American Horror Story: Asylum- The Origins of Monstrosity

If I had a nickel for every time I said this about Ryan Murphy

My American Horror Story recap got super delayed because of the holiday, but better late than never, as they say.  As you can tell by the title, this episode delved into a lot of backstory of a few characters.

In present day, Adam Levine is FINALLY dead.  The cops are called to Briarcliff from an anonymous tipster who says, "You'll know my name when you see them, they were impostors."  And then we see the three faux Bloody Face teens strung up and hanging from the ceiling.

In the 60s, a young girl, Jenny is dropped off at Briarcliff.  Her mother brought her in because Jenny was playing with a girl in the woods, and next thing you know the friend is dead of stab wounds from a scissor.  Jenny stoically tells the police a bearded man in a brown coat killed her.  Her mother believed her, I suppose, until she found a lock of the girl's hair that Jenny had kept as a token.  Sister Jude tells the mother that they can't do anything for Jenny because they don't have a children's ward and... wait.  Jude is back?  Didn't she pack her things at the end of the last episode?

So Lana wakes up to the smell of Oliver frying up some croque monsieurs, which everybody knows is super inferior to the croque madame.  She pretends to like his croque monsieur and tomato soup, even though she wishes it was a croque madame, because she doesn't want to make him angry.  She asks where Wendy is and he says he hid the body.  Oliver goes on to say that Lana is about the same age his mother was when she abandoned him.  Lana tries to relate saying she knows what it feels like to be abandoned.  Oliver says he studied psychiatry to understand his own afflictions.  In his anatomy class they had a corpse that was about the same age as his mother, and that's when he realized what he was yearning for was skin to skin contact.  Nothing wrong with that I guess.  But the corpse wasn't enough, which led him to skin his first victim.

Oliver says now that Lana is here, all that work is behind him, and he calls her Mommy.  Sweet.

Mr. Goodman calls Jude and says that Arden was the nazi doctor that Anne/Charlotte accused him to be.  He has the documents to prove it, but now all he needs is a fingerprint.  Jude turns around and Jenny is in her office, because her mother apparently abandoned her there.

Father Timothy gets called to give last rights for someone who is fearful looking with a mysterious illness, but at the very least has tuberculosis.  When he enters the room, somehow he can recognize that blob of boils is Shelley, which I find suspect.  They flashback to when Timothy and Arden first meet, at the TB ward in Briarcliff, which is empty except for the "incurables."  Somehow Arden sweet talks Timothy into letting him do human trials for drugs at Briarcliff.

In present time, Father Timothy sees what Arden has done to Shelley, and he puts her out of her misery.  Timothy confronts Arden and says he is a monster for mutilating Shelley like that.  Arden basically says every patient at Briarcliff is worthless, and he is progressing human evolution somehow by injecting the patients with STDs.  Father Timothy says he can't allow it to continue, but Arden says if he's exposed, all of Briarcliff will be exposed, which, for some reason, stops Timothy dead in his tracks.

Jenny has a heart to heart with Sister Mary Eunice, and they get along really well, which is somewhat disconcerting considering that Mary Eunice is the devil.  She says she knows that Jenny killed her friend, and she gives her a knife so she can kill some more.  Yay.

Timothy, meanwhile, offers Jude a position at a home for wayward girls, and essentially tells her to pack her bags.

Oliver gets a call from Kit, who is in jail and says that he's a liar and all for using his murder confession to get him locked up for murder.  Lana tries to escape while he's on the phone, and she gets close to doing it but Oliver catches her.  He's devastated that she would try to abandon him just like his mother.  He says when people don't live up to expectations, sometimes all you can do is end it.  And then he puts his mask on.

Jude decides she's going to get Arden's fingerprints before she goes (for good?).  She brings him some cognac and toasts him.  At first she doesn't pour herself a glass because she doesn't imbibe, but he says he doesn't drink alone, and apparently, he doesn't drink first.

Meanwhile, Mary Eunice is in Jude's room playing with her lingerie when she gets a call.  Next thing you know, she's at Mr. Goodman's motel room.  He asks if Jude sent her, but she says Jude doesn't know she's there.

Jude shows up to Goodman's motel room with the glass.  He doesn't answer the door, so she walks in.  She finds him bloody and dying in the bathroom.  She suspects Arden, but he keeps saying "nun."  Mary Eunice brings a bunch of Goodman's evidence to Arden, but says she's keeping some of it in case he double crosses her.

Outside, Jenny's mother and family have been murdered with a knife.  Jenny tells the police they were killed by a bearded man with a brown coat.

Oliver starts undressing Lana, commenting on how alive she used to be before Briarcliff.  It doesn't shock me that he was creeping on her back then.  But he talks about her like he had been creeping on her for more than 45 seconds, which is not what the footage suggests.  Anyhoo, Lana tells him that he deserves unconditional love, and he doesn't have to feel guilty for killing her.  Then she calls him baby.  He takes his mask off and starts crying.   Then this happens:

In 2012, the police have discovered the crime scene.  Leo's arm is ringing.  They pick up the phone and it is Bloody Face telling them that he only killed the impostors.  Which makes me wonder why were some teenagers just waiting around to kill Adam Levine like 4 different ways and how did they rip his arm off??  Anyway, the police find out that Leo was on his honeymoon, but no sign of the bride.  Because she... is with Bloody Face.  Dun dun dunnn...

I can hardly be mad anymore. I'm just wondering what other ways Ryan Murphy is going to try to come up with to keep being on the cutting edge of shock and awe.  Anyway, now that Shelley is dead, maybe I can watch the rest of the season with both eyes open.

Picture Credit: tumblr