BWW Recap: Mercy Has Ended on AMERICAN HORROR STORY

With us almost halfway through American Horror Story: Roanoke, the series is getting to a point where it feels like it is spinning its wheels until it reaches the much awaited sixth episode where, as creator Ryan Murphy has promised, the show will reveal a big twist. Most fans have theorized what that twist could be, debating on whether or not it will tie all of the seasons together or if it will explain why AHS chose the docudrama format for this season other than just for aesthetic purposes. The anticipation for the reveal, however, overwhelms any anticipation for the episodes preceding it.

American Horror Story usually has an issue when it gets to the middle of the season where the first act, that hit the ground running, starts to slow down and the storyline starts to meander. With a shortened season and tightened schedule, the hope was that the creators have noticed this issue and intent on fixing it. Well they did...for the most part. This season is definitely more streamlined than the past few have been, with a central story and a focus that doesn't meander. It's straightforward without being overly so. Our story is the Matt and Shelby story and their encounters and struggles this haunted house. They are the ones recounting it and so we are shadowing them through this documentary format and all that they encounter on their haunting. However, the more flashbacks we get, the more explanation we get that turns this story into something bigger, the less focused it appears. The story starts to feel less and less concrete as they start building and building upon Roanoke and it's tale, appearing to simplify the lore by just citing that they simply moved to where Shelby and Matt's property rests but complicating what came after. The horror and the mystery of the Roanoke colony was in the disappearance itself, not what followed, because people didn't think there was something that followed. The disappearance and clue that Shelby and Matt could be residing in a property sitting on that land had us believing that the danger would be that they could end up like the colony. It would have explained the house's history of death and disappearance if the mystery had come in the act of the disappearance rather than what became of them after they had vanished, streamlining and paralleling the story, and creating a singular force or antagonist to fight against. Instead, we were consistently misdirected, but not on purpose. There was no suspense or even surprise in the misdirection that had us believing the colonists themselves were the enemy, but it instead created an underwhelming feeling growing every time Shelby, Matt, and us, find out more about the history of the land and the house. Horror comes out of withholding information and dealing it out selectively, keeping the audience both on their toes and also on The Edge of their seat. AHS has done virtually everything but with these incredibly expositional information dumps of backstory and having the story told to us through Matt and Shelly's narration, and their point of view, makes it impossible to employ Hitchcock's ultimate, defining rule of suspense; You must let the audience in on some details or plot before the characters know so that way the audience engages in anticipation and anxiety for the unknowing characters that they know might be walking into horror and doom. We're almost halfway through this season and we, and Matt and Shelby, know virtually everything but it doesn't feel like this story is anywhere near ending. If there is a switch, we need an indication that it is happening soon, or much like some of the characters this episode, the audience will start falling off.

We open up this episode right where we left off, Shelby and Matt arguing about what Shelby saw Matt doing in the woods with the witchy Lady Gaga character whom we still do not have a name for. This scene is a masterclass in acting, with Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr. giving it their all. It's a couple that is absolutely breaking down in a situation that is making them question the one thing they felt sure of; each other. Matt can't remember any of it and collapses, crying until Shelby calms him down, realizing that he's telling the truth. The two of them make amends just in time for a horror of horrors in the form of a pig man to chase them through their home with a knife. Running for their lives they are saved by a man who hits the pig man with an axe, which only slows him for but a moment, but then rids him of the space for good by shouting "Croatoan!" The man is Dr. Elias Cunningham (Denis O'Hare), previous resident of the home who Matt and Shelby saw "ranting and raving" in the found video tapes. He's alive after all and has owned the house since he escaped to prevent others from falling prey to the horrors without ever living in it himself. Unfortunately for Matt and Shelby, he was short on money this year and so the house went up for action, allowing them to buy it. Cunningham promises to help them, telling them the history of the house and its spiritual inhabitants. Every year, during the same moon cycle in October, the spirits are able to leave their world and inhabit ours for six days, going from just fearsome to lethal. All previous inhabitants of the house, as Cunningham has record of for his proposed book, have either died or disappeared including a recently emigrated Taiwanese family, a group of hunters, and the psychopathic and murderous nurses.

Cunningham insists what every one has been insisting since the moment Matt and Shelby first noticed something was wrong with the house; leave. Especially now, with the cycle starting, it is of utmost importance that Shelby and Matt vacate the house if they want to stay alive. There's just one problem; Flora. They can't leave until they find Flora. She's their niece and also, with Shelby's rising guilt and Matt's grief, finding her alive is the only way to clear Lee's name. When they let Cunningham know their dilemma, he tells them he can take them to Pricilla and they head into the dreaded woods. There, they start hearing voices and seeing things, including Lady Gaga's woods witch, whom Shelby runs after in a flight of madness. Shelby loses sight of the witch and gets lost herself, seeing past inhabitants of the house come to life around her. She shouts "Croatoan!" at them, but it Cunningham comes to the rescue, telling her that it wont work. They eventually find Flora who is playing with a group of the dead inhabitants, including Pricilla, but before Elias could try and strike a deal with the little girl, he's shot with an arrow as an army of spirits come after them.

Matt and Shelby run to the house, which doesn't seem much safer than the outside, except for the fact that Cricket is back on their doorstep to help. He has talked to the Butcher (Kathy Bates) who told him that Matt and Shelby can no longer do anything to satiate her anger, but he knows Flora is alive so he vows to go back outside and see what he can find out. He doesn't return for hours but when he does, he said it's not the Butcher he ran into, but the one in charge of all of this; the witch. She told him the entire story in exchange for just one thing; Matthew. When the colony moved, the Butcher performed human sacrifices to the gods; or her god, the witch. We see her going so far as to sacrifice a child; Pricilla. Unrest begins to grow in the rest of the colony until one day, the Butcher's son (Wes Bently) speaks up, telling his mother that she has brought evil in the form of the witch into their lives and that they will return back from where they had come, with the support of the entire colony. In an angry fury, the Butcher plans their murder to, as the witch tells her, seal them and their loyalty to her for all of eternity in the next life. She feigns repentance and poisons them all. This offer to the ancient god bonded them to the land for all of eternity.

In exchange for Matt, Cricket also received knowledge of a spell that would end all of this forever. Finally feeling like they could fight back, Shelby and Matt's elation is cut short when Cricket, in the second best line of the episode, tells them his uber has come and that he had to just pop in to his hotel quickly to pick up what he needs for that night. Then, as he's driving away and utters the best line in the episode to his attractive young uber driver, "Excuse me young man, have you ever heard of the term gay for pay?" Flora runs across the road and Cricket runs out after her.

Mad with fear and anticipation, awaiting Cricket's return that seems to be taking far too long as the sun has already gone down, Matt readies a gun and tells Shelby to rest. She shuts her eyes, but so does Matt, and when he awakes, he's drawn outside and into the cellar by, you guessed it, the witch, who is there to claim her prize and rape Matt. Yes, it is rape. He specifically says "I tried to resist but it was impossible," and she has him under a spell, as he recalls in his talking head. It would be nice to have one season of AHS not touch on sexual violence as horror can exist without it and it begins to go beyond entertaining horror to depravity when you switch from fear to pure violence. She connects Matt to her further by allowing him to see her story, of her plight from England to America where she had been captured by soldiers to be burned alive at the stake on the accusation that she was a witch. In turn, she slaughters them all, a crime eventually blamed on the Native Americans. I don't really know what we are made to think of that line, if we're supposed to take in stride of the wrongs the texts books have already written about history of our land and what was done to the natives as a commentary, or if we're supposed to feel uncomfortable that part of this info dump of this backstory was just explained away and covered up by blaming it upon those who have done no wrong. Matt declares that "She wanted me to understand her. She wanted me to join her, and I would have," lost in her spell until he hears the cries of Shelby who has woken up to find Matt missing and the mob of colonists marching towards their door.

Matt returns to her, helpless as The Butcher holds up a knife to kill Flora, but Pricilla comes to the rescue and pushes Flora out of the way. Flora runs to safety into the arms of Shelby and Matt who go inside and lock the door. She seems to be alright but can't stop muttering "The man," to which pushes Shelby to look outside and see the mob has hold of Cricket. They proceed to disembowel him and the Butcher holds up her cleaver towards Matt and Shelby in their window, indicating that they "were next".

Thus, another episode ended and we seem back to where we started. This episode felt like we were moving towards an ending point with all of the info dumps and the hope of the only two people in the world who seemed as if they could help, Cunningham and Cricket. However, now once must wonder what episode five will be considering they have Flora in their custody so one would think they would simply get out and go at first light, but mayhap the spirits will prevent them from doing so. With falling action just before the middle of the season, one can only wonder what the overall structure the creators are going for could possibly be, but with the colossal amount of theories out there, including one with due credibility suggesting that each episode of this season lines up with the sixth episode of each prior season, maybe the theory that the docudrama will break the fourth wall and turn in on itself is ever more likely when the sixth episode of the sixth season lines up with itself.

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