Welcome to the ninth episode of American Horror Story, the show that has simultaneously lowered and raised the bar for television everywhere. Is this show ridiculous? Of course! Am I at all interested in watching TV shows that DON’T feature a talking severed head of Kathy Bates? NOPE NOPE NOPASAURUS REX!

This show has ruined real life for me, you guys. Like, if the four horsemen of the apocalypse appeared before me (and Riese wanted me to recap our imminent demise) I would take an iPhone pic, write something like “Neigh Girl Neigh!” underneath, and then take my place alongside all the other doomed souls.

This week’s vocab word is: shoinks! It’s a combination of “shit!” and “yoinks!” Spread it like wildfire.

We open on father and son campers in the woods. It’s 1991. Turns out it’s Baby Hank and his dad, who are on Hank’s first witch hunting trip. Is this how men bond?

Dad tells Hank not to be nervous, and gives him a rifle bigger than he is. Apparently they’ve been hunters for generations, killing witches, upholding the patriarchy, driving the priestesses of Avalon into the mists. You know, just bro-ing out.

Soon, a bedraggled looking woman stumbles out from the brush, begging Baby Hank not to shoot her. Dad screams at him to gun her down, and Baby Hank chokes, because he’s a fucking child and not a soulless killing machine.

The witch casts a stream of fire at him and Dad runs and saves Baby Hank, getting mighty singed in the process. Dad shoots the witch and tells his son to have no mercy, to never forget what they are, and to maybe get some aloe for his extra crispy hand.

Over at Marie Laveau’s salon, ladies are getting their hair done while Queenie works the phones. Their busy day is interrupted by (Golden Globe nominee!) Fiona and her (Golden Globe snubbed!) cardboard box of Delphine’s head.

Fiona tells Marie that they need to talk, what with the war on witches/witch hunters/revived Christians, etc. Marie refuses to talk to her, but then remembers that health inspector rule about severed heads in the work place and ushers her into the back room.

They adjourn to the back room, where Delphine’s body is still chilling in her cage. The body waves half-heartedly at Fiona, who looks appalled. Marie tells Fiona that since she dug up Delphine, she’s her problem. Ah, the old “finders keepers losers weepers” rationale.

Wow, remember back in episode one when Fiona just dug up Delphine to get her beauty secrets? Was this show ever so young?

Fiona is there to brook an alliance between the covens and warn Marie of the witch hunters. Marie isn’t interested in an alliance and tells Fiona that the witch hunter (who is on her payroll) is a white girl problem and none of her concern.

I don’t know, Marie. As an over-privileged Caucasian, I consider myself an expert on white girl problems. They usually involve adderall, skiing, and Taylor Swift, right? I feel like witch murder is maybe an everybody problem.

Throughout this whole conversation, Delphine’s head has been providing color commentary from the box, and it’s hilarious. Fiona has to jam some stuff in her mouth just to shut her up.

Marie tells Queenie to take the head out back and burn it in a fire. Delphine is psyched to maybe possibly finally die. Fiona leaves behind the head and any hopes of an alliance.

Meanwhile, back at Miss Robichaux’s Obstacle Course for the Recently Blind, Cordelia is banging around the kitchen and trying to cook some eggs. I know that all the help is gone, but can’t Nan or someone take five fucking minutes and make this woman an omelet?

Luckily Myrtle is there, and she watches Cordelia break all the eggs and stumble around like she’s Mary from Little House on the Prairie. Cordelia even says the following: “Could people please not move things? Some of us are blind!” I believe that was the first thing Helen Keller signed to Anne Sullivan.

Myrtle goes to help her and tells Cordelia that she wasn’t the one who blinded her. We see a flashback of Young Cordelia being ditched at Miss Robichaux’s by Fiona. Myrtle takes her in and raises her like her own daughter, and it’s really sweet and touching, which is an emotional note that AHS almost never hits.

BTW, how cute are Myrtle’s glasses in this episode? When I’m old I’m just gonna go full on crazy and wear all the shawls and fingerless gloves and cat’s eye glasses and embarrass the shit out of my children.

Anyhoo, Cordelia doesn’t need her magic sight to know that Myrtle loves and cares for her. Myrtle tells Fiona that she’d pluck out her own eyeballs to give her sight again. This is what we in the “biz” call foreshadowing.

From there, we wiggle our noses and hop on our broomsticks and fly on over to Atlanta to a big fancy pants company called Delphi Trust. Hank is there to meet with his dad, who owns the company. Turns out that dad held that old hunting trip faux pas against Hank, and denied him a seat on the board. Furthermore, Hank is in fact a low-level witch hunter whose only job is to collect intel from Cordelia.

Unfortunately, Hank has been going rogue, what with the Marie Laveau alliance/unsanctioned hotel witch murders/general douchery/unwillingness to wear non-flannel shirts. Poor Hank cowers under his father’s glare; he has nothing to contribute to the witch hunting or the multi-million dollar corporation… which does what, exactly? Manufacture silver bullets?

Adding insult to injury, Hank finds out that it was his dad who authorized Cordelia’s blinding, as a way to make her more dependent on Hank. Whoops, that backfired like whoa.

Hank is upset, what with his real love feelings for Cordelia, and his dad immediately yells at him about losing himself in the lie/she’s a witch/no girls allowed blah blah blah this is boring.

Meanwhile, back at Miss Robichaux’s School for the Culinary Arts and Crafts, Myrtle is fawning all over her new melon baller and serving lobster to Pembroke and Quentin.

This is surprising, as the last time they saw her they burnt her at the stake. But they’re totes sorry about it, so it’s cool, right?

Anyway, Myrtle is looking fresher than ever and the lobster is a-flowin’ so let’s let bygones be bygones! They try to toast Myrtle before succumbing to poison because this is American Horror Story and this is how they roll. Turns out that Myrtle gave them a paralyzing drug, so they are totally helpless when she takes that melon baller and scoops their eyeballs out.

You guys, SHE MELON-BALLERED THEIR EYES OUT! THIS IS A SHOW ON TELEVISION AND THIS IS THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN!

Myrtle takes those freshly melon-balled eyes and magicks them into Cordelia’s face, and abracadabra Cordelia can see again! Myrtle gave her one blue eye and one brown, just like a Turkish angora cat she used to own. Lezziest spell ever, right? Myrtle could pull Ellen and Portia scissoring out of a top hat and it would still be less gay than this spell.

Fiona arrives at the school and overhears Cordelia telling Myrtle that she can’t just go around jacking eyeballs. Myrtle equates it with throwing a drowning man a life preserver, which is totally the same thing… if that life preserver was made out of the intestines of your former colleagues.

Fiona is awestruck to see that Cordelia’s sight is back, although she balks at the mismatched eyes. I guess someone’s a dog lover. Fiona and Myrtle start bickering and Fiona calls her a charcoal briquette, which, LOL. When Fiona asks about the origins of the eyeballs, Myrtle jokes about anonymous donors, and we see a quick scene of her hacking up the bodies and yukking it up like a nutbag. She also says that the council isn’t seeing anyone right now because EYEBALL PUNS! All of the shoinks.

Cordelia has had enough and tells them both to shut the fuck up and get over their drama. This means that Myrtle has to respect Fiona as the Supreme and that Fiona can’t threaten Myrtle with banishment to Pyramus, New Jersey. I would totally watch a show about a wacky witch banished to New Jersey, BTW.

Cordelia reminds them that the real danger is outside the school, not inside it.

Here’s a quick tally of the dangers found INSIDE the school:

• Axeman locked in a Ouija board
• Racist serial killing maids
• A creepy butler with a doll fetish
• A murderous Supreme
• Some decaying minotaur penis?
• The corpses of old council member who could rise as zombies
• A killer vagina
• A murdering Frankenboy made entirely of rapists

GREAT JOB CORDELIA THIS PLACE IS SAFE AS HOUSES.

Cordelia goes to take a nap and hugs Myrtle. That’s when she realizes that her magic sight is gone. Oh well, two eyeballs forward, one step back.

We zoom over to the hospital, where Zoe and Madison are strutting down the hallway. Zoe is wearing a variation of that fucking hat, and Madison is wearing a Russian fur hat and a sheer ankle-length night gown. Appropriate.

They find Nan waiting outside Shirtless Luke’s room because Patti LuPone won’t let her in. The twitches barge in to see Luke, who is in a coma. Patti yells at them to leave, but Nan can communicate with Luke. To put it in Madison’s words, “no bitch, she’s clairvoyant.” Also, in case she couldn’t tell, they are witches. I think she figured that on out, girls.

Nan convinces her that Luke is speaking through her, and wants to hear Patti sing to him. You and me both, Luke! That woman is a national treasure.

So she sings “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”, although I’d rather hear her sing this:

Or maybe this:

Or how about this kicky little number?

BRB crying forever.

So Patti sings and cries and hugs Nan and loves her dead gay son and all is forgiven.

Over at the Severed Head Emporium, Queenie has Delphine propped up on a little table. Delphine is hungry, but Queenie wisely notes that the food will just go through her mouth and shit out her neck, which can then be made into a shit sandwich, and she’s on a no carb diet gosh Delphine you’re so stupid!

Before she kills Delphine, Queenie wants to try to educate her about racism via a movie marathon. She’s got the box set of Roots, Mandingo, The Color Purple, and her personal fave, B.A.P.S.

I would watch an entire show of Kathy Bates’s head watching shows.

Meanwhile, Hank is in his room nomming on some Chinese food when a wound opens on his wrist and he starts gushing blood. Other wounds appear all over his body, and we see that Marie Laveau is going to town on a voodoo doll.

Marie’s henchman breaks into the room, with the sole purpose of… answering the phone and handing it to Hank? Marie tells him either the white witches die tonight or he gets a needle through the heart.

Back at Miss Robichaux’s Potions After Dark Room, Misty and Cordelia are cranking the Stevie and whipping up some magic mud in a blender.

Misty says her spell and brings a plant to life, and is adorably delighted to be magicking up a storm alongside Cordelia.

Misty says that Cordy makes an awesome leader and she hs so much to learn from her… in bed. Cordelia tells her they make a great team, and they are moments away from making out.

Then Hank shows up and really ruins the bohemian, sexually fluid vibe of the scene. He’s drunk, and he wants to win back Cordelia. Cordelia shuts him down right quick and tells him to take his shit and GTFO. Misty walks in and Hank recognizes from trying to shoot her in the swamp shack. Hank tells Cordelia he only wants to protect her which LOL she’s a witch she’s got it covered okay thanks goodbye.

Hank takes his cardboard box of aforementioned shit and Charlie Browns his way out of there. A guard dog growls at him, followed closely by Fiona, also growling. She tells Hank they don’t need his puny mortal protection, and that female dogs are more loyal/aggressive/better at processing emotions. She then magicks his box to break, dumping his shit on the floor.

As Hank leaves, the dog growls at Zoe and Madison’s door. Fiona opens it and finds FrankenKyle. She says “another goddamn boy, Jesus these girls!” FrankenKyle is thrilled about the dog though… until we hear a sickening crunch…did he just kill that fucking dog? Did the dog eat his face? I am okay with ONE of these outcomes.

Back at the hospital, Patti is calling Nan a miracle and thanks her for her gifts. She says that Nan is proof of God’s existence… and speaking of God, they told Luke that Patti murdered his father and will be judged for it! Twist!

Turns out that Luke’s dad was banging another woman and was ready to leave Patti… until she unleashed bees in his car!

Fucking bees y’all! It was kind of like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k79yNNdFr8

And maybe a little bit like this:

Guess who no longer thinks Nan is a miracle? Patti yells at her and kicks her out of the hospital room.

Meanwhile, we see Hank loading up all the guns. Uh oh.

Zoe, Madison, and Nan come back to Miss Robichaux’s Magic Castle, where they find FrankenKyle and Fiona playing gin rummy.

Fiona used her Supreme awesomeness to spruce up FrankenKyle, saying that he’s the new guard dog. Um guys, what the fuck happened to that real dog? God I hope he didn’t eat the dog.

Back at the B.A.P.S. fan club headquarters, Delphine has made it through all of Roots with her eyes closed. Queenie is disappointed but not surprised. She makes Delphine watch one more video, then she’s tossing her into the fire.

Queenie goes back downstairs to work the phones, when Hank busts into the shop and starts gunning down people left and right.

Hank shoots Queenie in the stomach and and several other beauty shop patrons before setting his sights on Marie. He shoots her in the arm and has her cornered.

Queenie crawls over to one of his guns, puts it in her mouth, and blows her brains out, effectively blowing Hank’s brains out. While this is going on, Delphine is watching footage of the Selma riots and tearing up and Queenie doesn’t get to see her FINALLY learn because she’s dead. Or is she? Stop playing with my emotions, Ryan Murphy!

Meanwhile, in case this episode wasn’t dark enough, Luke comes out of his coma… only to be smothered to death by his mother.

We end with Marie, arm bandaged, showing up at Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Potential Witch Alliance. Fiona answers the door and wordlessly brings her in.

And that’s it until 2014! Tune in four weeks from now! The covens finally join forces! Matching robes for every witch! And maybe they find that dog?

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