Everyone has an agenda in this week's episode, "Open House," and a wealthy developer is at the center of it all. Sounds simple and streamlined enough, right? Well, for some reason it resulted in American Horror Story's most scatterbrained episode yet. As always though, there was still plenty worth talking about after it was over.
Larry the Burn Guy Is A Simp
Larry (Denis O'Hare) lives! And he used to trick on his wife with...Constance (Jessica Lange)? OK, what? In 1994, after Tate took more shots than Pac, Larry was living in the Murder House and he was very neighborly with Constance. Enthralled enough to do a wild-ass favor for her, and then coldly kick his wife to the curbs of Ohio. Turns out, Larry was lying about having bodies to his name: His wife retaliated to his infidelity by lighting their house ablaze, starting with their daughers' room. Cheaper to keep her, son.
Back to that favor he did for Constance: Wouldn't you know it, she [re]produced yet another problematic child. First, a mass murderer, then a daughter with Down Syndrome, and now a deformed son reminiscent of Sloth from The Goonies. Sheesh. Constance is worried that "they" will take her son Bo (a.k.a. Bizarro Sloth) away from her, so Larry obediently puts the poor kid to pasture by suffocating him with a pillow. Keeping tally, that's now two ghost sons that Constance has in the Murder House, which now boasts a Sloth in the attic and a Fang Baby in the basement, with a million ghosts and a Rubber Man in between.
In the present, Larry is still as devoted to Constance as ever, and all of his moves thus far—trying to scare Ben away, hitting him up for money—have been for her. (We're still not sure how killing Hayden figured into that, though.) He's deluded and thinks buying the Murder House for Constance will win her back, which makes her venomous put-down even more tragic. Yet and still, Larry proves he is willing to keep killing to make his dream happen. He has nothing else to live for.
Murder Land Condiminums?
Vivien (Connie Britton) finally has an interested buyer who could give a fuck less about the Murder House's history: a wealthy Armenian developer. Moira's (Frances Conroy/Alex Breckenridge) interest is piqued when he mentions plans to tear up the whole backyard and put in a swimming pool, and, as a result, free her bones from the backyard grave. If it takes a couple blowjobs to get the douche bag to go through with the buy and dig up her skeleton so she can finally stop scrubbing floors for an eternity, then so be it.
Constance, on the other hand, is fearful of what a renovation-ready owner would mean for her unhealthy visits to her walking, talking family plot. She goes to see him and delivers a passionate monologue about the disconnect between the fresh start California once represented and the caustrophobic, soulless place it has become. The developer's response: Make him a sandwhich, suck him off, or shut the hell up and leave. Classy.
The visit isn't a complete waste, as Constance learns that he has no plans of actually living in Murder House; he's going to tear it down and build a bunch of housing units. Once Moira learns she's just going to have even more bricks and mortar over her bones, she and Larry the willing-sucker-for-love join forces to take the Armenian out, in a way that every male viewer of the show will surely never forget; think the worst BJ ever. Followed by suffocation via plastic bag. Was the biting really necessary?
Demon Babies, Past And Present
On the Ben (Dylan McDermott) and Vivien front, the unhappy couple learn that they're expecting twins, but curiously there's no mention of hooves. How much do you want to bet that the OBGYN, who's reluctant to perform the amniotic test, is being less than truthful?
Ben doesn't do much else for the rest of the episode besides fail at both threatening Larry and consoling Violet (Taissa Farmiga) through the divorce. Meanwhile, Viv and the realtor take the Murder Tour so she can learn everything about the house's bloodstained history, where we get the final pieces of the Fang Baby's origins, which go as follows: After receiving their son Thaddeus's body in parts from an abortion patient's angry boyfriend, Charles (Matt Ross) literally put him back together. The result: a demonic monstrosity and one that Nora (Lily Rabe) discovers is hungry for more than milk after she comes back looking like her breasts are about to fall off. Why she would even entertain the thought of breast-feeding a thing with teeth like that is beyond us. Unable to cope with the reality of it all, she blows hers and Charles' brains out.
Violet and Tate (Evan Peters) are hanging out in the attic where she learns all of this herself, while also meeting the ghost of his brother Bo. You read that right, Violet is palling around her house with her undead boyfriend, whom she learned got undead by shooting up half of his class and losing a shootout with the cops on haunted soil, and his equally undead brother. She expresses discomfort with this for, like, eight seconds, but then Tate tells her she's just enlightened or whatever now, so it's all OK. Thankfully someone who probably won't be so OK with GHOSTS has just been let into the fold as Vivien finally, finally puts it all together when she sees a picture of Nora.
Questions Left Unanswered
-- There's a huge chunk of story missing between 1983 when Constance shot her husband and Moira, and 1994 when Tate died and she moved next-door. Why does Tate hate her so much?
-- If Constance and her loony bin family are The Munsters, the last child has got to be a Marilyn, i.e. completely normal and well-adjusted, right?
-- So how did Larry get his burns if his initial story was bullshit? Did he go into his daughters' room and unsuccessfully try to play the hero?
-- Did Charles and Nora jumpstart the house's supernatural mojo? Or was the California soil not as pure as Constance thinks it was?
-- Does Tate remember everything or not?
-- Why does Moira age?
-- What does Fang Baby Thaddeus do cooped up in the basement 24/7?
