American Horror Story - Small Screen Review
Episode Nine - "Spooky Little Girl"
The year is 1947 and the current resident of the Murder House is David Curan (Joshua Malina), a dentist who sees neighborhood patients. New to Hollywood is Elizabeth Short (Mena Suvari) who has dreams on making it big as an actress and wants the dentist to fix her teeth. As she can’t pay him, she offers up sexual favors in return for his services. The dentist is happy to oblige, raping her after she passes out from the knockout gas. Things go awry as Miss Short does not revive after he removes the mask, so the dentist drags her body to the basement where, lo and behold, Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross) appears, all too eager to help. He chops her up and gives her a Glasgow smile (or Chelsea grin, if you prefer). Though the body of the Black Dahlia is found mutilated, her spirit still haunts the Murder House.
Moving on, this episode was perhaps the strongest for Ben so far. We’ve seen him walking around in a daze, fantasizing about Moira (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Hayden, oblivious to things going on around him. With Vivien gone off to the looney bin, Ben is starting to take things a little more seriously. We see this from the outset as he turns down Moira’s advances. Enter Elizabeth Short in ghost form, seeking the consultation of Ben as a psychiatrist. She nearly seduces him into infidelity again, but the phone rings and interrupts him. It’s Vivien’s doctor and she has news about the twins. Citing “superfecundation,” she tells Ben that his wife’s twins have two separate fathers.
Ben uses this fact to lord over her while she was assumedly unconscious in her hospital bed, calling her a stranger, a liar and a betrayer. Although Ben now suspects his wife of having cheated, he still resists the urge to cheat himself, even when he sees Miss Short and Moira making out on his couch. As Ben is the sole person who hasn’t figured out the power of the house, he attempts to kick Elizabeth out while “firing” Moira. After a nice flashback to the night that Ben slept with Hayden before the Harmons left Boston, Ben admits that he made a mistake and abused his authority. He admits to Hayden that he doesn’t love her and she takes it fairly well…only dropping a hint that Luke was fooling around with his wife. A quick chat with the security guard makes it clear that one of the twins isn’t his as he admitted to “shooting blanks“.
In one of the most transformational scenes for Ben in the series so far, he finds the S&M mask and Moira attempts to seduce him one last time. Ben resists and admits he made a mistake. Here, the true form of Moira (Frances Conroy) appears and tells Ben, “Congratulations. You’re finally seeing things as they are.” Perhaps Ben has a fighting chance after all.
Later, after revealing to Elizabeth Short the true nature of her death, Hayden welcomes Travis back into her bed (or, more accurately, the basement floor). After he finishes, Travis tells Hayden that he’s going back to Constance. She asks him for a hug and, when he obliges, stabs him to death. Hayden worries that the police will find the body and arrest Ben. As Travis bleeds out on the floor, his ghost appears alongside Elizabeth Short and Charles Montgomery. The good doctor offers up his services once more and Hayden says she knows someone who owes her a favor. The scene cuts to some kids playing basketball, who find the mutilated corpse of the wannabe actor, Travis, taking on the new persona of the Black Dahlia.
Moira tells Constance that Tate has been up to no good. Constance searches him out to see if it’s true. When he confesses to fathering one of the twins, she wails on him, lamenting that they finally had someone in the house that could help them. She is last seen in her kitchen having a discussion with the medium, Billie Dean (Sarah Paulson). Constance asks her what happens when a baby is born from a union of a human and a spirit. Billie Dean goes on to talk about the selection of the Pope. When a new Pope is chosen, he enters a small room known as the Room of Tears (true), in which lies the Pope’s Box (false?). Inside the box is apparently the secret to the end of the world, the true nature of the antichrist. “A child born of human and spirit will usher in the end of times.” As Billie Dean puts it, one of the twins is a perversion of the Immaculate Conception as “the Devil wanted a little more bang for his buck.”
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