'AHS: Coven' Recap: Off With Her Head

Never fear, you viewers who were eagerly awaiting Cordelia’s Fuzzy Husband Hank’s backstory in great detail. All two of you hit the jackpot this week. The teaser finds us in the Chattahoochee National Forest, 1991, where a father teaches his small, innocent son bout hunting. “We’ve been hunters for generations!” he explains to his apprehensive little boy, and it’s about now you’ll realize that the little boy is Fuzzy Husband, and the prey is definitely not a grizzly bear. It is in fact a frazzled, pleading witch who freaks Lil’ Hank out just long enough to distract him and set his dad on fire. Dad shakes it off and shoots her dead, bellowing his mantra, “No mercy, never forget what they are.” Well, we all know future Hank is kinda a crappy witch hunter, so clearly he’ll forget a few things.

Post-credits finds us back at Marie Laveau’s hair salon. Fiona storms in with Kathy Bate’s uncomfortable chatty dismembered head and demands an alliance to protect themselves against last week’s Attack of the Witch Hunters. Marie uses Fiona’s cancer to attack her, claiming she’s only come for an alliance because she’s too weak to take care of her own Coven. Fiona with a selfish agenda?! No way! That’s as rare on Coven as gratuitous sexual violence!

Cordelia, in the mean time, continues to struggle with her recent blindness. Myrtle insists she didn’t blind Cordelia as Fiona accused, recounting how Cordelia asked Myrtle to be her new mother upon arriving at school as a child. She doesn’t have to do much convincing because Cordelia’s already on board and also believes Fiona set Myrtle up.

Over in Atlanta Fuzzy Husband visits his witch hunter father (who we are also informed is the head of a corporation and CEO of a financial institution, because apparently witch hunting isn’t financially stable). Dad is not thrilled about Fuzzy Husband’s ability to be married to a witch yet not kill her or any of her friends. We also find out that Dad’s corporation is responsible for Cordelia’s blindness, which pisses Fuzzy Husband so much the whole world can tell he may just have actual feelings for his wife.

Back at Miss Robichaux's, Myrtle holds a lovely intimate dinner party consisting heavily of melon balls for her two former counsel member friends (who also sentenced her to be burned at the stake on faulty evidence, as friends often do). They feel pretty bad about, ya know, setting her living body on fire, but luckily Myrtle is a forgiving woman. So forgiving she poisoned the melon balls with “human statue syndrome,” which paralyzes her victims as she goes on to deliciously describe their unpleasant fate. Side note; this entire show is worth watching for Frances Conroy alone. Every line she has is absurd, and she’s absolutely perfect at her delivery. She accuses her safe-to-say former friends of trying to kill her to dominate the counsel, then of believing she must be senile for leaving the melon baller in the serving dish. Think again, paralyzed former counsel members! That melon baller was in fact left in the serving dish to gauge your eyes out. Oh, the many creative uses for melon ballers.

Myrtle then gives Cordelia the best Christmas gift ever in the form of her paralyzed pals’ eyes; one of each, so that there can be a funky mis-matched color effect. Alas, with these new eyes comes the loss of her ability to hug people and see how many people they’ve murdered. Can’t win ‘em all.

Madison and Zoe visit Nan at the hospital, where she’s been waiting since the night before to see the now-comatose Luke after he was accidentally shot by Fuzzy Husband last week. Joan won’t let him see her, but she bursts in anyway and reads his mind (a convenient power when it comes to coma patients).

Nan tells Joan that Luke wants her to sing to him again, and though she insists she didn’t sing to him, she’s soon starts singing because she is Patti Lupone and we all knew this moment would come! She seems to suddenly believe Nan now, and pulls her in for a hug. Score one for split-second character development!

Back at the salon, Queenie and Delphine get a subplot like some sort of lost Disney Channel show where two enemies become friends after one of them must take care of the racist one’s disembodied head. Queenie has planned a Roots marathon for Delphine, followed by an endless array of Black culture treats for her to enjoy. Delphine reacts by clamping her eyes shut and singing “Dixie.” I’m not sure what I can’t stand more- Joan’s change of heart in a second, or Delphine’s complete inability to budge from her grating racism for 9 straight episodes. But ‘What can I not stand the least?’ is a game I’m used to playing with American Horror Story.

Do you know what I hate? When I’m eating Chinese take-out and voodoo magic slits my wrists. Clearly Fuzzy Husband feels the same as Marie Laveau voodoos him up so he can “feel the wrath of broken promises.” She’s angry he hasn’t followed through on offing Cordelia’s Coven. The ultimatum; either they die tonight or he does. What an interesting show that would be, if everyone died except Hank. That’s a great direction to be heading in, and one surely the entire fan base would enjoy.

Cordelia and Misty have magical flower bonding time, unaware that everyone in the world is trying to kill them. They too seem graced with amazing sexual tension that Ryan Murphy will never follow through on. Fuzzy Husband shows up to ruin the lovely gay flower party, and Cordelia tells him she is filing for divorce. This is a great time to kill your wife, dude! Instead, he lets himself get kicked out of the house. Come on, Fuzzy Husband. This is not what you trained in Chattahoochee National Forest for. 

At the hospital, Joan declares Nan a miracle, then changes her tune after Nan tells her Luke believes Joan killed his cheating father after he told her he wanted a divorce.

Apparently Luke finds it a little suspicious that a horde of bees his father just happened to be allergic to just happened to show up in his car. I can’t imagine why.  “This is a trick! You don’t speak for my son!” Joan yells, in another change of heart so flip-floppy she might as well be running for President. 

Upstairs, Kyle bonds with the resident guard dog, then apparently snaps its neck. Whoops! Someone’s got a case of the ‘Of Mice and Men’s. Now that they need a new guard dog, Fiona fixes Kyle up a bit so that he’s coherent enough at least to play Gin, much to the joy of Zoe and Madison (and probably Evan Peters, who may get to actually do things again!)

Queenie returns to find Delphine incredibly proud of herself for not watching one moment of Roots. Side note: At this point, I can’t tell if Queenie’s lines are poorly written or if Gabourey Sidibe is poorly delivering them. I’ve seen her in Precious and I’d rather blame Ryan Murphy, so let’s say it’s the first option. Queenie insists that though Delphine can shut her eyes to the video, she can’t cover her ears, and then puts on real-life footage of civil rights struggles while “Oh, Freedom” plays emotionally in the background. In moments Delphine is a changed dismembered head. I know I complained about Delphine being a rock of racism for 9 episodes (and nearly two centuries), but is it really only going to take one news reel to make her see the error of her ways? Fine, at least it’s something.

Fuzzy Husband gets ready to finally take down some witches, but it’s not Miss Robichaux's he infiltrates. Nope, guns ablaze, he storms Marie Laveau’s hair salon and takes out everyone inside, including Queenie. Just as he’s about to shoot Marie herself (NO! Not Angela Bassett!), it turns out Queenie has just enough strength to grab a fallen gun and shoot herself in the head while focusing all her human voodoo doll energy on Fuzzy Husband. It kills him and saves Marie, but whether or not Queenie paid the ultimate price remains to be seen.

Just as nearly everyone dies, we see Delphine now weeping to the video upstairs. Too little too late, D. You literally turned a man into a Minotaur.

Luke finally starts waking up from his coma. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of once again bringing up his dad’s death and Joan tearfully puts a pillow over his face. Joan, at least 40% of my enjoyment of this show came from Nan and Luke. Stop killing all my enjoyment. Or at least put Lily Rabe somewhere in every scene to make up for it. To cap off the episode, Marie shows up at Miss Robichaux's, ready to take up that alliance offer. Fiona lets her in.

And now we have to wait until January 8th to find out what happens because it’s hiatus time! When we return it appears we get a race for the next Supreme and a mission to destroy the witch hunters forever. Can you possibly wait? I can, because at this point, in my opinion, Coven is just a lot of weird and not a lot of compelling. Maybe it’s my inability to get over the wrongful murder of Alexandra Breckenridge. Either way, hopefully Coven will pick up a little as it approaches its finale. Or at least give Lily Rabe more scenes.