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The eleventh season of American Horror Story comes to an end, and it truly was a season like no other just as the network promised, mainly because there was no true supernatural killer here. There was a serial killer, Whitely, and he was disposed of in the previous episodes (although he did make an appearance in the finale), so that left the question of who — or what — Big Daddy was … and the answer was just as I surmised last week as the final two episodes revealed what this season was truly about: the early days of the AIDS crisis. And Big Daddy, as it became clear wasn’t a real, physical being (although the fight with Gino and Adam on Fire Island does raise some questions) and whomever came in contact with him, or simply laid eyes on him in most cases, ended up being infected (and that also makes us wonder what happened to Fran and her friends after the trip to Fire Island since they did not appear in the finale, and we have to question the circumstances of Barbara’s death as well). But in the simplest of terms, Big Daddy was a virus (one that also could fire bomb a bar somehow … okay, it’s not really that simple to explain). But it’s clear that he was associated with the disease. Let’s break down the episodes.
Part 1
The focus of the first episode was Sam and Patrick, with the episode jumping from 1981 to 1987. It opened at Theo’s funeral where Sam collapses and then wakes up in the hospital. He’s surprised to learn that his nurse is the guy he locked in a cage at the beginning of the season, and he’s even more surprised to find that his doctor is … Theo. So we know something bad is about to go down. Even though he’s not in the best of shape, Dr. Theo leads him around the hellhole of a hospital showing him other patients, all of whom Sam knows from his various parties and sexual encounters, all of whom have some mysterious viral disease which leads Sam to believe Theo is blaming him for spreading it. Theo forces Sam to give one of the patients a kiss to show some compassion, and while Sam still thinks he’s the one who deserves compassion, he kisses the man on the forehead. But Theo isn’t done, taking Sam to one more room — his room. Just as Ebenezer Scrooge saw his future courtesy of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, Sam witnessed his … or perhaps it was his present, dying alone in a wretched hospital ward where no one comes to visit, not even the staff.
But Sam is suddenly in a cage like the one he used for his playthings. This time it’s Henry, dressed in leather, who is on the outside taunting him, forcing him to deal with the unpleasantries of his father and his first boss on Wall Street who only saw Sam as some worthless faggot despite the fact that he worked harder than anyone else in the office. Before things can get any worse as Henry brings Big Daddy before Sam to administer some torture, Sam is on the beach at Fire Island and Big Daddy is not far behind him Sam tries to run but Henry, now in all white, tells him it’s no use to try to outrun this thing that is aready consuming him. Big Daddy catches up and wraps his arms around Sam. He struggles for a moment then just gives in, turning to remove the ever-present leather hood. He also sees Theo and his antlered friends on the beach watching. It’s quite unexpected when he does remove the hood, revealing a handsome young man with blond flowing hair and a much smaller, but still muscular, build than the behemoth that had been chasing him. An angel, perhaps? As they embrace, Theo and his friend move forward and then Henry is alone on the beach, holding an urn, dumping Sam’s ashes into the surf, the antlered boys serving as witnesses. RIP Sam.
We flash forward to 1987, and Gino is walking the corridor of a hospital looking into various rooms before he arrives at his destination — Patrick’s room. The ravages of the disease having visibly aged him as well as taken his sight, both retinas have become detached and the doctor says an AIDS patient is not a candidate for the operation, plus it’s very complicated for someone in his condition. His condition may have deteriorated so much because of the lack of care he’s getting, the room is filthy, the IV drip is empty, neither he nor Gino have any idea when someone had checked up on him or brought him food. Sadly this was common in the early days of the epidemic, making this a horror story grounded in reality. Gino gives Patrick some water and applesauce, which he savors, and he tells Gino to sell his life insurance policy and take the money so it doesn’t go to his parents. He’s so sorry for what’s happened but all he wants is for Gino to be there to hold him. Patrick then wakes up alone in his bed (there is another patient in the room) but he knocks the call button out of reach and not even his yells bring anyone to the room. He tries to get out of bed but falls to the floor. Unable to see, he crawls across the floor until he finds a wheelchair, rolling out into the deserted hallway. There is no one around but he senses something or someone and we see a figure silhouetted by a bright light. It’s Barbara. She tells him to look at her and suddenly he can see and she acts as his own guiding spirit.
Patrick has been a tough character to crack all season, but now he — and we — finally get to see what made him who he is/was. The first stop is a crime scene, an apparent suicide where Patrick first encounters reporter Gino. Gino wastes no time in letting Patrick know he knows he’s gay and gives Patrick his phone number. So perhaps at some point he hooked up with Gino, or some other man who may have already been infected, while still married to Barbara and ended up infecting her which is why she was ‘killed’ by Big Daddy (which also explains why the cops outside her building never saw anyone go in or out). The next scene she shows him follows the aftermath of a police involved shooting, his first partner with an itchy trigger finger specifically. The cop who became Patrick’s partner told him to get the guy cleaned up and then they could work on the report, but while the cop was showering things got a little heated and the other cop witnessed Patrick and his partner kissing. Surprised, Patrick pushed the man away, causing him to hit his head on the wall, and stormed out saying the other guy forced himself on Patrick. Then Barb took him to Whitely, still working on his sentinel with Patrick’s assistance but Patrick couldn’t bring himself to attach the head. Whitely pulled out the head and it was Patrick’s. Barbara pointed out how Patrick was always coming apart and putting himself back together again, but he was a sloppy mess. His last vision was an afternoon with his abusive father, trying to teach his young son how to fire a pistol so he could be a strong cop like his dad and grandfather. But young Patrick could not hit any of the cans and his father berated him for being ‘limp-wristed’. Becoming very frustrated with Patrick’s inability to hit a can, his father took the gun and fired it right next to his son’s ear which now explains Patrick’s hearing loss. Patrick’s father continued to berate him for holding his ears during the shooting, unaware that his eardrum had ruptured and was bleeding. All of these things informed the man Patrick grew to be, deeply closeted, emotionally unavailable, incapable of truly loving anyone because he didn’t love himself.
But Patrick is back in his bed with Gino at his side, whispering that he loves him. With Gino holding on to him, Patrick turns his head and sees Barbara again. Behind her is Kathy Pizazz singing ‘Calling You’ again. By the doorway stands Big Daddy. As Patrick moans in pain, perhaps sorrow, Gino holds on for dear life as the heart monitor flatlines. Gino is now alone in the hospital room staring at the empty bed. RIP Patrick.
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Part 2
It’s 1981 again (so Patrick is still alive) and Adam is approaching Hannah’s apartment. There are police and an ambulance and he’s told someone reported a smell coming from one of the apartments and found a body. Adam sees a body bag wheeled into the ambulance. He tells the police he’s a friend of the deceased and they allow him to go to Hannah’s apartment. Apparently she never made it to her mother’s as the phone receiver is on the floor (we saw Big Daddy standing outside her window while she was on the phone). The police leave Adam alone and he listens to a tape she had been recording about the unexplained and swift repopulation of deer on Fire Island after the culling (and could Fran have been right about the government engineering the virus to be delivered by tick bites?). Big Daddy is in the room with him. He listens to more of the tapes and realizes that using a turkey baster to impregnate herself with Adam’s donation is what infected her. Sam tried to get information from the coroner, wanting some assurance that there was foul play but she tells him about a lung infection that has been detected in several people including his friend Theo, but she assures him the two cases are not related in any way … except they are, and Adam knows this but she doesn’t.
Adam begins to re-examine his life, his anonymous sexual encounters, at one point imagining it’s Big Daddy behind him instead of the trick he picked up in the park. He goes to the doctor to get his bruise biopsied but he already knows it’s kaposi sarcoma, he just wants it confirmed for the record. Adam tries to tell the doctor to do something, to get some studies done, warn the community but the doctor just tells him he’s a young man, not to worry and there’s no way he could get any funding for research just on Adam’s say so. Not wanting to feel defeated, Adam prints out some flyers advising men to use condoms, and he takes some to Kathy’s bath house but … it’s her last show, the place is closing down. She knows something is going on and tells him it doesn’t feel safe anymore. And she tells him he’s too young to think about how not to die, so think about how to live. Adam begins putting up his flyers around the neighborhood and has a strange encounter on the subway. The lights flicker and suddenly there is a woman across from him saying to no one that something bad is coming. The lights flicker again and she’s right next to him saying the same thing. The lights flicker again and there is a newspaper on the seat with an article mentioning a rare cancer seen in homosexuals.
Back to 1987 and Gino is at the pharmacy picking up his prescription for the new AIDS drug AZT. When he leaves and walks past a window, we see Patrick’s reflection walking with him but when Gino turns the corner he is alone. He is actually on his way to Patrick’s funeral where he’s snubbed by Patrick’s mother (and brother?). Gino freaks out when he sees the coffin is closed, yelling that Patrick did not want to be shut away like that and he throws open the lid revealing a ghastly makeup job on the corpse. Patrick suddenly opens his eyes and says Gino’s name but it was all in his head and it’s Adam who is speaking to him. It’s time for the eulogy which Gino is to deliver but before he can say anything he is obviously overcome with emotion leading to one of the season’s — and series’ — most devastating scenes. Set to Kraftwerk’s ‘Radioactivity’ a montage follows Gino as he first finds himself at the back of the room at the funeral, then he’s at a cemetery, Big Daddy digging a grave, one funeral after another, a line of men walking into the open grave, one after another, one on top of the other, then he’s at what is meant to represent an Act Up demonstration in 1988, a die in in the middle of the street to bring attention to the AIDS crisis (this was also depicted in Pose), then in his empty apartment remembering his time with Patrick, at the office composing a new headline for the paper announcing the more than 30,000 people who have died so far, in the background is Big Daddy with machine guns slaughtering everyone in the office around him, in 1989 Gino sits at a bar and Whitely is there next to him but suddenly Big Daddy appears and slits his throat, another man who resembles Patrick buys Gino a drink and Gino takes him home but before they can get very far Gino has a coughing fit and goes to the bathroom. The man still in his bed is suddenly confronted by Big Daddy who throws a bucket of blood on the man. Gino comes back and sees the blood and the empty bed and doesn’t think a thing about it. Another headline blaring a new death toll, another Patrick-like man at the bar but before they can even leave Big Daddy snaps the guy’s neck and murders everyone else in the bar. Gino is in bed but he wakes up and finds a puddle of blood, unsure of where it came from. He walks through the apartment and opens the door and Big Daddy is outside. Gino quickly closes the door. 1990 and Gino is surrounded by the dead in his office. He leaves and Big Daddy closes the door behind him. Back at home he’s making a paste with his AZT and applying it to his kaposi sarcoma as Big Daddy watches. He knows it’s only a matter of time now as Big Daddy appears in behind him in the bathroom mirror. 1991, Gino needs a walker now, seeing masked men walk past him on the street until once again he’s confronted by Big Daddy. Gino is lying in his bed, gasping for air. He turns his head and sees Patrick … and now Adam is at a funeral. Gino is in the coffin and Adam is overcome with emotion as he begins to deliver the eulogy. RIP Gino.
That was a very heavy way to end the season. I know people have had complaints that the show has never had a successful finale, and while this one did leave us with a few questions (as mentioned above), it definitively told us what this season was about. Ryan Murphy has certainly told this story of AIDS before, but it’s one that needs to be told again to a new generation of LGBTQ+ people who didn’t live through the scourge, who didn’t witness the government’s total lack of action under President Ronald Reagan, who did’t see how AIDS patients were segregated in hospitals, not allowed to have visitors for fear of spreading the disease (when they thought it was transmissible just by touch) with only a few brave and compassionate souls at the hospital to take care of them. People in their 20s and 30s today probably don’t know what the 40+ generation lived through. I ugly cried a couple of times thinking about my best friend who died several years ago, knowing what he went through. This is a period of history that can’t be forgotten as there are still over 1.5 million infections worldwide per year and 700,000 deaths. AIDS isn’t just an American Horror Story, it’s a global one and we need storytellers like Ryan Murphy to keep reminding us that the disease is still out there, stalking the careless and carefree.
What did you think of the finale? Sound off in the comments below!
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