Category Archives: Drama
‘American Horror Story: Coven’ Recap: “The Replacements”
I watched the most recent episode of American Horror Story: Coven, “The Replacements,” about an hour after it aired. Prior to that, I noticed several Facebook/Twitter/what-have-you posts that all echoed the same sentiment: “WTF did I just watch?!” So I prepared myself for a doozy and settled in to watch. Everything seemed relatively normal and I thought, “Hmm, this isn’t so bad,” but halfway through the episode, the freakout began.
Kyle is back at home after Zoe moved him from the second coming of Stevie Nicks’ cabin to his own home where she felt he’d heal better under his mother’s care. Misty, undoubtedly lonely in the woods, grew attached to Kyle and is not totally ready for him to leave, but Zoe takes him anyway. Back at Kyle’s, Mommie Dearest greets him in bed. Earlier, she walked in on him in the shower and noticed his new body parts. Wait, did she just glance down south? Back in the bed, she kisses him and kisses him some more and OH MY GOD THIS IS TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE. SHE’S REACHING UNDER THE COVERS. OH. OKAY. So, Kyle’s mom has been sexually abusing him for an undisclosed amount of time, which is something Zoe might have known had she actually, you know, known him. This continues later on in the episode, giving us Kyle’s first words since his resurrection: he screams “No” over and over again while beating his mom’s face in with an old trophy.
“The Walking Dead”: “Infected” Recap
In last night’s episode of The Walking Dead, the prison is starting to crumble as a safe haven. Outside forces, like the mysterious disease and the growing number of walkers near one spot of the fence, are threatening the whole group. Last week’s episode ended with a new character Patrick getting sick and turning into a walker. This set off a whole chain of events that unfolded last night. Rick theorizes that the illness and the sick animals could be connected. He also notices that the walkers are grouped near the livestock. He then sacrifices the pigs to draw the walkers away from the fence. Problem solved, right?
There is also a new threat within the group. Someone is feeding the walkers live rats, which could be another reason why they crowded in one area. This same person might have been responsible for killing two people that were suspected to have the mystery flu. Since there are so many new people in the prison, this is a recipe for disaster. Last week, Rick learned to stop trusting people. This lesson is probably going to spread to everyone in the original group. This is evident because Rick and Carl are carrying guns again.
‘American Horror Story: Coven’: “Boy Parts” Recap
This week’s episode of American Horror Story: Coven opened up against a classic Louisiana landscape: the bayou. Two poachers hunting gators are hauling a catch up to their camp when they noticed a woman we know as (the recently burned-at-the-stake) Misty Day wandering around. As Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” served as the background music, Day, looking very Nicks-ish herself (more on that later), examines several of their previous kills and lets the hunters know how she feels about their hobby. Given her power of resurrection, it was easy to see where this was going. She brings all of the gators back to life, and they decimate the two men, guilty of murdering innocent creatures for their own personal gain. When we last saw Misty, she was called a necromancer and burned by her God-fearing peers. Now, she’s mentally and physically reborn.
Back at the school, Cordelia gets the girls up and ready for the day. Zoe is still mourning Kyle, but Madison feels he’s just as guilty as his fraternity brothers. Zoe can’t accept that, but Madison assures her he would have died anyway because of Zoe’s power. Fiona, meanwhile, has Madame LaLaurie tied up and gagged in her room. Fiona warns her not to scream, but of course she does. I’m still not exactly sure what she thought this would accomplish. She obviously wants to be helped, but I’d imagine it would be difficult for someone who’s been buried alive for 180 years to navigate the present.
‘Sleepy Hollow’: “John Doe” Recap
It seems like Sleepy Hollow is taking a break from their usual “demon of the week” story lines. They are also taking a three-week break to give way for The World Series. Instead of fighting a demon, they are continuing to keep Horsemen from entering. This week they had to combat something completely new: infectious diseases.
This week’s episode titled “John Doe,” had Ichabod and Abbie fighting one of the other horsemen of the apocalypse: Pestilence. Only for about ten seconds, for the entirety of the episode was dedicated to figuring out the whole disease situation. In the beginning, a boy in Renaissance clothing collapses in the middle of town. He is infected with some type of disease that causes his veins to blacken.
It’s Raining Dead! ‘The Walking Dead’ Returns
Spoilers (show, video game, and comics) ahead, you’ve been warned.
The Walking Dead kicked off its fourth season last night. After a sleeper third season finale, fans were hoping for an amazing premiere. The episode “30 Days Without An Accident” shuffled its way along. It spent the whole episode building up the rest of the season. Not that it’s entirely a bad thing, since that’s what premiere episodes are supposed to do.
Most importantly, the group is quickly going to discover a whole new problem. This time, it isn’t a horde of walkers or a gang of crazy survivors. Not yet, at least. It seems that the animals are finally being infected. Whether it’s by the same infection or a whole new strain has yet to be determined. It started with one of the newer group members (aka walker food) thanking Daryl for the deer he hunted earlier. By the end of the episode, he mysteriously turns into a walker. Throughout the episode, Rick noticed that there were some sick animals in and around the prison. Hershel had stated that they have enough food to feed all of the people in the prison. Well, not anymore.
American Horror Story: Coven’s Promising Premiere
After American Horror Story’s disjointed, cluttered second season, I wasn’t too sure I’d be back for season three. It took such a nosedive after a stellar inaugural season that I didn’t think recovery was possible. I changed my mind with the release of each 15ish-second preview and after the cast was announced. It looked creepy, fresh, and fierce – and it acted the part in “Bitchcraft,” the premiere episode.
The show opens in 1834 New Orleans. Madame Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) hosts some kind of formal gathering in her home. Once all of her guests leave, she heads upstairs to start her nightly beauty routine: rubbing a mixture of blood and a human pancreas on her face like any self-respecting woman would. She’s disrupted, though, when she learns that her daughter was found copulating with a servant. Furious, she has him taken to the attic, where slaves are kept in crates in various states of torture; one man’s eyes and mouth are sewn shut, a woman’s skin has been peeled from her face. Delphine has a child bring in a bull’s head, which she puts over the slave’s like a mask because she’s “always loved the minotaur.” Later, she receives a visit from Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), a priestess claiming to have a potion for Delphine that will curb her husband’s craving for younger women. She gladly takes it but soon discovers it’s poison. Marie sought revenge against Delphine, as her lover was the one who was fitted with a new head. Delphine died, and her body was never found.
Sleepy Hollow: “The Lesser Key of Solomon” Recap
This week, Sleepy Hollow took a break from fighting demons and delved into another topic: humans can be just as scary as demons. Especially, when they are Hessian soldiers whose sole purpose is to release the demons from Hell, including the demon that the show has been teasing for the last 3 episodes. He finally got a name: Moloch. He is the demon that Abbie and Jenny saw in the woods and he is responsible for killing John Cho’s character, Andy Dunn. Well, the first time Andy Dunn died.
Last night’s episode focused more on the strained relationship between Abbie and her sister Jenny. Their constant bickering with Ichabod scolding them makes for great bits of comedy. Lets hope they don’t keep this up, or else it will get very annoying very fast. Since Abbie is making a huge effort to prove how sorry she is for betraying Jenny, I think their bickering will be very minimal. Which is great, since Jenny agreed to help Ichabod and Abbie fight demons.
Sleepy Hollow Makes You Sleep With One Eye Open
After Sleepy Hollow’s strong pilot and terrible second episode, its third episode could either make or break the series. If it continued on with the second episode’s cheesy subplot, obvious Chekhov’s guns and just downright outrageousness; then the show would have to be buried. Luckily, the third episode titled “For the Triumph of Evil…” was a vast improvement over last week’s disaster. This has to do with removing the whole zombie John Cho story line and finally gathering some materials to make an Ichabod/Abbie ship.
This week, Ichabod and Abbie had to fight a demon called “The Sandman,” who like Freddy Krueger, attacks people in their sleep. Instead of actually fighting you, he makes each person relive their sins so they willingly kill themselves. Unfortunately, Abbie is on The Sandman’s hitlist for what she did to her sister, Jenny. Jenny had told the police that she had seen a demon in the woods. Abbie lied and said that she didn’t see anything, thus betraying her sister and forcing her into an institution.
Growth, Decay, Transformation: “Felina” Wraps Up “Breaking Bad”
Confession time: I am a recent Breaking Bad bandwagoner. I mean, it’s barely been a year since I started watching. I popped in season one mid-June of 2012 and barreled through the whole thing just in time for the season five (first half) premiere. When the first couple of seasons aired, I had some interest, but not enough to seek out a download link. I think I even vaguely remember being annoyed that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul beat out a few Lost actors at the 2010 Emmys, which seems a little bizarre to me now. I want to go back in time and tell myself, “WATCH IT. You will learn, child.”
So it’s only been a year, but it feels like many more. After the pilot, I knew there was no going back. This show has absolutely consumed me since then. I’ve been nervous for the finale ever since, not due to a lack of faith in Gilligan & Co., but because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to these characters just yet. While “Felina” was utterly nerve-wracking, a fingernail-destroyer of an episode, it did leave us with some solace. When was the last time we thought that about anything on Breaking Bad? It was the perfect end to a perfect show that never dipped or even approached a downhill slope.
The episode title guaranteed us three things: blood (iron, Fe), meth (lithium, Li), and tears (sodium, Na). A simple, straightforward formula that really could be the overarching theme of the show as a whole, but nothing else was needed. Walt’s death was inevitable, so Gilligan got in, got out, and got it done, but not before tying up every remaining loose end. He even gets continuations of almost every flashforward: leaving Denny’s, retrieving the ricin coupled with a particularly painful flashback to Hank prodding Walt to inject a little more excitement into his life from the pilot. Nothing was extravagant, save for a few masterful cinematography moments – the reveal of Walt behind the pillar in Skyler’s kitchen comes to mind.
Which Returning Show Are You Looking Forward To?
We’re trying something new at Wait! What’s a Dial? In the past, we’ve reviewed shows based on their trailers. However, now that we’re reviewing a lot of pilots, we want you to let us know what you think the upcoming season of returning shows will be like based on their trailers.
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