SHOCK gives a blow by bloody blow account of last night’s installment of AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL.
John wakes in the 2am hour to horrible nightmares of zombies fucking in his shower. He then sees Holden and chases him through the halls. When he gets to the lobby, it is empty, and he chalks it up to his dream. Sally finds him and wants to buy him a drink, but then sees the recovering alcoholic in him. She waxes poetic about chasing the perfect high, then asks about his last drunken day. He was investigating a homicide which looked like a man poisoned his wife and three kids, then shot himself. It turns out that they died of a carbon monoxide leak and when he found his family dead, the man shot himself. John went on a two day bender after that. When he came home, he took his family to the beach, a desperate gesture of apology. That was the day Holden went missing. He leaves the bar without touching the booze.
Drake is preparing a fashion show for the lobby of the hotel, to introduce all his fabulous fashion friends to his new digs. Scarlett is dropped off by one of Johns police buddies, and Drake invites them to stay for the party. John declines; it is too adult, but Drake insists Scarlett can hang out with Lachlan. Meanwhile, Sally is having a conniption because her name isnt on the list, despite being a resident.
The fashion show begins. Tristan, a junkie model full of rage, snorts lines of whatever he can crush up before hitting the runway. He grabs a spectators champagne, drinks it, and smashes the glass; he grabs a woman and starts kissing her. Her companion tries to pull Tristan off, so Tristan starts kissing him. This turns into a scuffle, and Tristan goes for a broken piece of champagne flute. Elizabeth, sitting front and center, locks eyes with Tristan for a long minute. He calms, and walks away without further confrontation. Donovan is jealous.
Drake finds Tristan backstage, looking for more coke, and yells at him to get back on the runway. Tristan is done with modeling and cuts his cheek open before storming out. He ransacks the hotel, looking for drugs, starting with Elizabeths suite. Donovan catches him, throws him to the floor, and is about to take a bite when Elizabeth stops him. Tristan escapes to the elevator, which stops halfway to the lobby. He pries open the door and finds himself on a dark, seemingly empty floor. It feels as though he has stepped back in time. He pops into one suite, with old-timey music playing, and starts rummaging. A dapper man, who we later find out is Mr. March, dressed like he stepped out of the 1920s, appears, and doesnt care if Tristan steals from him. March has found something much better than drugs: murder. He offers Tristan a handgun and a whore, but Tristan isnt interested. March reveals his bloody, torn-out throat and shoots the girl anyway. Tristan runs from the room, screaming, back to the elevator, where Elizabeth draws him in.
During the fashion show, Lachlan is bored and wants to show Scarlett something secret. He takes her into a drained swimming pool and shows her a few glass coffins, each containing a ghostly vampire child. One opens his eyes – Holden. Scarlett is shocked. She cant let it rest, so the next day she takes a bus to the hotel and goes looking for Holden. The coffins are now empty, so she starts snooping. She finds the hidden playroom, empty save for Holden. What took you so long? he inquires. Holden has not aged since the day he was taken, and Scarlett is overjoyed, even if Holden hasnt aged. She wants to take him home, but Holden is home; he likes it here. You can come visit whenever you want, he offers. She wants to at least take a photo to prove to her parents she found him. They selfie, but Holden leans in to bite Scarletts neck, and she runs from the room. Scarlett arrives home to find her street blocked off by police. Her house is madness as her parents think that she has gone missing, too. They embrace her, but when she tells stories of finding her missing twin brother, her parents become furious. Scarlett throws her phone at her dad and storms away. John looks at the photo on the phone: Scarlett is in focus, but she is sitting next to a pale, streaky blur.
Tristan marvels at his healed cut and his peaches n cream complexion. Elizabeth has changed him, but calls it a virus. They have rough sex in the bathtub while she explains that they dont bite, they cut; dont drink from the dead, the ill, or junkies; the sun wont kill you but it will sap your energy; and you are only immortal if you are smart about it. Dont get caught and dont fall in love. Thats the part you save for me.
The lovers move the sex to her bed, where Elizabeth admits she was born in 1904. She loved the late 1970s the best. In flashbacks, we see Elizabeth ride into a disco on horseback (a move that is clearly copied from a 1977 event, when Bianca Jagger rode a white horse around Studio 54), dance with ten-foot-long hair, and feed out in the open. We were all vampires then, she reminisces. Donovan walks in, seething with jealousy, and Elizabeth asks for a moment alone with him. Donovan cant believe she would turn a stupid model, but Elizabeth reminds him he was a dying junkie when she saved him. There is no reason this has to end badly, she tells him before moving into the other room. Donovan worries that he is being thrown out, and he professes his love to Elizabeth. She loves him too, but it isnt who you kill or who you screw that makes you – it is the heartbreaks. The bigger the better. She tells him to pack his things.
John returns to the hotel, furious, and arrests Iris for the kidnap of his son. She remains calm and explains that she will tell him everything if he takes off the cuffs, asks nice, and buys her a drink. John agrees and the two adjourn to the bar. John is poured a drink, but he defiantly pushes it away. Iris begins her story of James Patrick March, the man who built the Hotel Cortez.
March was a self-made man, but he was new money, so he left the east coast and came west, where people dont care how old your money is; just that you have it. He built this hotel in 1925, in a story that is obviously based on serial killer H.H. Holmes. March had designed the house as the perfect torture chamber. There were hidden chutes, secret rooms, hallways that went nowhere, walls lined with asbestos so as to dampen screams. People would come in here, but then just vanish. As we learned in his encounter with Tristan, drugs no longer scratched that itch to feel alive, but murder did. It was rumored that he killed at least three people a week, and that he forced his wife to watch.
As we see in flashbacks, Marchs wife was a willing participant; she may have even egged March on. Though we dont see her face, it seems pretty obvious that his wife was Elizabeth. Among his tortures: sealing a live woman behind a brick wall; slashing a woman with razor claws; hammering a mans head in. They were all dropped down chutes into a basement that you must imagine is filled with bodies.
One of Marchs victims insists that, even with his murder inevitable, he still believes in a god. March decides he will have to kill god, that is his message to the world. He sends his loyal maid, Miss Evers, to collect all the bibles from the hotel. That Sunday, the police discover a pile of dead migrant workers in a field, surrounded by bibles. March was careless, and he left his monogramed hankie at the crime scene, though Iris believes his wife turned him in. Miss Evers rushes to March, warning him that the cops are there to arrest him. March decides he wont go alive, and he picks a knife and a gun. One for Miss Evers, one for himself. Ever the gentleman, she allows him to pick how she wants to die. She chooses gun, and requests that she be his final victim. March eagerly acts upon her wishes, then slits his own throat. He is dead before the police can break down the door.
John listens to this story, but doesnt believe a word of it. People do enough damage without help from the afterlife. Iris warns him to expand his thinking, and warns him that the room John is staying in was Marchs office. If the building had a heart, that is it, black as the ace of spades.
Back at work, John adds Marchs known murders to his big board o murder. He sees a biblical pattern in the current kills as well as in Marchs, and thinks the killer now is following in Marchs footsteps.
