'AHS: Coven'—'The Replacements' Recap: Supreme Scandal

This week’s Coven kicks off with a bit of exposition about how Fiona became the Supreme witch. After talking with near wide-eyed innocence to the current Supreme about how she became such, Flashback Fiona takes a turn for the vicious and begins tearing her elder down, explaining that as her age and powers ebb Fiona’s grow stronger. The elder (Christine Ebersole), who hates Fiona and claims that her becoming the next Supreme will destroy the Coven, loses any say in the matter when the conversation ends in Fiona slitting her throat.

The butler (remember Denis O’Hare, who is in the main credits?), watches all of this, and then we return to present day, where the Fiona of Covens Present implies that she is the one who removed his tongue. I assume this was to keep him from telling anyone what she did to the elder, but can people not write things down? And even if he was illiterate, couldn’t he learn to write down ‘Fiona killed someone, guys?’ Maybe I’m looking too deeply into this, but hey, removing someone’s tongue is a drastic measure.

After the Jessica Lange-iest monologue about ‘the dance’ (of love? of magic?), Fiona goes to a surgeon who explains facial plastic surgery options while tears run down Fiona’s face. It’s as if Ryan Murphy and Brad Fulchuk had just received the (actual) news that Jessica Lange would not be returning after the next season and, in a panic, injected the show with her purest essence while they still could. I have nothing but respect for Jessica, but her characters suffer from a sameness that just takes some of the magic of her presence away after a while. Zoe, meanwhile, continues to try to be the one good person on this show by visiting Kyle’s mother (Mare Winningham). She’s a grieving mess who sleeps in her son’s room, smokes his pot, and admits to almost killing herself before Zoe called.

She explains what a wonderful son Kyle was, and Zoe responds, ‘Kyle’s not left us.’ For someone who enjoys yelling everyone’s most personal secrets, Zoe is being oddly subtle here.

Next, we get to meet the Coven’s new neighbors, in the form of Hot Shirtless Guy Luke and his mom, Joan (Patti LuPone).

Madison takes an immediate interest in Luke, and Joan takes an immediate dislike to Madison. But this is not the episode’s biggest face-off. The recently unearthed Madame LaLaurie struggles to accept a world where there’s a black president, and Fiona, explaining, ‘There’s nothing I hate more than a racist,’ demands she be the house’s new maid. LaLaurie, who continues to spew racial slurs and attitudes, will serve all the girls except Queenie, ending in Fiona making her Queenie’s ‘personal slave.’

There’s clearly no way this plot can end but in LaLaurie learning the error of her racist ways and becoming Queenie’s best friend. Just kidding. Someone’s probably going to die.

In her cozy, corpse-y cabin, Misty Day is none too happy to have her Stevie Nicks party with her new bestie Kyle interrupted by Zoe, who believes taking him to his mom might heal him further. Misty demands she is connected to Kyle and that she was there for him when Zoe ‘abandoned’ him, but Zoe still manages to get him out of the house. Misty and her abandonment issues continue their frantic Stevie Nicks-ing alone, and that’s all we see of her this week.

Madison takes a slightly different approach to seduction by walking into Luke’s house and basically insisting they have sex. Luke seems more interested in Nan and the cake she made perfectly for him using the secret ingredient of clairvoyance.

Madison continues her failing seduction by calling religion a ‘crock of shit’ to her old-school religious neighbors who are about to head out to bible study.

Joan, understandably furious with the heathen, tries to grab the cake-cutting knife out of Madison’s hand, but it goes magically flying into the wall, right by her head. The girls are then banished from the house and from ever speaking Shirtless Luke again. Madison retaliates by mentally lighting the curtains on fire- a power she didn’t even know she had.

Cordelia, in her own bubble of currently disconnected plot, learns that, despite her magical fertility sex, she is completely unable to have a baby. Fiona learns that the plastically surgery she was crying over is now impossible as well, due to her health being incredibly poor. Remember, old Supreme means a soon to be de-throned Supreme, and Madison is definitely looking like the new up-and-comer. Fiona is drowning her sorrows in alcohol and prescription medication when Joan futilely comes to gift Fiona and the school with a bible. Poor, holy Joan may want to immediately consider moving, that or she’s got the biggest redemption project planned.

Zoe continues her parade of bad ideas by bringing the stiff, still zombie-esque Kyle to his mom’s house. His mom takes an oddly long time to clue in to some of his recent changes, but eventually tells him that when he was in the shower she noticed his Franken-body. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she explains, before making out with him and giving him a hand job. Are you uncomfortable yet? Now, we can add incestuous necrophilia to our ‘American Horror Story A-Zs.’ Also, last I checked I believe New Kyle didn’t even have junk to begin with. What the hell is going on here? I partially don’t even want that question answered.

Cordelia, who really needs to learn adoption is a great option, continues her quest for fertility by going to Marie Laveau. Flash forward, Marie and her friends do a voodoo-y satanic semen spell that involves murdering a goat over Cordelia’s vagina.

It turns out this is just a fantasy demonstration, and in reality, Laveau laughs off doing to the spell at all because Cordelia is her sworn enemy Fiona’s daughter. Cordelia is desperate, heart broken, and probably vengeful. More on that next week, apparently.

Fiona takes Madison to lunch, and Madison explains her back-story as an actress-since-birth with a horrible mother who turned her into the only moneymaker in the family. Fiona has recognized Madison’s potential Supreme-ness (I’m still pulling for death-vagina Zoe), and seems to take a different approach from her throat slitting as a youth. She offers to train Madison, and Madison accepts.

Meanwhile, Queenie and her slave LaLaurie have bigger problems than their challenging banter when Laveau’s minotaur-boyfriend shows up at the house.

Queenie tells LaLaurie to hide while she takes care of the minotaur-man, and her impending doom (as she is not considered a lead in the credits) begins to appear at its most impending-est. She lures him away using a LaLaurie blood-soaked handkerchief, then tries to tenderly talk to him about how both of them need love. Oh no, this cannot be going where I think it is, can it? Yes it can, because Queenie then lifts her skirt and starts masturbating while propositioning the Minotaur for sex. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting this, after all it is American Horror Story and last’s week’s episode was pretty tame. Still, this was not what I was hoping to see when I woke up this morning.

At his mom’s house, Kyle is having a hard time dealing with death, incest, or all of the above. ‘I think maybe you needed it as much as I did,’ his mother explains in what might be some of her last words. She goes on to get much more creepy as she murmurs, ‘Mama knows how to please you,’ right before Kyle’s first word, ‘No!’ He then beats her to death with a trophy, which I don’t think anyone is going to be too torn up over at this point.

Fiona and Madison take their witchy training to a bar, where Fiona starts seeing Madison as the literal young version of herself from the teaser. Fiona toasts Madison, then pours out her own drink, and it’s clear that Fiona’s not as into passing the Supreme torch as she appeared.

As if she ever planned to. Fiona then takes Madison back to the house to explain that, to Madison’s surprise, she is indeed the next Supreme, and her young powers have been draining Fiona’s old ones. Apparently, the new Supreme needs to take powers from the old Supreme, and Fiona is not throwing a party over this. Fiona explains she has cancer and Madison sweetly offers to use her celebrity connections for a good doctor, but Fiona declines. Mental Breakdown Fiona drunkenly monologues about her guilt over long ago killing her mentor Supreme, lamenting that she doesn’t deserve a painting on the wall. She then unsheathes the knife she used to kill her elder, and I want Madison to run because Fiona’s a threat even at her most stable and now she’s gone off the deep end.

Fiona tries to get Madison to slit her throat as she did her elder, but Madison refuses. Then, in what is making me want to throw my laptop out a window, Fiona slits Madison’s throat instead, all while Denis O’Hare watches. ‘This Coven doesn’t need a new Supreme,’ Fiona says as she sits down to casually smoke a cigarette. So this was the plan all along. Lily Rabe, where the hell are you when we need you? Do not let Emma Roberts leave this show! She is in the credit sequence and I adore her and I want her gloriously bitchy self around all the time! I would be in full out ‘I care too much about television characters’ rage right now if the promo for next week’s didn’t show a hand shooting out of the ground. Nearly ever lead on this show has been revived from death in some way, so Madison better follow the trend. And so on the poetic notes of Minotaur masturbation and mother-son incest/rape, another episode of Coven draws to a close. Next week’s episode falls appropriately right on Halloween, so make sure to work that into your trick-or-treat plans. At least afterwards you can venture on to your spooky festivities knowing your night cannot get any weirder. 

Like SheWired on Facebook

Follow SheWired on Twitter