American Horror Story Play By Play - Season 1, Episode 6

"Piggy Piggy"



Here we go, folks. Let's see what unlikely American horror stories are executed to bewitch, bother and befuddle us this week on American Horror Story, Season 1, Episode 6: "Piggy Piggy."

SPOILERS******************************************

ACT ONE

A doorbell rings. Jessica Lange pats a hairdo she 100% cannot have achieved herself. Possible conclusion: dead people do her hair. She opens the door. It's a SWAT team. Why not?

They're looking for Tate Langdon, Lange's ("Constance's") son. They have big guns and chinstraps. They proceed to raid the home, and suddenly we are informed it is 1994, in Charles Rennie Mackintosh font.

Oh hey! It's all those dead teenagers from last episode! Wow. These people are all roughly the same age as I am (tad younger, who's counting), which means American Horror Story is shamelessly using the Columbine massacre as the inspiration for Tate's tortured character. Ouch. I actually knew one of the girls who was killed in that. She was in my cabin at camp and we played tetherball for a whole afternoon one time. I digress. Anyway, nice thinly-veiled riff on the wounds of my generation's youth.

Well. This is great. Remember what I just said? Now it's these kids trapped in a library as someone shoots up their schoolmates. Are the writers using true American horror stories all the time, and I just hadn't noticed yet? Is it because I tend to either work or fall asleep while I watch TV? Because they should be expecting that. Nick Swardson's Pretend Time, for example, shows the hashtag #pretendtime in the bottom left corner of the screen for the entire duration of the show. Why? Because they know me.

And yes, tweeting counts as work.

Isn't that that girl from that show on MTV with the cast on her arm?

Ok. The shooter shoots holes in the door, then opens it (easier). He begins stalking the students in the stacks. The students all look a little ... old ... but not like, 90210 old, so we're fine. A student begs for mercy and gets shot. The shooter is wearing a black coat, but not a trenchcoat, more of a euro-military-style coat. I am still uncomfortable.

MTV girl screams "WHY?" and is shot by Tate. You're not winning any points with me, American Horror Story writers.

Cut back to Constance's home; the SWAT team arrests Tate, who stands and puts a finger-gun to his own head. He fires. It is ineffective.

ACT TWO

Violet is Googling (I'm sorry, generic "Roundsearch"-ing) the Westfield High Massacre. She is visibly freaked out when she sees the kids, then she sees that Tate was the shooter. She runs downstairs and calls for her mom. Unfortunately, the only person around is Jessica Lange in the kitchen with the same hairdo, smoking an appropriately anachronistic cigarette. Wait. Is she wearing the same outfit from 1994?

Nope. Just checked. That's a negatory. Actually, the hair's a little different, too. How does she do that without the help of dead people? Can I accomplish this in the morning before work? Deep thoughts.

Constance makes a dig about Vivien's (Violet's mom's) cooking and guesses that Violet found out about Tate. What's she going to say now?? She has just blatantly acknowledged that Violet has been cavorting with a dead murderer. That's kind of harshing on my comprehension.

Violet's all like "Get out of my house!" and Constance is all like "THIS HOUSE MADE HIM DO IT." Then she takes Violet to meet Billie Dean Howard.

Billie Dean is model-pretty except I think she's had some work done. Yes, I will notice this every time. So. She's a medium. Like we need a medium on this show; everyone and their mother can talk to dead people.

To remind us that the world we live in is stupid, we learn that Constance found Billie on Craigslist, and that Billie has been offered a pilot for a show on Lifetime. Or is that to establish her legitimacy? (In which case, we live in an even stupider world.)

Billie is all put-upon about being a medium, and vaguely racist. Ugh, fine. She also has the oddest shade of pale salmon nails. I can't tell if I'm supposed to hate her. And now I notice that Violet's hair has been brushed perfectly. Maybe she has a dead hairstylist, too.

Billie says someone named Mary wants to talk to Violet, and musters a quote from Mary's deathbed that makes Violet run out of the room in disbelief and perhaps exhaustion from acting disbelieving. Constance asks Billie if she can trust Violet. Billie says she's not sure.

Cut to Vivien rubbing lotion on her pregnant belly in blissful ecstasy while listening to classical strings. Then... oh lordy. That was a claw. Everyone with half a brain in their head just flashed back to Alien, or at least Space Balls. A defined claw pushes from inside her belly. That's not great.

It's painful. She screams. She wakes! It was a dream.

She takes off her wedding ring and calls her police guard. Why not? He checks the house and doesn't find anything. She reminds us that her husband just moved out. Thanks, Vivien. Apparently, the guard's wife cheated on him with another woman. Well. That's a fun fact.

Dylan McDermott shows up! Oh, his name is Ben. Ok, cool. We'll call him that. The guard tells Ben that the woman he recently removed from their home never made it to the police station. It's because she was a ghost, but the guard doesn't seem to realize that, or be in any way alarmed that it happened.

Ben and Vivien bicker about Ben needing to run his psychiatry business from the home he's just wrecked by murdering his pregnant ex mistress, and oddly, the Producer credits show up. We are a full 15 minutes into this show. Fine. Viv says Ben can be the father to her kids but that she won't be his friend and that he has to leave after his last session of the day. He seems non-plussed, which is just how I would feel, especially since he just said that's what he would do anyway.

Up in the bathroom, Violet's got a razorblade and cuts a huge horizontal cut in her very-horizontally-scarred wrist. Then she slashes her own throat! Wait. I think that was a fantasy. Tate appears behind her and says "Are you scared now?" She turns. He's gone. OoooooOOOOOOoooooooo.

In the office of broken dreams, Ben is having a session with a man who familiarizes us with the tale of "Piggy Man." Here's the rundown: There was this pig butcher who got killed by his pigs and disappeared, then all his clients starting turning up dead. If you call him in the mirror and say "Here Piggy Pig Pig," he'll "return for the slaughter." I feel like a writer lost his soul over this one, in a fit of "Guys, that's not even creative ... but maybe we can work with it."

The man has never tried the mirror trick, but is afraid he might. What a horrible life he must have.

Ben make an appointment to see him again and suggests that he shave. The man fearfully says "in a mirror?" ... but this man clearly has only the very beginnings of any facial hair growth. Shouldn't they have cast someone with a beard to make this plot device functional? I am confused.

Violet comes in and says the darkness has her. All right.

ACT THREE

Constance is in the kitchen exchanging glances with the dead maid and recommending that Vivien eat offal during her pregnancy, making this all a bit Rosemary's Baby. It's like every horror movie ever got together and made a baby. A Satan baby.

Constance leaves muttering something about "we need that baby," and later, the dead maid is cooking offal for Vivien and talks about how despicable Ben is. Vivien is shown huffing a raw bloody pancreas by the sink. Ew.

Ben has his Piggy man in his family bathroom -- like, not even a guest bathroom on the ground floor; there's a whole shower in it. He hands him a knife and encourages him to go in. Again I am compelled to note this man has virtually no scruff on his face. This is either a brilliant plot device (i.e. Ben sees a beard we cannot see) or it is stupid. If a big dude were afraid to shave his face, he would have a beard.

Derek (oh -- we just learned the man's name is Derek) says his "Piggy Pig Pig" spiel, sees a corpse in the shower and screams. Ben comes in and shows him there is no corpse. And there isn't.

Vivien is getting an ultrasound.

Violet's friend wearing a ridiculous floppy purple hat (are people really wearing those??) and a bandaid on her face tells Violet the devil is real. Then she gives a chilling account of the book of Revelation complete with a red dragon and a woman screaming in labor. Violet unwisely takes pills from this friend. Idiot.

ACT FOUR

Violet's in the library where all the kids got shot. Some dude from the earlier library scene, older and in a motorized wheelchair, rolls over and calls her a "sicko," and tells her where the kids were shot. She realizes he was their teacher and calls him a hero. He says "Now you know what heroes look like," and hits the full-speed-ahead button on his wheelchair. "Wait," she says, though he has barely passed her and is moving at approximately .01 mph. They exchange words about Tate. Violet just wants to know why Tate did what he did. The teacher asserts that "maybe he wasn't a good person." Maybe!

The dead maid serves Vivien a raw brain. Oh, and notes that Constance brought it over earlier. SHE EATS IT. There is a weird eating montage, with music like there's a storm in a Jane Austen movie playing, and then Vivien looks disgusted with herself.

Violet gets home. It's late. She chases shadows of Tate around the house to the basement, and ends up seeing the two dead boys, then lots of other dead people. She runs back upstairs like a good girl.

Upstairs, her iPod is spontaneously playing. She turns it off. The blackboard in her room says "I LOVE YOU." Yeah. She has a blackboard in her room. She starts to cry. So would I. Then she takes one of floppy-hat-bandaid-face's pills. I guess that's really where Violet and I differ.

Then she takes, like, all of them, with a Sigg bottle, and curls up on the bed. I know. Aluminum poisoning.

Tate shows up and freaks out, and puts her in a cold shower to wake her up. He cradles her as she cries. Let's not forget that he is dead. Is Violet dead now, too? I don't think so, but the writers have barely established any "rules" here.

ACT FIVE

Ben tells Derek he has to do the "Piggy Man" thing in his mirror at home and that then he'll be free.

Vivien goes and meets Angela, her last ultrasound technician, in a church. Angela tells her the reason she freaked out and quit (this was last episode) is that she saw the devil in Vivien's unclean womb, complete with little hooves. Vivien takes this as her cue to leave.

Cut to Derek trying to be brave in the mirror at home. A robber appears from the shower and shoots him. His robber buddy is like "what are you doing, this is supposed to be a robbery!" They leave him, shot in the head, on the floor.

HA! Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself, but in the next scene, Constance calls Billie out on her ugly nailpolish! Sweet satisfaction. Anyway, Billie says Constance's dead daughter is mad at her. She notes that the dead can keep grudges even better than Scorpios (whoa). Constance says she has one last thing she wanted to say to her daughter and asks Billie to talk to her. Billie obliges. Constance says she's sorry for being a terrible mother, that she's proud of Addie, and that she thinks she's beautiful. Billie says Addie says thank you and that she knows, and that on the other side, "she's a pretty girl at last." She's also thankful not to be in the lawn at the old house because she's afraid of Tate now that she knows the truth. Bam!

We see the finger-gun scene from 1994 again, only it continues. Tate pulls out a real gun and the SWAT team fires on him until he is dead. Dead-dead.

Violet's reading a book and Tate comes in all like it's no big deal that he's dead and talks to her about the pills. She mentions that her parents think she's depressed, which leads us to believe she's still alive. Tate says he loves her and that he'll leave her alone if that's what she really wants. Violet instead offers to spoon with the dead boy.

And that's it! Tune in next time for god knows what.


Special thanks to FullHouseReviewed.wordpress.com whose delightful prose reminded me how much fun it is to review television shows.