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Let’s Talk About ‘Bad Fortune’:
- Kathy Pizzaz’s stand-in at the bath house is offending her by doing an impression rather than exactly replicating her voice.
- Kathy also has a side hustle, operating a fortune telling parlor and she needs a new psychic as the last two have quit.
- Hannah is pregnant, Adam is the donor, they decide to have their fortune told but it goes horribly awry.
- Patrick and Barbara are finalizing their divorce but Barb faints after signing the papers.
- Patrick is met by an intruder when he goes to Barbara’s apartment to take care of her new dog.
- Hannah receives some starling news about her health.
- Theo takes Adam back to have their fortunes read even though Adam is quite clear that he does not want to do this again.
- Gino decides to check out this fortune teller who has upset Adam so and receives a few surprises of his own.
- Barb commits the cardinal sin of horror — taking a shower alone.
- Whitely reveals his true intentions to Cameron and Daniel.
The spectre of Death hangs heavily over many characters on the first of this week’s two episodes of American Horror Story: NYC, and you know we’re at the midway point when some of the main, although not quite major, characters begin to be killed off.
The centerpiece of ‘Bad Fortune’ is a psychic parlor that is also owned by Kathy Pizzaz from the bath house. She’s in a pickle because her last two psychics have quit, but as fate would have it Fran walks in for a reading and Kathy offers her a job as long as she’s willing to work the late shift to tell the drunk boys from the bars what they want to hear. All she has to do is master the tarot cards and she’s got the job. Fran needs the cash since her part-time gig at the Native doesn’t pay a lot, but she still has a sense she’s being watched … and she is as she spies ‘Big Daddy’ lurking across the street from her apartment.
But she gets to work and, as fate would have it, some of her first clients are Hannah and Adam. Hannah is pregnant and Adam is the donor, so they decide to pop in to see if the psychic can tell them about the baby. They’re surprised when it’s Fran, and even more surprised when it’s obvious she has to keep consulting the tarot guide book to tell them what the cards are saying. The first is the Queen of Pentacles, which she assures them is a good card, the pentacles mean grounded to the earth, but the next card is the Ten of Swords which she quickly brushes past. The last card is The Empress, which seems like a good card, perhaps denoting the baby is a girl. She then does a reading for Adam and the first card she turns is Death … but it doesn’t mean literal death, she assures him, just the ‘death’ of one thing that could lead to a ‘rebirth’ of something else. It freaks him out enough to end the reading, so Fran does one more for the both of them and every card she turns is Death. Which is weird since there is only one Death card in the deck. Adam has had enough and he and Hannah leave while Fran is perplexed by her deck becoming all cards of Death.
Patrick and Barbara are finalizing their divorce, but Barb does not seem well, blaming it on some bad sushi. She asks the lawyers to leave them alone and she tries to appeal to Patrick to not go through with the divorce but he tells her they have to do this. He will always care for her and they will always be friends, but he can’t keep living this lie with her. She finally agrees and signs the papers but faints right after. When she wakes up in the hospital with Patrick by her side, she tells him she did something terrible — she got a dog, and he’s been home alone all day with no food and probably peed all over the place. Patrick tells her he will take care of the pup but when he gets to the apartment the dog pays him no mind, instead just staring and barking at a closet door. Patrick puts the dog in another room and pulls his gun, surprised when ‘Big Daddy’ bursts out of the closet, attacking Patrick. They fight but Patrick is knocked down, the masked face looking down over him. It’s unclear what happens next because Patrick is next seen in the apartment with his police partner and two other officers. The officers seem to be snickering about something, perhaps something in Patrick’s report (he may have been sexually assaulted) but questions linger as to how and why ‘Big Daddy’ was in Barb’s apartment.
Later Patrick brings Barb home but he wants her to stay at a hotel. She assures him she’ll be fine because there are police outside the building. Patrick is uneasy but he allows her to stay. Later Barb decides to take a shower and she fantasizes that Patrick is also there, shaving. As she ‘watches’ him shave she gets a little handsy with herself but out of nowhere ‘Big Daddy’ appears — is he a ghost? — and strangles her. Patrick comes back to check on her and finds the body in the shower, and then he runs out and starts attacking the officers that were sitting outside the building. He collapses on the sidewalk, and the next thing we see is him laying in Gino’s arms at home, both grieving over this shocking situation.
Meanwhile, Hannah has gotten some shocking news about her blood work — she has the same low red blood cell count as all the gay men she’s been studying, the same as Adam has as well. But how did she become infected? Gino has also discovered the bruising on his and Patrick’s body. Adam tells Theo what’s going on with Hannah, and they happen to walk past the psychic parlor. Theo wants to go in to show Adam that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Fran is surprised to see Adam again but he says he’s there because his boyfriend is an asshole. She begins Theo’s reading and the first card is Judgment. She doesn’t sound very convincing when she says it’s a great card that represents awakening and self-evaluation. Card number two is The Devil. Not the literal Devil, she assures them although Theo jokes that some people have called him the Devil in the past. Fran likes his attitude and says the Devil can be playful and fun. Okay, card number three is … Death. Suddenly the room starts shaking and Adam hears a demonic voice from Fran, ‘You’, that causes him to jump from his chair. Theo and Fran look confused by his panic, saying it’s just the subway below the building. Sure, Jan … I mean Fran. He runs out and Theo follows, but back at the Native Gino can tell Adam is upset about something and sees the drawings he’s done of demons. Adam tells Gino about Fran’s past time activities so he pays her a visit at work.
He’s surprised to find not only Fran but Kathy as well. He accuses Kathy of first taking the money of the gay men in the neighborhood at the baths and doing nothing to protect them (did he forget she did give him a quote about needing police action?), and now she’s preying on them, taking their money to fill them with fantasies. Kathy assures him that what she does is real and tells Fran to take her lunch break so she can give Gino a reading herself. When she turns the card, she doesn’t know it but he gets the same three cards as Theo — Judgment, The Devil and Death. She is rattled by this and tells Gino to cut, draw and turn the cards himself. He does and turns the exact same cards, but when he turns death the room is briefly filled with a bright light. Kathy starts speaking, telling Gino he’s an angry man and his life is spinning out of control. Her voice begins to echo, she tells him that he knows he’s dying, he sees a figure enter the room. Kathy says everyone around him is dying, he wants to save everyone, he wants desperately to be loved, does he think anyone will love him when he has no soul to love. She tells Gino to turn around, someone wants to meet him. A hand touches his shoulder, wings spread on the shadowy figure as she asks if she should kiss him, saying she can make it all go away. As the Angel of Death reaches out, Gino leaps from his chair, yelling that this is all an illusion, he has a soul. Kathy says the only illusion is that he thinks he can escape his destiny. Gino says Patrick loves him, but Kathy says Patrick doesn’t even know him but not to fret because he is dying too. Gino yells stop and everything is back to normal. He leaves and Kathy seems perplexed, perhaps unaware of everything that Gino just experienced.
But Death still hangs over the city as Mr. Whitely prepares his two latest victims for their fate. He reveals to Cameron and Daniel what exactly it is he’s doing as he presses a button and a figure lowers from the rafters, a monstrous creature he’s stitched together from his victims that now just needs a heart and … a penis. This is what he will put on display in the upcoming Pride Parade, a man made from the people the city despises, the people will be transformed into agents of change, it isn’t as bad as it looks. Now he just has to decide which of the men will lose their heart and which will lose the ‘heat of their loins’.
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Let’s Talk About ‘The Body’:
- Two men discover human remains in a dune on Fire Island.
- Patrick and Gino pay a visit to Hannah to get information on a patient but she knows this is not an official police matter.
- Patrick gets a call from the men who found the remains because word seems to have gotten around about him.
- Henry turns out to be more than a barfly, he’s a fixer for the mob and Gino is a problem that needs fixing.
- Patrick leaves for Fire Island but Gino sees him hop in a convertible with … Sam?
- Patrick and Sam have a history and it’s all revealed on the dunes of Fire Island.
- Henry agrees to help Gino take out the Mai Tai killer.
As the previous episode was centered mainly around the events of Kathy’s psychic parlor, this majority of this episode is set on Fire Island, both in the present and in 1979 … which is just two years earlier than the show’s present. And many, many secrets are revealed as the remains of a body, the skull encased in a leather hood, is discovered in the dunes of the gay playground. A call is made to Patrick because, apparently, he’s the only cop ‘gay enough to care’. But first he and Gino pay a visit to Hannah inquiring about the blood samples she took after the fire at the Ascension. They know the Mai Tai killer was there and she may have taken some samples from him, but she refuses on grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality and calls them out for this not being on the books because a cop generally doesn’t travel with a reporter. So it’s a dead end there, but she notices the bruise on Gino and wants to check it out but he refuses.
The couple, quickly recovered from their mourning of Barbara it seems, run into another issue when Patrick packs a bag to run off to Fire Island. Why is is planning to stay overnight? Gino wants to know if he’s fucking someone else, but Patrick tells him the last thing he needs right now is a jealous boyfriend. Off he goes, but Gino follows, watching Patrick wait on the corner as a convertible pulls up and he hops in. Is that Sam driving? Why on earth is Patrick getting in a car with Sam bound for Fire Island? But Gino has something else to worry about when Henry shows up in his apartment — he did leave the door open when he left to follow Patrick. Henry, it turns out, is not just a barfly, he’s a hit man for the mob, although Henry says that term is gauche. But he’s been sent there to deal with the problem of Gino whose articles in the Native are causing his bosses problems, namely monetary ones as the articles are scaring off the clientelle from the establishments they operate (like The Brownstone and the bath house). Henry tells him he’s got to stop or he’ll have to do something he doesn’t want to do, but Gino says is Henry kills him he’s only helping the killer. Henry tells Gino to drop this obsession, but Gino tells him there’s been a body found on Fire Island. That rings a bell with Henry.
Patrick and Sam arrive on the island and shoo away the two men who found the body, telling them to keep this quiet. They go inside a large house and Sam says this is the only place he’s ever felt relaxed. It’s Sam’s house, and it turns out the problem on the beach is his and Patrick’s because why on earth did they decide to bury a body in a shallow sand dune two years ago? What did they think would happen? As they attempt to dig up the pieces, the two are surprised by Gino and Henry. Gino is furious and wants to know how Patrick knows Sam and how Henry knows them. Well, it all goes back to 1979. Patrick was still married and deeply closeted but he knew he was into men. Fresh off the ferry he meets a handsome young man who is on his way to a party at Sam’s house, one of Sam’s famous ‘no fats, no femmes’ parties. The man takes Patrick’s hand and drags him along, and he seems like he has found his people once he steps inside, hot men all over the place in various states of dress, dancing and making out. As the night wears on, Patrick dances with the man, who is also getting the attention of Sam. They indulge in poppers and coke, and Sam leads them down to the lower level. Not quite a dungeon but there is a stockade hanging from the ceiling. Sam asks who wants to volunteer and the young man says he’ll do it. Sam puts a leather mask on him, then locks his head and hands in the stockade. Sam and Patrick get totally coked up and take turns with the man, and at one point Patrick has totally lost himself in the feeling but Sam notices the young man is not moving. He pulls Patrick off and they off the leather hood. The poor young man apparently suffocated. Patrick tries CPR but Sam panics and tells him to stop. Patrick wants to call the police but Sam says they can’t call the police. Patrick shocks him when he says, ‘I am the police!’, a little fact Sam wished he’d known earlier. But Sam knows there is only one person he can call to take care of this mess.
And Henry shows up with his associate, Mr. Whitely. (So Patrick has actually seen his face but hasn’t put two-and-two together yet.) Whitely takes out his tools but Patrick can’t watch the body being dismembered. Whitely completes his task as Henry watches, but he tells Henry the young man deserved better. Now on the beach, Patrick has to convince Gino that they need to get rid of the body and then they’ll deal with whatever issues Gino is having at the moment. Gino, now feeling like an accomplice, begins to help but Patrick has to stop him when he notices something about the bones. They are cut clean through, almost surgically, the same way the victims in New York City were dismembered. Was the man who helped Henry that night the same man they’ve been looking for? They appeal to Henry to help them stop this killer and he finally reveals his name to them. While Patrick and Sam deal with the remains, Henry and Gino head back to the city. Henry has called Whitely and asked to meet him about another job. Whitely says he doesn’t have time, but Henry offers him a large sum of money to change his mind. All he needs is an address and he’ll come pick him up. Whitely instead asks to meet at a bar, and Henry agrees but tells Gino that he’s suspicious. They get to the bar and Henry sees Whitely’s car. Before they left Fire Island, Patrick gave Gino his gun, so Henry tells him to hide in the back seat and he can take out Whitely when he brings him back to the car. In the bar Whitely and Henry have a drink, but Henry doesn’t fall for the old drugged Mai Tai trick, asking for a whiskey instead. Before they leave, Whitely asks to use the rest room and Henry says he doesn’t need to ask permission. But Henry follows him in, planning to take out Whitely himself. Pushing a stall door open, Henry is the one surprised when Whitely pops up behind him, jamming a needle into his neck, drugging the man. As he drags Henry out of the bar, saying the man just can’t hold his liquor, Gino sees Whitely put Henry into his car. The only think he can do now is follow in Henry’s car — luckily he left the keys. He follows them back to Whitely’s building but instead of confronting the killer, he makes a call from the pay phone across the street telling Patrick that he needs him.
And the mystery deepens. Who will get bumped off next with just four episodes and two weeks remaining? Stay tuned!
What did you think of these episodes? Sound off in the comments below!
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