Each week Joe (@bstolemyremote) and Terry (@gaylydreadful) discuss the most recent episode of FX’s American Horror Story, alternating between our respective sites -- queerhorrormovies.com and gaylydreadful.com.

Episode 9.03 “Slashdance”: Imitation is the best form of tragedy. Coming clean can be pretty messy.

TERRY

Here we are, Joe. Already just a hair under a third of the way into this season and...minus some kitchen sink plotting, I actually enjoyed this episode? It’s a definite improvement over last week’s “Mr. Jingles” at the very least. And while I’m unsure how they’re going to keep this season upright and on the rails for another 7 episodes, “Slashdance” added some much needed texture for me. But before we get ahead of ourselves, last week’s abysmal episode ended on a double cliffhanger as our counselors were split into two groups.

Nurse Rita, Ray, Chet and Brooke are holed up in the infirmary, looking for keys, when the door starts to shake, rattle and roll...well, not rolling, but you know what I mean. It’s the Night Stalker and after some ineffective barricades, Ray reveals himself to be a complete coward and thinks he only has to be faster than at least two of the others. Dick! Rita and Brooke run away, the Night Slasher does his thing, but Chet turns into a hero, knocks the killer away and takes off running with Ray before ultimately falling into a spiked pit.

Meanwhile, the other counselors are holed up in a cabin. Xavier is crying, Montana could really go for “one of those ‘ludes right now” and the other dude...well I had to go look on IMDb to remind myself what his name was because in my notes I just referred to him as “Big Dick McGlee.”

ANYWAY...

Turns out it’s a pair of fake Mr. Jingles. Apparently, the anniversary of the massacre has become a pseudo Halloween and tricksters wear Mr. Jingles masks and play pranks, like throwing a bag of burning shit--that one of the Jingles has been saving for a week(?!)--into the cabin. Death happens, people freak out. And then we get the first big surprise of the episode and the season:

Nurse Rita jabs a needle into Brooke’s neck and as Brooke passes out, she says “Oh honey, I wish you could see your face right now.” That’s because Nurse Rita is actually PhD-candidate Donna Chambers. Oh, and she’s in semi-cahoots with Mr. Jingles.

So that kind of sets the scene, Joe. There’s a lot of plotting going on this episode and there’s some stuff--potentially juicy stuff--that I want to get into with you. So on that note, what do you make of this reveal? Does her thesis that the Vietnam War (and porn? And maybe high fructose corn syrup?) could have something to do with the sudden uptick of serial/sequence killers hold thematic water for you? And speaking of back stories, were you as eye-rollingly bored with Ray’s fraternity story?

JOE

Well, unlike Rita...er...Donna, I believe in a mix of nature and nurture when it comes to serial or spree killers (BTW American Horror Story, you need to watch Tragedy Girls because those terms are not the same thing!).

High fructose corn syrup on the other hand? That’s absolutely a recipe for disaster.

But welcome back to Camp Redwood, Terry! And my little Debbie Downer corner of the Internet because, yes, while that was a slightly better episode of American Horror Story, I think that I’m in the minority because I still don’t think it was very good!

Look, I know I’m basically everyone’s drunk uncle at the holiday party with my pessimism, but it feels like every year we as a society collectively decide to suffer from amnesia and give a show a pass on all of the terrible plotting, paper thin characters and “trick” reveals.

Thinking specifically about “Slashdance”, we get not one, but TWO extended flashback backstories (one of which is for Ray, a character who is literally beheaded around seven minutes later). We get not one, but TWO “character twist” reveals for Donna and then for Montana in the closing moments. That’s a lot of “going back to the same well” for a 42 minute episode.

Of course, this is CLASSIC American Horror Story - when in doubt, simply insert a twisty backstory or character trait and then cross your fingers in the hope that no one notices how hard you’re working. We got 4.5 deaths in this episode, but three of them are characters who we’ve never met before this episode and are pretty obviously only introduced in order to up the body count. What purpose do Pete and Larry - the Mr. Jingles fakes - or the actual Nurse Rita serve, other than to act as temporary distractions and Red Shirts?

I mean, sure, Nurse Rita’s canoe paddle in the mouth impalement death is cool, but there’s no surprise or tension there. AHS has this problematic tendency to flag a character for death the minute that they appear, so the only real unexpected development is that it took so long to off the poor bubbly blonde health practitioner.

I will credit the “punji pit” as a fun set piece, though. While I’m unsure why Chet and Ray fall into it and Brooke and Donna don’t, it’s a solid visual representation of the episode’s fixation on the impact of the Vietnam War and a good way to reinforce both Ray’s cowardice. It also helpfully prevents all parties from immediately reaching the parking lot.

Please note, however, that I’m not feeling generous enough to extend any praise to the “shocking” development that Trevor, Chet and Xavier accidentally knock the wrong Mr. Jingles into the pit (I literally had to look up all of the boy’s names except Chet - because Gus Kenworthy…). The inept, “loser” Mr. Jingles cosplayer was obviously doomed from the moment the real killer allowed him to walk away.

I dunno, Terry - I saw so much online excitement for this episode that perhaps I got my hopes up that things had finally taken a turn and now I’m being extra hard on it. But everything still feels so predictable to me! Perhaps it’s that American Horror Story isn’t truly for horror fans, but rather casual enthusiasts who haven’t seen these plot points a million times?

Or I’m a big ol’ grouch.

Circling back to Ray’s backstory before I turn it back to you: oof, what a load of “who gives a shit”?! I’ll let you dig into that a little deeper, but I do want to pose a potentially uncomfortable question: do you think that the writers were justified making Ray - the show’s sole Black man - a coward and the first main character to die because they think they’re doing something more interesting with Donna? Because if you look at the way that Xavier has been developed, he’d be far more suitable as a coward who runs…

Also: any insight in Montana’s motivation (we better not be in Scream: Resurrection territory here). And where the hell were Tammy Baker and the Lunch Lady during all of this nonsense? Did you even miss them?

TERRY

Alright, Joe! I’m glad we’re at least both on the same side with high fructose corn syrup…as delicious as it is in my ketchup. Meanwhile, there definitely seems to be a gulf between your reaction to this episode and the stuff I’ve been seeing on Twitter. For what it’s worth, I might be the mediator standing between you and the fans, because while I enjoyed this episode, it still has a ton of faults and problems.

The biggest is one you hit right away: Ray. While I’ll say that Ray’s cowardly character has been established from the first episode (where he kept jonesing to get out of town) that you get the sense he runs from everything and doesn’t want to confront anything. But I didn’t realize just how cowardly the character was and 1984 continued to smash that point, over and over. He wants to run from his friends, he gets saved by Chet, he leaves Chet to die, he then drives off on a Ninja to leave Montana—in his mind—to die. Like how many double-crosses do we need to have to realize he’s a coward?

Like you, I was annoyed that we were given a flashback to Ray’s Hell Night initiation and the “trunks to tails” hazing, especially for a character that was going to, as you mention, lose his head not even ten minutes later. It doesn’t add anything to the plot and it’s not even enough to be a red herring, considering the character is insta-gone moments after its revealed. And yeah, I don’t feel like I have the authority to really comment or dig into Ray’s death as the only black man on the show, but I shook my head and signed when it happened, particularly since he’s, as you mentioned, the first of the main characters to go. It’s frustrating.

My biggest problem with Ray’s flashback is that it sort of deflates the punch of Rita’s revelation, a moment that genuinely did surprise me. And it’s probably that surprise that makes me give the episode a bit more credit than I normally would. I loved Angelica Ross in Pose and I was fairly disappointed in how little she’s been given in the first two episodes of 1984. She’s a talent and she’s gorgeous and I wanted her to have a juicy role that didn’t seem to be in the cards. So when it’s revealed that she’s part of the reason shit is going down and she has a more interesting backstory, I was snapping my fingers and on board.

You do hit on a problem I have with the series’ depiction of violence, though. There’s no real lead-up. It’s all punchline. And it gets kind of boring. In my notes, I wrote the following:

“Donna Chambers killed Nurse Rita”
“Oh. The real nurse Rita isn’t dead. Just tied up.”
”Nope. Now she’s dead. Oar through mouth. Okay.”

It’s just so matter-of-factly and lacks any sense of tension. And it’s a problem with all of the violence so far. It doesn’t have any pizzazz.

But, I don’t know, Joe. Montana’s twist could go one of two ways. I hope it adds wrinkles to the story because that’s the thing I liked about this episode, particularly over “Mr. Jingles”: it added some texture…however insane. But what about you, Joe? It sounds like you’re expecting this to just downward spiral over the next 7 episodes, while I’m still holding out hope. Any thoughts for where this is going?

JOE

I will never root for a show to fail (what’s the point of that?) so I do still hope that this ship can be righted. But I won’t be satisfied if “Slashdance” is the best that this season can do, particularly when last season proved that AHS can do better. If we’re being fair, though, I was very much on the fence for the first half of Apocalypse and ultimately that season wound up being one of my favourites. So this is all subject to change!

Montana and Donna are now the two most interesting characters in the show because they’ve basically reverted back to strangers that we don’t know anything about. I’ll confess that while Donna’s motivations are dumb as hell, like you I’m very excited that Ross gets more to do. She’s the star of the season for me (sorry Emma Roberts, but ya basic!). I don’t hold out hope that she won’t be killed in the next episode by either killer, but for now, I am pleased that she’s more front and center.

Montana is the true wildcard. We’ll likely find out more about her connection to the Night Stalker next week, but my hunch is that she’s connected to Brooke’s wedding massacre in some way and she’s using this dumb guy to get her revenge. If this pair of women wind up being the masterminds of this whole season, there’s a good chance that that will be enough to rescue it for me.

And if they kiss...but that’s just my inclination to demand queer content from every show I watch.

Judging from the preview for next week, we’re not going to get anything subversive, though seeing Jingles go up against the Night Stalker give me a little tingle of Freddy vs Jason, so...that’s something? Until then, Terry, let’s close down camp for another week!

Next week, we’ll be heading over to Joe’s site to cover Episode 4, “True Killers”