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We’re four episodes into ‘Red Tide’ this week and we finally get an origin story of how P-Town became bloodsucker central five years earlier, and that is with the arrival of … The Chemist, the only name she gives. Having recently left a job at a lab in Providence, she’s come to Provincetown for a little peace and quiet, telling realtor Holden Vaughn that it was an ‘ugly breakup’. He suspects she’s there to take advantage of the locals an cook up some meth, but she snidely tells him meth is below her pay grade.
She settles into the house and it’s not a minute before she’s cooking up her little black pills and stalking the town for a guinea pig. Stopping in at The Muse, The Chemist is approached by dear, sweet Mickey (I’m sorry, I am just so in love with Macaulay Culkin’s performance right now) whom she takes home where he offers her his ‘Halloween Special’, i.e. he’ll do anything for $20. But she just wants to talk, and asks him what his dream is. He reveals his penchant for writing and she explains how research into a drug that super-charges a person’s occipital lobe brings their innate talent to the forefront. It’s worked on primates, to a point, but they also became enraged and bloodthirsty. Mickey turns her down, but she pays him for his time and offers him $50 for any other subjects he can send her way.
Back at The Muse, it’s karaoke night and Mickey spies a man who has a pretty decent voice, offering him the chance to truly let his talent shine. He sends the guy to The Chemist and he gladly takes her up on her offer to be a test subject. But, well, the poor guy really didn’t have the talent to succeed and he became the town’s first meandering bloodsucker. As his hair falls out and he’s always cold — The Chemist berates him that it’s October and he’s wearing a light jacket — he ends up at a thrift shop run by local tattooist/dentist Lark, who explains that as all the gay men who lived in town began dying of AIDS, all of their ‘vintage’ clothing ended up at her store, hence Holden’s earlier quip about the ‘pale, strange homeless creatures wearing AIDS-era couture.’ The untalented vampire picks the coat with the ridiculously pointy shoulders and begins to stalk the cemetery to feed.
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We now meet Belle Noir, a sad-sack older woman in town to promote her self-published softcore porn novel about the sex lives of — wait for it — George and Martha Washington, giving a reading to four people at a local bookstore. The Chemist buys a book — Belle’s only sale (she’s sold five books total now) — and has it inscribed to ‘The Chemist’ (to which Belle doesn’t bat an eyelash). Belle’s husband is a total monster, refusing to watch the sunset with her and telling her he wanted to vomit while reading her disgusting prose. And he’s certainly not going to go to a queer bar with her, so she goes alone and meets Mickey who takes her to see The Chemist … who is thrilled to give her the offer because she actually loved Belle’s novel. Throwing caution to the wind, Belle takes the pill and churns out a 400-plus page novel overnight. Her loathsome husband, who proudly tells her he’s been out all night boning a local (twice and is going back for thirds), insists she didn’t write the book because it’s good and tells her the marriage is over. Well, after writing all night, a girl is gonna be hungry and before he knows it, his throat is slashed and she enjoys her first feed. She reports back to The Chemist and relays how she really felt nothing while she killed and fed on her husband, but The Chemist tells her she has to get rid of the body. She does, in pieces all over the beach.
Two years later Belle Noir is a celebrated bestselling author in search of a new, less dowdy look. Of course she ends up at Lark’s place and Lark is also now a client of The Chemist. She tells Belle how she also killed her boyfriend and ‘drank him dry’ then burned the body. She also revealed her sharpened teeth, which Belle was extremely interested in so Lark took care of her. With her new look complete, Belle ventures into The Muse where she spies some drag queens (including the one and only Eureka O’Hara playing Crystal Decanter) having a catty conversation, with most of the vitriol aimed at Patty O’Furniture, aka Austin Sommers. The queens pick on Austin’s busted drag, but he actually gives a pretty decent performance to Heart’s ‘Magic Man’.
After the show, Belle offers Austin some solace and a drink and he explains how he’s a playwright. He even had a production lined up at a local theater but the owner simply vanished (well, Belle fed on him if you must know, but Austin doesn’t). Spotting some talent in the young man, she offers him a pill and he takes it without question but has a slightly violent reaction. After he stops foaming at the mouth, he tells Belle he feels unstoppable, unafraid, fearless … and starving. She says they need to get him fed, and he knows exactly where the buffet is — his drag queen frenemies. He and Belle feed on two of them but Crystal gets away. Unfortunately she stumbles into the cemetery and takes a breather on a bench … and untalented vampire guy pops up from behind and bites her in the neck.
And now we know how it all started.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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