American Horror Story S10.06 — Low tide
Spoilers below for American Horror Story S10.06 — Winter Kills
Tonight’s episode marks the end of the Red Tide, the first story in American Horror Story: Double Feature. Let’s dive in.
At the start of the episode, a fisherman finds the Chief’s dead body in the harbor. Then, during a council meeting that goes on for far too long, a Mass Police officer arrives to discuss the murders. Holden (Denis O’Hare) and the other councilpeople shut her down, but Holden knows he needs to do something to clean up the riff raff. Or at least, he needs to tell someone else to do it. He visits Belle, Austin, and the Chemist to let them know and they spring into action.
In the Gardner house, Harry has finished his masterpiece, his Godfather, if you will. With that done, he decides that the family should stop taking the pills. Since he has written enough for 5 years this winter, he feels it is time to “get some of his soul back.” Okay buddy, good luck with that. On the surface, Alma agrees but then in classic Creepy Daughter fashion, she looks at Ursula and you know they have some shit up their sleeves.
When Harry realizes that Belle stole Eli the baby, he, Alma, and Ursula hatch a plan. Ursula gives new pills to the Pale People so they can go after talented folks (and each other, apparently) and they break into Belle’s house and kill Belle and Austin. Then, just before they get Harry & Alma, Ursula shoots them. If surprise shooting was an option, why didn’t Ursula just shoot Belle and Austin from the doorway or the window instead of unleashing the Pale People on them? I get the poetic justice, but still, kind of silly.
Anyway! Ursula collects baby Eli and Harry hugs Alma. He starts to tell her that it’s just going to be the 3 of them moving forward, but Alma (and Ursula) have other ideas. Alma bites and drinks Harry’s blood. Meanwhile, the Chemist and Ursula go over the cover story: brilliant screenwriter Harry was doing drugs and “Masoned” a bunch of people. It never comes up again so I guess people buy it.
Cut to Los Angeles 3 months later. A “Bad Apple” cop becomes a Pale Person and is shot down by other cops. The Chemist explains that since she has achieved everything she has ever wanted, she is now using her pills to give back to the community. Nice. Alma is getting ready for her Philharmonic audition when Ursula comes back to say she’s been giving out pills to “anyone in Starbucks with a laptop.” Even though the Chemist warns her that real writers don’t write in Starbucks, she continues to say that volume matters over everything.
After her audition, Alma is left in the green room with the other final candidate. He tells her that everyone in the orchestra is a prodigy and she’s not that special. She continues to say she’s the best player in the world (she really is so annoying) but he explains that she won’t be picked because it’ll make it a freak show, which of course, was a different and not very good season of American Horror Story. She knows he’s right so she obviously kills him and dumps his body out back.
The episode ends with Ursula crashing a hacky screenwriting workshop where she gives black pills to everyone attending and the old instructor who sold one, shitty script in the ’80s. Chaos ensues as they attack each other and flood the streets, setting everything on fire. For anyone who watched the straight-to0Hulu American Horror Stories anthology, which was also not very good, it looked very similar to the ending of the drive-in movie episode. As LA is engulfed in flames, the Chemist soothes baby Eli and tells he’s safe with Mommy. They drive off to a new town where she can invent a new pill.
My overall thoughts from this mini-season:
- While it was tighter because it was shorter, it also meant that it was extremely on the nose. Yes, we get it — Hollywood types are obsessed with themselves, agents are bloodthirsty, and fame and greed kill. There was truly no nuance and I missed the fun, often weird, side plots that occur in a lot of AHS seasons.
- The name of the game in this season was just to kill people instead of wrapping up plot lines. The Chief is getting in the way? She’s dead and no one really notices. Mickey & TKaren turn out to be talented all along? They’re dead. Belle & Austin are annoying? Dead. Harry wants to stop taking the pill? Murdered. Though, I guess this is kind of Ryan Murphy’s MO, it is still a bit boring.
- Will the Chemist and Eli show up in the Death Valley half of this season? The trailer was not easy to follow, but my guess is yes, just because I don’t understand why they are doing the season like this if they don’t connect at all. But, I hope so because I love Angelica Ross #JusticeforCandy
Producer who loves TV, looking for my next opportunity to be creative & pet dogs. View all posts by lizziekreitman
Originally published at http://lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on September 23, 2021.