henry says he did see the man on the flyer the night before. Gino wants to know why Henry didn’t call the police but he mocks such a phone call that a call from The Brownstone about a man trying to pick up another man wouldn’t get the results Gino wanted. Henry relates to Gino his own tragic tale or attempts on his life and the loss of friends since he first came to the city as a teenager, and that if he tried to find out what happened to any of them he wouldn’t be here today. Gino relates what happened to him the last time they chatted after he consumed the drink Henry bought, and Henry says he’s sorry that happened but he did not drug the drink and none of this has anything to do with him. Gino tells Henry he can keep telling himself that but it won’t protect him or anyone else.

Adam takes his flyers to the Ascension Club where he’s meeting Theo for a date. It’s an exclusive member’s only club but once he says Theo’s name, Dunaway allows him in — but he is not plastering her establishment with flyers and make it look like the bus station. Theo shows up and Dunaway takes him to Adam, but neither of them see ‘Big Daddy’ standing outside on the sidewalk. Theo orders some ‘domestic beers’ in what comes off as a condescending way to bring himself ‘down’ to Adam’s level. Talk turns from the Mai Tai Killer to Theo’s relationship with Sam, and Theo tells Adam he’s ready to move on and be with him. Their drinks arrive but they aren’t the beers Theo ordered — it’s a Mai Tai, and Adam spots the man he’s looking for standing at the bar. He and Theo get up to chase the man but when they get to the front door, it’s locked from the outside. The hooded man no one saw chained them shut, and then he threw a Molotov cocktail through the window. The place explodes into flames, the terrifying screams heard from within. Someone finally breaks a window so people can escape, but with the doors locked Adam knows the Mai Tai Killer was still inside.

At the hospital, Adam is a bit hysterical because he wants to find the killer but he’s put into restraints. He tells Theo to find Gino and tell him what happened. In the hallway, Theo walks past a badly burned Dunaway who says to him, ‘The fire is coming.’ Theo gets Gino on the phone, and both he and Patrick show up at Adam’s room, but Patrick has to pull back so Adam and Theo don’t see and possibly recognize him. Adam tells Gino the killer was at the bar so he has to be at the hospital as well. Gino shows a nurse a flyer but she says the man only had minor injuries and was released about five minutes earlier. Gino and Patrick split up to try and stop him from getting too far.

With the fire victims piling up, Hannah sees her opportunity to draw blood from some of them who she has already seen as her patients. She sees Dunaway first, who tells her the man who set the fire is coming for them, ‘not just the boys, all of us.’ Hannah draw Dunaway’s blood, then Adam’s and then … Whitely’s, unaware that Gino and Patrick are searching for him. Whitely is impatient and knows the longer he’s there, the more danger he is in of being discovered, so he ends the procedure before she’s finished. As he leaves the hospital, he tries to avoid the police by turning back but by that time Gino has also exited and they come face to face. A chase ensues, up stairways, through corridors, down stairways until Gino finds himself outside the morgue. Entering, he grabs a scalpel and begins checking the drawers to see if the man is hiding. Whitely surprises Gino from behind, chokes him out and puts him in a drawer, taping his wrists together and his feet, telling Gino that he would never spill the blood of another vet but this is different, freezing to death is the most peaceful way to go. He slides Gino into the freezer and closes the door.

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Let’s Talk About ‘Black Out’:

• Will Patrick find Gino before it’s too late?
• With temperatures rising, it’s going to be a hot day in the city.
• Adam writes an article for the paper about the fire at the Ascension Club, but Gino berates him for not putting his own name on it.
• Gino pays a visit to the bath house to beg Kathy Pizzaz for help in capturing the Mai Tai Killer.
• The police are summoned to an apartment where a badly decomposed corpse is found with contusions, bruising and wounds of unknown origin.
• Theo tells Sam they are done, and suggests that Sam may be a killer, but Sam reminds Theo he holds all the cards and the life he enjoys goes away if he leaves.
• Gino is fed up with people telling him to calm down while gay men in the city are being picked off one by one.
• Theo shows up at Adam’s and tells him he and Sam are done, but Adam gets a surprise visit from Sam who suggests otherwise.
• The city begins to go into black out mode, so Adam goes to a Black Out Party and Patrick gets a call from Whitely.
• Patrick’s ex brings Gino another of his hidden items, a leather hood, but Gino doesn’t get what game she’s playing.
• Patrick has an announcement for Gino, but the reaction is totally unexpected.
• Daniel and Cameron may have seen a murder and follow the man, unaware of his identity.

As the temperature in New York City rises, so does the tension in this tautly crafted episode. We pick up where we left off with Gino frantically trying to kick open the morgue freezer door before it’s too late. Patrick is still trying to find the man they were chasing and he does. Whitely calmly waves at him and Patrick goes in pursuit but Whitely has a talent to just vanish. Patrick realizes he hasn’t seen Gino and remembers the odd wave from Whitely. Noticing the door from where he exited, Patrick goes through and also finds himself at the morgue, fearing that Gino is inside. He calls out for Gino, and after some silence hears a quiet banging, then notices the one dented door, rescuing his lover in the nick of time. But at home as the heat gets worse, Gino begins itching and Patrick has a rash himself. Gino accuses Patrick of bringing fleas home, but is it that or have they been infected with the mystery virus?

With Gino getting fed up with the apathetic reaction to the killings, he turns to Kathy Pizzaz, the former Broadway star who now runs and sings at the local bath house. She is reluctant to get involved because the people who help keep the establishment running also don’t want any dealings with the law. But Gino pushes her a bit too far, insinuating that she is just using her customers to collect their money and not give a damn about them, and in the end she’s going to end up with an empty room because she didn’t do anything to keep them from dying. Kathy has struggled to make the bath house a place where her customers can come and live their truth, and she knows that she has a voice to help Gino with his cause and allows him to quote her that as a concerned business owner she is bothered that no one is investigating the disappearances of the gay men. How many more men have to go missing before the police do something?

The police, however, are investigating a dead body, poor Hans Henkes (the Klaus Nomi-esque performer) who we last saw in the previous episode following some strange woman deep into a subway tunnel. Oh Hans, what were you thinking? What drew you down there? Because whatever it was killed you, leaving gruesome contusions and open wounds on your body that both your roommate and your cat are being blamed for. Patrick, however, is certain the roommate is innocent and orders him released from custody, but when everyone else leaves he stays behind — even though it’s over 100 degrees and there’s a rotting corpse in the room — to try and figure out what happened.

Theo finally confronts Sam to tell him it’s over, and insinuates that he believes Sam is also a murderer … which Sam does not take well. He reminds Theo that he is the one who gave Theo this life he enjoys, the career he wanted, the clients who clamor for his work. They’ve never put restrictions on who they wanted to dally with but if Theo thinks that he can accuse Sam of murder and just walk out without consequences, he’d better think again. He even tells Theo to call the police right now if he really believes he could murder someone, but Theo decides against making that call and leaves, heading straight for Adam’s apartment to give him the good news that he’s done with Theo. And even though it’s hot inside and out, they go at it without breaking a sweat. After Theo leaves, Adam checks his answering machine and there is an odd sound on the recording but before he hears more than a few seconds … black out. And a second later the phone rings (the miracle of land line phones) with an invitation to attend a black out party. Doesn’t seem to be the smartest move with a killer on the loose, does it?

At the police station, Patrick is called into Captain Marzara’s office who wants to talk to him about someone in the department leaking privileged information to the press, particularly The Native, and with everyone at a boiling point — particularly Patrick who thinks Marzara is directly implicating him, he finally blurts out that his personal life is not his business and all of this is important to him because he’s a gay cop. I don’t know if Marzara was stunned or didn’t care, but he didn’t give much of a reaction. And then their power went out. But those land lines still work (yes, that really was a thing) so what better time for Whitely to call Patrick’s phone (perhaps a switchboard operator gave him a name and number?), taunt him a bit and then tell him that with all the lights out in the city he is free to kill out in the open instead of in some dark, stanky bar. He even clues Patrick in that he’ll be making some moves at the park, so Patrick grabs his partner and they head to the biggest park in the city — Central Park. At the park, Patrick is trying to see what he can in the dark with a small flashlight, and when he spots a pay phone with the receiver hanging free, he’s also confronted by the hooded ‘Big Daddy’ guy who is wielding a mace (the weapon, not the spray). He runs off but can’t get his partner on the radio, and ‘Big Daddy’ appears again, advancing toward Patrick. He gets off a shot and the figure just seems to disappear. They do miss Whitely, though, who is pretending to be on the pay phone, but as two men pass him, he hangs up and follows them. Patrick gets home and is rather proud of himself for coming out at work, but Gino is more upset now about the leather hood Patrick’s ex brought him, another example of the secrets and lies Patrick has kept from Gino. But Gino doesn’t know why he would feel the need to lie to him about these things. The conversation gets so heated that Gino collapses, showing signs of a possible heart attack. At the hospital, Gino and Patrick are told that whatever is affecting him appears to be bacterial but they need to run more tests. Gino’s reaction is to turn away from Patrick, perhaps in his mind believing he brought something home from one of his clandestine rendezvous.

While Adam makes his way to the party, he stopped by Sam who tells him to get in his car … and no, he’s not going to lock him up in a sex dungeon and he will drop Adam off at his destination. Sam, naturally, talks down to the young man, trying to make it known that he’s not good enough for Theo, and if he knows what’s good for him, he should just forget about this life of sunshine and rainbows with him. Adam cuts the conversation short and asks to be let out where they are and he walks the rest of the way to the party — which he and Daniel interrupt by warning the sexually engaged group that there is a killer on the loose and a dark warehouse is the last place they should be. They need to be out looking for the killer. They kind of ruin the mood so Cameron and Daniel team up and head to the park. Among the trees they see the figure of a man holding what appears to be a head, so they decide to follow him to get his address so they can alert the police. They get to his apartment building and follow him in, but they are surprised when the elevator door opens and the man — Whitely — says he saw them and held the elevator for them. They have no choice but to get in and tell him they’re going to six, the floor above his. Whitely asks if they are new to the building but they say they are visiting a friend. The tension is thick in the elevator, almost as thick as the stench coming from Whitely’s bowling bag. And the power goes out. Whitely keeps lighting matches to give them some light. Daniel keeps pressing the buttons but Whitely tells him that’s not going to make a difference. He has to come up with something to explain the smell and tells them he buys meat two days past the expiration date because it’s cheaper. It smells but it’s still good. Then he apologizes for lying and says he knows that they know what’s really in the bag. The match goes out and the power flickers on just long enough for the men to see Whitely is now holding a large knife. Black out.

What did you think of these episodes? Sound off in the comments below!