It's Check-In Time At American Horror Story: Hotel

Ja, For Sure, From Sweden!

The Princesses And The Pea

Front desk clerk Iris having checked in Aggie and Vendela and informed them that they can't have their deposit back -- they might as well just stay the one night they've already paid for and find out the Hotel Cortez isn't as horrible as its cavernous and strangely empty lobby would make it seem, right? -- Vendela and Aggie make their way with her to their room and find it disgusting. (Although there is a kitchenette, so it could be worse?) Vendela goes to get ice, which takes her past a few of the weirdos we'll presumably come to know better soon.

A maid with an old-timey hairstyle and accent cheerfully steams bloodstains out of a sheet!

A couple of Children Of The Corn make nuisances of themselves!

And a hand seems about to touch Vendela on the back of the neck, OR DOES IT?!

When Vendela returns to the room, Aggie is lighting some candles she's brought and complaining that something in the room smells like a dead animal. Vendela calls down to the front desk to demand another room, but Iris tells them the hotel's sold out. I guess they've got to like it or lump it, right?

WELL, SPEAKING OF LUMPS, that's when Aggie notices something weird about the mattress. They tear off the bedding (for real, if you're ever so horrified by a hotel room that you feel compelled to do this: just go home) and find that the cover's been hacked apart and haphazardly sewn back together. Vendela takes charge, marching over to the kitchenette silverware drawer and pulling out a butter knife, and though Aggie protests that they'll be charged for the damage, Vendela DGAF and goes to work hacking at the stitches. When she's cut them apart, there's a moment of dread as the Swedes wait for something to happen. And then something does!

Mystery solved, I guess?

Don't tell me what to covet, show.

That Free People Tamisole Will Never Be The Same!

So after that guy/creature went ahead and popped out of their bed, Aggie and Vendela are not that psyched about staying the night in the Hotel Cortez after all -- not even when Iris says she's comped them for the room that had a human newt sewn into the bed! how ungrateful! Iris informs them that the cops are coming, and that the Vendela and Aggie can speak to them -- either at the hotel, when said cops arrive, or else in jail after Iris has them arrested for "evasion." For some reason, Iris's guests are convinced that this is a charge that would stick UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES and let her lead them to Room 64.

When Vendela comments that Iris had said she didn't have any other rooms, Iris replies, "This one we never rent out." Nothing untoward about that, I'm sure.

Time passes, apparently very slowly. When the alarm clock next to the bed ticks over to 2:25, the radio comes on, playing warbly '40s-ish music. Vendela glances around and notices she's a lone, whereupon she creeps toward the bathroom door as the radio makes that ghostly sound of messing around between stations, and then...

Seven? This Is Like Seventy.

Detective John Lowe is briefed on a couple found in a room in a hotel much less derelict than the Hotel Cortez, OR AT LEAST IT WAS UNTIL THIS SHIT HAPPENED.

In a shot I'm told is way too filthy not to get this page flagged by our ad providers even though it aired in primetime on basic cable: a man is sitting on the bed, with a woman straddling him. His hands have been nailed to the headboard, Christ-style; hers are also nailed to it, her palms pressed to it. For good measure, she's also impaled on what seems to be a curtain rod with a finial on the end and everything, so it sure seems like she's dead. But he isn't!

Lowe's colleague, Det. Hahn: "Our victim's eyeballs are in the ashtray." Lowe notices what appears to be the male victim's tongue, as well, and the EMT confirms that "He's in a world of hurt," in case you weren't certain about that. The victim can't really talk, but he's moaning what sounds like "Help me," as one does. Lowe figures out that the victims were "married, but not to each other," and each side of the bed is flanked by framed photos with the eyes carefully cut out and a bunch of votive candles burning. "They were cheating." Hahn chalks it up to "a very pissed-off spouse," but Lowe doesn't think this is jealousy: "This is something else. The killer's saying the families are blind to what's been going on." He turns at the sound of more moaning from the victim, and while Hahn perfunctorily comforts him, Lowe squints, and then suddenly finds a bottle of super glue: "He's saying 'get me out of her.' He's still inside of her." Lowe predicts they'll finds ED drugs in the victim's system, "probably a lot," and adds that they'll have to be separated elsewhere: "Take him with the corpse. Cut him loose."

Oscar Blogging's Rougher Than You'd Think!

After FaceTiming with his sweet, innocent daughter Scarlett and reading Little Women with her before she goes to bed (blowing off a call from someone a uni tells Lowe is "pretty adamant" to do so), Lowe is reminded of the similarities between this couple he's just been called in to deal with and a certain Martin Gamboa, an Oscar blogger killed by blunt-force trauma in his home in Silverlake; there were "traces of what appear to be gold paint chips" both in the fatal head wound and in his rectum. While this narration is happening, we don't just see but LINGER ON crime scene photos so gory I actually can't believe they were broadcast. Seriously, one is of the guy prone, fully nude, with the camera angled basically right up his bloody butt crack. I'M NOT THAT SQUEAMISH BUT MAYBE RYAN MURPHY IS REWIRING MY BRAIN with this shit! Gross! Also unnecessary, particularly since I'm pretty sure this corpse isn't ever going to be a character on the show? THAT'LL DO.

Mouse, Meet Cat

Lowe is heading out for the night when he gets a call from an unknown caller and for some reason picks it up. (I guess if you're a cop you kind of have to? Sucks to be a cop.) The caller -- whose voice is disguised -- says he's the one whose call Lowe didn't take earlier: "I nailed them to the headboard. I'm at the Hotel Cortez. Room 64. I'm going to do it again." Sounds like something Lowe had better investigate alone, with no backup and apparently without even telling anyone where he's going!

Shoot, Gabriel, Shoot

Poor Gabriel's barely shot up in Room 64 (where else, though there's no sign Aggie and Vendela were ever there) and started to nod out when suddenly someone/thing is there wanting to make friends! It wastes no time turning Gabriel over and ripping down his jeans...

...and for the briefest second we get a look at what is about to make its way into Gabriel. Yikes.

Lowe shows up at the hotel -- alone, of course, because why bring backup? Iris immediately clocks him as a cop. He asks who's currently in Room 64, and she says it's vacant. Lowe looks to the mail slot and sees the key for 64 missing. He asks if he might take a look. Iris: "Be my guest." I get it.

Iris calls out for "Liz Taylor," and all our lives instantly improve. Denis O'Hare, how are you always the best?

As the skinfaced gimp continues going to town on Gabriel's colon, a leopard-coated, crimp-haired lady straight out of Slaves Of New York literally pulls up a chair to gaze into his anguished face and advises Gabriel, "The more you scream, the more he likes it."

As Liz leads Lowe to 64, Lowe peppers her with questions: for instance, is the hotel mostly full of residents or transients? Liz drawls that some pay by the hour, some by the day: "Some of the old-timers have been here since the dawn of time." She then asks Lowe what he's looking for. Lowe curtly says he's "not at liberty to say," but that's not what Liz means: "I can see the pain in your eyes.Very familiar. You've lost something. And now you're frozen in time. Can't move forward, can't go back."

Sally urges Gabriel to say tell her he loves her: "SAY IT. Say 'I love you, Sally,' and it will all go away." Of course, he does, and his antagonist apparently poofs away. Once isn't enough, so Sally makes Gabriel repeat that he loves her. When he does?

Sally settles back, gets out a cigarette, and lights it.

Liz's caftan billows gorgeously as she leads Lowe to 64 and opens the door. Lowe says he'll take it from there. Liz holds out her hand for a tip, and when Lowe tells her he doesn't have any cash, she sniffs, "Monty isn't everything." In the room, there's no sign of the Swedish guests OR Gabriel, or anyone else. Lowe lies down to take a nap...

...which is when we see Lowe's not actually alone after all...

...and then when the clock ticks over to 2:25 next to him, the same routine happens as with Vendela earlier. But this time Lowe sees one of the creepy-ass blond kids without quite being able to focus on his face. When the kid takes off, Lowe follows, yelling, "Holden?" Lowe chases the wisp of what he can see around the halls for a while before stopping and rubbing his eyes and deciding that little shithead isn't worth finding anyway, or maybe that's just me.

Bleed A Little While Tonight

Hypodermic Sally vs. Iris

Poor Iris has just gotten Aggie and Vendela -- or, as she calls them, those "dumb Swedish meatballs" (fair) -- into a couple of crazy-looking cages and is preparing to force-feed them a nutritious smoothie of oysters, chicken livers, kidneys, and white wine through a funnel when Sally saunters in to be all fucking critical about it. "Do you really need to be so aggressive?" Sally asks Iris. "Can't you have some compassion?" Iris crabs that she doesn't want to be there with the junkies and decay. Sally points out that Iris has been whining about that "for twenty years," and that if Iris stays, it's because she likes it. "No, I'm stuck in this godforsaken cesspool of pain and shit because of you," Iris shoots back. "You're the beginning and the end of all my suffering." "GOOD," snaps Sally.

Iris declares that she's done, and that if Sally thinks she can do...whatever this is better than Iris, she's welcome to -- but she has to do a good job: "You can explain to her why they still taste like shit." Iris takes off to go feed "that thing in Room 33," hee hee, and Sally gives the Swedes a little history lesson about the old rich guy who used to use this room for puppet shows -- but now Vendela is going to entertain Sally: "Move me with your tears." Vendela's not sure what to do as Sally opens Vendela's cage and tells her, "Run." She remains frozen in terror and confusion for a moment, until Sally bellows "RUUUUUUUN!" and finally she figures she might as well run?

With Aggie screaming after her not to leave Aggie alone, Vendela hauls ass through the halls, and along the mezzanine, where Iris spots her and sighs disgustedly. When Vendela makes it down to the ground floor, Iris stalks, without much urgency, to try to stop her before she can get to the front doors, but Iris needn't have bothered at all.

Iris is very nervous and servile with Lady Elizabeth, stammering, "I don't know what happened. She got loose somehow." "This can never happen again," states Lady Elizabeth, striding off as Vendela bloodily expires.

Well, that was a nice carpet they had, ONCE. Way to go, Vendela.

Winner: Sally, for now.

Don't Bring Your Very Young Child To An Active Crime Scene

So Lowe has come home to relieve his doctor wife Alex so she can go do house calls (I guess she's a concierge doctor, because the hell?) and hear some timely social commentary on how one of her patients has whooping cough and then taken his daughter out for sushi when he gets a text, apparently from Alex.

I say "apparently" because Lowe doesn't know he's in a horror story and just takes it at face value, heading straight for that address. This time, at least, he called it in, but when he arrives there's only one cop car and one cop present. Naturally, Lowe takes out his firearm and just tells his kid to stay in the car, and the cop to keep an eye on her before creeping into the house -- and the cop totally does, until he hears a rustling in some trees nearby and takes off to investigate. Left alone, Scarlet decides she might as well go see what's up inside, and after what feels like many minutes of watching the Lowes slowly wander around this dark house looking at creepy shit and possibly ghosts...

...Scarlett finds what Lowe's quarry apparently wanted him to...

...a couple of guys very Hannibalishly strung up, with their intestines spiraling out. What a terrible, certainly avoidable situation! Lowe, you are bad at your job! And at dadding!

Speaking Of Lowe Being Bad At Both His Job And Dadding...

Here's where we find out what Liz Taylor was talking about when she told him she could tell he had lost something and couldn't move on: five years ago, in Santa Monica, Lowe put his son Holden on a carousel horse, turned away to mess with his phone, and straight-up lost him. To me, no big loss -- look at the dumb hair on that little puke -- but apparently his parents weren't thrilled about it.

Bye, Fe-Lowe-cia

Situation: Someone's messing with Lowe and his family, with probably murderous intent, so since Lowe assumes he's the target, he's going to arrange for police protection for Scarlett and Alex -- presumably not the same guy who abandoned Scarlett in the dark at a murder scene to go chase after a possum or something -- and move out for a while.

What makes it awkward? Alex wants him to go, and says so. She explains that it's not because she doesn't love Lowe, or that she blames him for having lost Holden. It's that every time she looks at Lowe, she seems Holden in his face, and she needs a break. (She also says she's still hopeful that Holden will turn out to be alive, which is "the worst part.")

How is order restored? It's not, and based on where Lowe goes, it's not likely to be.

Started From The Bottom, Now We're Here

Name:	Will Drake.
Age:	Late 30s.
Occupation:	Fashion designer.
Goal:	To make an exciting new life for himself and his son Lachlan in Los Angeles as owner of the Hotel Cortez. And hey, things are getting pretty exciting for Lachlan already!
Sample Dialogue:	"I'm on a cleanse."

GameBoy!

Hey Lachlan, want to see something cool? How about Holden Lowe, who apparently is still alive just like his mother had hoped, and who hasn't aged since he disappeared from that carousel five years ago?

And a bunch of other kids one presumes got to be in Lady Elizabeth's "care" by similar means? What could be so enticing in this room that it would keep stolen children both eternally youthful and uncommonly pacified for a half-decade -- or maybe even more?

Wall-size GameBoy! Is the Tetris music in your head yet? It will be!

Downtown!

Speaking of lost boys, here's where we flash back to Donovan and Iris's origin story. In 1994, Donovan was just your basic dirtbag junkie -- nothing like the stylish blood enthusiast he's become -- and Iris, his mother, was surveilling him from her car.

We watch her watch him trail behind Sally and into the Cortez; after a safe length of time has passed, Iris follows, and urgently begs Liz Taylor to tell her which room they're in. (Liz is reading Ulysses, which may be significant, but my willingness to make these posts informative and add value to your viewing experience has its limits, and they include not reading that book.)

Elsewhere, Donovan struggles to find a good vein while Sally shoots herself up first. When he's ready, she goes to hand him her needle. Donovan, not really asking, confirms that she's going to give him a new needle, to which Sally drawls, "I'm the cleanest person you know." Not really in a position or frame of mind to make self-preserving demands, Donovan takes it and does his business.

One bribe later, Iris is upstairs, banging on the door; Sally bitterly lets her in, striding past the plush lounge chairs in the sitting room that let us know they're in Room 64. Iris hurries in and demands to know what Sally gave Donovan; Sally says it's China White. Donovan is out, about which Sally comments that she had told him not to try to keep up with her. She starts to collect her things as Iris screams at her to call 911, and that Sally can't leave him.

Sally does, however, leave, wandering unsteadily down the hall and turning it into a little dance. She ends up in front of an improbably wide-open window on the upper floor of this tall building, so of course...

That's when "Hotel California" starts up, so I guess we're supposed to figure out that this is how Sally "check[ed] out," but also why she's never left? Ditto Iris? (I really wish they had left this corny, on-the-nose song choice for the season finale. Or better yet, out of this season entirely.) Anyway, after apparently murdering Sally, Iris returns to the room to find that Donovan, even unconscious, is catnip to the ladies.

"Your boy has a jawline for days," says Elizabeth. She's not wrong -- and wait until she sees his ass!

What, He's Been Banned From The Days Inn?

And then we close on Lowe collecting his things, leaving his house, and checking into the Cortez.

AND NOT ONLY THAT BUT YOU GUYS CHECK OUT WHICH ROOM HE "ENDED UP" IN!!!!! I hope an anal rape or two from a gimp with skin grown over his entire face is worth getting a glimpse of his dumb son again!!!