'AHS: Coven' Recap: Zombie Dearest

Halloween may have come and gone in our world of real existence, but in Coven-land All Hallows Eve is in full effect in two different centuries. “Burn Witch, Burn!” (not feeling very subtle with our titles these days, are we?) begins in 1833, at the always pleasantly charmingly Madame Delphine LaLaurie’s mansion during her Halloween party. She introduces the governor’s son Jacques to her daughter Boquita, and in a not-so-completely-freakish show they might fallen in love and had many children and died of old age in each other’s arms. But in Coven, LaLaurie insists Jacques visit her “Chamber of Horrors” to see if he’s a ‘man’ enough for her daughter.

It turns out Jacques is not ‘man’ enough to pass the boyfriend test of courageously sticking his hand in bowls of slave eyeballs and intestines, and he flees (as he should. Run Jacques, run far away). A furious Boquita and her sisters convene to discuss how darned annoying it is that their mom keeps scaring away potential suitors with dismembered slaves, and they decide to kill her. Their plan backfires when LaLaurie, aka Mom of the Year, takes them to her Attic of Torture and threatens to keep them there for the year.

Boquita, she explains, will get the special Christmas present of that thing where LaLaurie sews one’s mouth shut over human feces. Merry Christmas, am I right? So it makes sense when we flash forward to 2013 that LaLaurie is a more than little concerned to see her vengeful Zombie Daughters at her doorstep, as summoned by Marie Laveau.

Last week, Cordelia had acid thrown on her face by a mysterious cloaked figure. Fiona struggles to handle this and yells for someone to call an ambulance, though why the Supreme Witch can’t clean up some acid seems a little sketchy to me. At the hospital, the doctor informs Fiona that sulfuric acid thrown directly in one’s eyes causes permanent blindness.

Fiona deals with this information and her guilt over the accident by getting wasted on stolen hospital meds and alcohol, then finding a young mother who just miscarried and forcing her to hold her dead baby while whispering declarations of love. So basically, a very common form of grieving. Just as this scene reaches maximum uncomfortable creepiness as a weeping young woman cradles a clearly dead infant, Fiona does the first nice thing she’s ever done and brings the baby back to life (but she still can’t fix acid-face? Hmm...). The moral of the story seems to be that maybe this young woman will be the only not-horrible mother on this entire show.

Back at the school, Zoe decides to actually be useful for the first time by attempting to zombie-proof the house. However, her plan to move everyone to the attic is shut down when Spaulding is silently like, ‘Hell no, I’ve got a creepy Madison Montgomery doll thing going on up there.’ No one has decided to inform Hot Neighbor Luke that magic and zombies are real, and he storms out to tell those pesky ‘neighborhood kids’ to give up their prank. Ah, but the joke’s on him and he gets stabbed by a zombie. That’s what happens when you don’t naturally assume zombies are real, Luke, get with it. Nan goes after him and drags him to safety in a car full of windows. In shocking news, windows can break, and the zombies nearly get a midnight snack just as Zoe distracts them with a symphony of banging pots. They run after Zoe, who finds shelter in a crypt.

Inside the house, LaLaurie makes a great decision to open the door to ZomBoquita. LaLaurie tries to apologize for being actually the worst person ever, but Boquita is having none of that and attacks her mother.

Boquita than makes her way upstairs where Queenie tries to kill her with some voodoo throat slitting. Fun fact; voodoo murder doesn’t work on Zombies. A poker through the back does, however, LaLaurie discovers as she impales her daughter. “She had a monster for a mother. This last act is the only kindness I did for her.” Nice realization, LaLaurie. Would have solved a lot of problems if you’d had it 180 years ago.

Outside, Luke continues to bleed out and Nan tries to drag him to the house. Once again, not the best plan as the zombies gain. Luckily (and awesomely) Zoe finds a chainsaw and goes Evil Dead all over those suckers on the lawn. Yay for Zoe actually doing useful things this episode.

Typically, the extent of her usefulness is creating evil zombies, yelling secrets at the wrong people, and accepting death-by-vagina is a pretty sucky witch power. Unfortunately, chain saws stop chain-sawing after a while and she finds herself cornered by a zombie. She raises her hand, says a spell, and defeats both the zombie and Laveau, who announces there’s some serious power going on over there. A new supreme, one might even presume...

Back at world’s worst hospital, Cordelia’s husband comes to visit her but ends up in a fight with Fiona. She insists he’ll leave Cordelia upon not being able to deal with a blind wife, then gives them 15 minutes alone.  He kneels by Cordelia’s side and insists he’ll never leave, but she wakes up and, upon touching him, is inundated with visions of him sleeping with Alexandra Breckenridge. Uh-oh! Just try to get out of this one, random, bland husband.

The house returns to some level of normal following the zombie attack, and Fiona and LaLaurie even bond a little over being god-awful mothers. But it’s not all fun and games as the council returns and demands Fiona give up her Supremacy. The council will rule the school until a new Supreme arises. Fiona is not exactly thrilled with this, and quickly turns on Myrtle Snow, pulling aside her sleeve and revealing a hand burnt by the same acid that blinded Cordelia. She explains it was Myrtle under the mysterious black cloak, and also that it was Myrtle who killed Madison Montgomery as she had a secret hotel room in town at the time that was wall-papered in suspicious pictures of Fiona.

Myrtle shrieks that Fiona must be stopped, but this is not exactly the time for her to yell something that sounds like a murder threat, and the council takes this to mean that she actually is responsible for all Fiona has accused her of. This makes perfect sense because they trust Fiona so much and definitely have not spent tons of time with Myrtle on their council for years (actually this makes no sense because that is not true). The council votes to burn the witch (remind me never to have a jury of my witch peers), and Myrtle just kinda gives up.

In world’s most funky witch-burning sequence, the whole gang takes a field trip to the Coven barbecue. Zoe doesn’t believe the whole burning thing is real, but it certainly is when Fiona tosses her cigarette onto Myrtle’s gasoline-covered stake.

Myrtle’s last words are that she’d rather “burn than boil,” after comparing the group to toads in a pot Fiona’s turned up the heat on. Adieu Frances Conroy. The good news is you probably won’t get burned at the stake during your guest spot on How I Met Your Mother.

After the completely justified burning, Queenie asks Fiona if she just helped kill an innocent woman or a guilty one. Turns out, just as Fiona was pulling back the sleeve on Myrtle’s acid-hand, Queenie dipped her own hand in acid to cause the injury. “None of us are innocent,” is Fiona’s presumably Emmy-winning response. Queenie goes on to explain just how disturbed she is that she saw a woman burned to death in front of her, but Fiona distracts her with talk of Queenie being the next Supreme (because that went so well the last time). 

Speaking of that going so well the last time, Spaulding continues to try to have a nice little tea party while also air-freshening the dead Teen Celebrity smell out of the attic. He tries to get Madison herself to join the fun, but just ends up pulling her arm right off her torso instead. I don’t know about you, but I find pulling my friend’s limbs off often ruins a tea party.

Lastly, we get a moment with the radiant Misty Day as she approaches the charred remains of Myrtle Snow.

Misty, who presumably bonds with other women who were burned at the stake, gives Myrtle some of that resurgence she’s so famous for and Myrtle’s eyes open. Looks like Fiona’s not out of the woods just yet! Maybe = Misty Day can go resurge Emma Roberts now! Or at least go try to hit on Zoe again...The world is full of fantastic and horrible possibilities, and we’ll just have to wait till next week for them to further unfold.