'American Horror Story': Killing them awfully

However, he has busied himself setting up a workshop at home where he turns the skinned and mutilated bodies of kidnapped women into lampshades, candy bowls and other such modern decor. Most of us felt increasingly suspicious of the kindly head-shrinker's intentions after that kinky aversion/conversion nonsense, and the majority of his insights sounded like grad-school cliches purred without conviction. But not too many viewers could have guessed that Dr. Thredson was in fact Bloody Face and "rescued" Lana from Briarcliff so he could get her alone, watch her make out with the frozen body of her dead lover and be subjected to ritualized humiliation and presumed assault. Lana may yet escape to tell Bloody Face's tale, as he portends earlier in their climactic scene. In fact, her account may be what inspires a legion of perverse admirers, including the weirdos who killed Adam Levine and his lady some 48 years later. But what about that other Bloody Face who killed those imitators? Copycat, or "Saw"-like disciple scenario? Yet more unanswerable questions to consider.

Unless spending consecutive episodes as a discarded double amputee who's been surgically and chemically altered to resemble a scorched, disfigured slug is her idea of fun. Which, given her audacious roles over the years, may well be true. This week, Shelley was the recipient of a mixed blessing, thanks to Satan/Sister Mary Eunice (whom we suspect will flash more than a sinister grin in coming episodes), who removed her from the premises before Sister Jude scoured Dr. Arden's lab for evidence of wrongdoing. Only catch is that she left her the bottom of a stairwell outside an elementary school, where a truly unfortunate child, and eventually his teacher and classmates, witnessed her decrepit body lurching toward the light. This could turn out to be Arden's undoing, which was possibly in the devil's plans all along. It's just hard to understand why the embodiment of undiscriminating evil would be doling out comeuppance so judiciously.

No wonder our conflicted Briarcliff administrator clings so desperately to the cloth and its most severe methods of indoctrination. One night outside the habit and she's already shacking up with some slimy middle-aged businessman after slugging down more booze than she's sniffed in 15 years. Wayward Jude finally recognized that her "goose was cooked" in light of poorly handling the Anne Frank mess and Dr. Arden's potent threats at her tenuous authority. Our guess is that motel fling with Mr. Pudgycheeks was a one-night stand with her past life, as if to somehow erase the time between her drunken hit-and-run and current state of spiritual crisis. (Or, alternatively, to shame herself into acceptance of her past.) Maybe she can even find redemption by helping save Lana. Well, that, and discontinuing her policy of violent degradation to affect more Jesuit behavioral standards. Hey Jude, don't make it bad, put down the whips and sterilization orders and make it better.