The Big Oozy

House Of Horrors/Dinner Parties

The home of Madame Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) is the center of elegant society in 1834 New Orleans! Unless you're a slave, in which case its attic is hell on earth, where you might get caged...

...all the holes in your face sewn up...

...flayed...

Charlie, 1996ish-2013

Charlie (Kurt Krause) had no idea when he went home with Zoe (Taissa Farmiga) for some standard afternoon delight that his getting into her vagina would lead to a fatal "brain aneurysm" (death by involuntary witchcraft). But Charlie's death isn't in vain: it leads directly to the revelation that Zoe is a witch by birth, and the news that she must relocate to a special witches' boarding school in New Orleans, "the new Salem."

Exposition Disgorged By Sarah Paulson After She Cuts Short Some Hazing

• Zoe is the fourth student currently enrolled at Miss Robichaux's Academy For Exceptional Girls
• Paulson is playing "Cordelia Foxx, Headmistress"
• the school was originally a finishing school, established in 1790
• it was a military hospital during the Civil War
• then a witch bought it and turned it into a witch school
• she was "the reigning Supreme" at the time
• in its glory days, it hosted sixty girls
• witches are "a dying breed"
• families that have witch blood don't reproduce in order not to pass on the gene
• average witches are born with "a few natural gifts," but a Supreme -- of which there is one in every generation -- "embodies countless gifts"
• Cordelia is not the Supreme
• Cordelia is a regular witch, and a teacher who will help the girls identify and control their powers
• "not suppression: control"
• "a poor Cajun girl" named Misty Day, a few months back, evinced the power of "resurgence" (resurrection), and was burned at the stake
• witches are under siege, and if they don't keep that fact in mind, they'll face extinction

Monkeyshines

Who called the meeting? Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange).

What's it about? She wants David (Ian Anthony Dale), a scientist whose anti-aging research she's been funding, to start injecting her with the drug he's tested (successfully) on a monkey.

How'd it go? Kind of a mixed bag: she does induce him to start shooting her up with this supposed miracle drug -- even though he's stated that it won't be ready for human trials for another two years -- but after five days, she sees no difference in her appearance. So she orders him to come to her home so she can berate him, suck the life force out of him, and stare at her disappointing face with regret.

Silent As The Grave

Spalding the Butler: the strong, silent type.

Exposiconflict

Over dinner, specifics about the girls' powers come out, more or less organically, in conversation. Nan (Jamie Brewer) can apparently read minds, and sketches in what happened between Zoe and Charlie. When Zoe says it was an accident, Madison proudly reveals that the event that got her sent to Miss Robichaux's wasn't: she telekinetically unscrewed a studio light and dropped it on a director's head, killing him. Queenie calls out Madison for her lack of acting talent. Madison spills Queenie's soup in her lap.

Queenie stabs her own hand with her fork, raising wounds in Madison's, because Queenie is a human voodoo doll. She also threatens to slash her own (Madison's) throat.

Winner: Madison, who doesn't get hustled out for a walk (by Nan), and stays at the table to make frat party plans with Zoe.

Exposition Disgorged By Sarah Paulson In Her Second Scene Of The Episode (With An Assist From Jessica Lange)

• the glamour is gone from Los Angeles
• Cordelia doesn't have a broom
• Cordelia's alleged "restorative" potion would have knocked out Fiona for a couple of weeks, had she not left it on the floor for the cat
• Fiona is Cordelia's mother
• Fiona is the Supreme
• Cordelia is powerful, but satisfied with her life
• Fiona just got back from a spiritual retreat in Sedona with Shirley MacLaine: "It was about forgiveness"
• Fiona wants to stay and help Cordelia, because she's fired up about Misty Day
• Cordelia wants to teach her young witches how to assimilate; Fiona wants to foment revolution
• against Cordelia's wishes, Fiona is staying

Scenes From A Frat Party

This Isn't Quite Madeline

After splashily introducing herself to Cordelia's students (by throwing Madison into a wall for calling her a "stupid hag"), Fiona announces that she's taking the girls on a field trip, where they find their way to the LaLaurie house and we get a recap of what we already know, plus new information: the minotaur was the lover of Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), who took revenge on Madame LaLaurie...though no one's entirely sure how, because her body was never found. However, outside in the courtyard, Nan tells Fiona she can hear "the lady of the house."

At the hospital, Zoe curses out an unconscious rapist (Grey Damon), saying he should have been the one who died instead of Kyle (Evan Peters), the nice boy who tried to save Madison, and without the receptionist's noticing, she closes the door!

Fiona directs the movers bringing her stuff into Miss Robichaux's, then takes off, sneering at Cordelia, "Don't make me drop a house on you"!

Though she's been acting like getting gang-raped at a frat party was no big deal, Madison cries in the shower!

Zoe gets the frat bro hard with a businesslike wristie, and then climbs on to fuck him to death with her powers!

Fiona supervises a couple of gravediggers pulling a coffin out of the LaLaurie courtyard, magics away their memory of what they just did, and then opens the box to reveal a still-alive Delphine!

"Come on, Mary Todd Lincoln. I'll buy you a drink."