American Horror Story frightfully continues its first season with episode 6 “Piggy Piggy,” bringing Modern Family‘s Eric Stonestreet into the fold as Ben (Dylan McDermott’s) new patient, while Violet unravels the ghostly mystery of Tate Langdon’s past. In case you missed out, we’ve got all the ghostly twists and turns to hold you over until the next terrifying episode!
Of course, if you’re too frightened to watch the action for yourself, read on for our American Horror Story recap of “Piggy Piggy’!
Back in good old 1994, Constance (Jessica Lange) answers the door of what we now know to be the Harmons’ home, greeting an entire SWAT team looking for Tate (Evan Peters). They enter the house, as we flash to an earlier scene at the high school library, populated by students whom we now know to be the vengeful spirits of Tate’s school massacre from “Halloween, Part 2!” As the shots ring outside the library, the four students and the librarian cower in fear and barricade the door.
When Tate finds another entrance, the teacher attempts to block it only to be shot through the door. Tate then slowly stalks around the library killing each student in turn, even putting down the jock boy for trying to confront him. As the last shot rings out, we cut back to the SWAT team inside the house, entering Tate’s room and training their sights on him. Tate slowly rises from the bed and raises his hands, gesturing a gunshot to his own head.
Back in the present, Violet (Taissa Farmiga) Googles, ahem, ‘Roundsearches’the high school massacre finding photos of the students shed met only nights ago, and an article identifying Tate himself as dead. Crying out for her mother downstairs, she finds only Constance, who takes her next door to meet with her own medium Billie Dean Howard (Sarah Paulson). Billie believes that Violet has the gift, and together they must help Tate cross over, as a specific type of spirit who doesn’t’understand he’s dead. Understandably freaked out by the woman’s revelations, Violet bolts.
Vivien (Connie Britton) dreams of her baby bump taking on a demonic shape before waking alone, removing her wedding ring, and intentionally pushing her panic button to get security officer Luke (Morris Chestnut) to drop by and inspect the property. The two bond a bit about their experiences with infidelity when speak of the Devil, Ben shows up! As Luke exits, Vivien and Ben discuss his working out of the house despite having moved out, as the family needs the money. Ben agrees with her disgust for him, and Vivien says that the two will end their marriage and sell the house, but Ben will be present to raise his children despite never being friends with her again. Upstairs, Violet pulls out a razor and daydreams of slitting her wrists, and her own throat before a ghostly flash of Tate asks, ‘are you scared now?’
Later, Ben talks with his new patient Derek (Modern Family‘s Eric Stonestreet) about his crippling fear of urban legends, particularly the ‘Piggy Man’legend of an 1893 butcher who slaughtered his pigs wearing a pig-face mask, only to wind up eaten himself. Later, the Piggy Man’s former customers wound up butchered like animals, creating a Bloody Mary-like summoning myth with the bathroom mirror. He’s afraid he’ll try the chant, and they plan their next appointment. After the session, Violet comes in crying that ‘it’s all my fault’and ‘the darkness has me’
As Vivien attempts to track down the nurse who fainted at her ultrasound, Constance drops by with some disgusting pregnancy food, namely “offal,” organs that provide vitamins for the fetus. As Moira (Frances Conroy) prepares one of the dishes, she chips in her own two cents that Ben will never stop his horrible cheating, and serves Vivien the sautéed dish, which doesn’t taste too bad. The raw pancreas on the other hand…
At his next meeting with Derek, Ben attempts to have the man confront his fear by performing the Piggy chant in the bathroom with Ben right outside. Nervously, Derek makes it to the second verse before hearing someone inside the shower, opening it to reveal Gladys, one of the nurses killed in the house in the ‘˜60s! He screams, but of course once Ben enters there’s no ghost in sight.
As Ben later Joins Vivien for a prenatal injection, Violet scores some anxiety pills from Leah (Shelby Young) to help deal with her terror. Violet then visets the library where Tate’s shooting took place, and speaks with the teacher who lived it, having survived in a wheelchair. She asks if Tate had been bullied in high school, but the man can only offer that sometimes bad things happen, and Tate himself might not have been the best person.
Vivien attempts to let Moira go again out of money concerns, but the woman offers to work for free at least until the family can sell the house. She sweetens the deal by offering Vivien yet another of Constance’s pregnancy delicacies, a raw brain! To even her surprise, she devours the entire thing!
When Violet arrives home, she follows the figure of Tate down to the basement, only to be confronted with the spirits of all those who died in the house, the redhead twin boys, Gladys, the killers from ‘Home Invasion,’even the house’s original owner! Running upstairs, Violet finds an ‘I LOVE YOU’scribbled on the chalkboard. She breaks down crying and decides to pop every pill Leah gave her, but once she passes out Tate himself appears to drag her to the shower and induce vomiting. Realizing what’s happened, Violet can only weep more.
Experiencing his own troubling visions of Luke and his wife, Ben continues coaching Derek through his fears as Vivien meets with former nurse Angela in a church. Angela asserts that she saw full-on hooves in the ultrasound, believing her unborn child to be ‘the unclean thing, the plague of nations, the beast!’Vivien dismisses her as crazy, of course, and leaves while Angela spouts scripture. Derek himself later confronts his Piggy man fears at home, but just as it seems he’s conquered them a man emerges from the shower and shoots him in the head, the man and his partner in the process of robbing Derek’s home!
Constance meets with her medium Billie once more, and manages to talk to the recently deceased Addie, finally making peace by apologizing for never saying how proud, and full of love and admiration she was for her daughter. Addie supposedly accepts, but also thanks Constance for not dragging her to the lawn after her death, not wanting to be trapped in the house like her deceased brother Tate. Constance flashes back to the standoff in Tate’s room in 1994, which culminates in the boy lunging for a pistol before being brought down in a hail of gunfire, and unable to answer the officer who asks ‘why did you do it?’
Back in the present, Tate appears in Violet’s room as she reads a book he’d once checked out. Tate confesses that he senses a distance between them, and offeres to leave her alone despite his love for her. She invites him on to the bed, and the two cuddle with one last exchange.
‘I’m tired.”Me too.’
Will Tate ever realize his own death, or haunt Violet and the house forever? What did you think about the episode? Join us next week for an all-new episode of American Horror Story on FX!
I don't know what I think, but its clear that Tate and Violet are the stars of the show. I guess that sad as it is, she will probably have to help him get out of that house. What else can she do for him, really? Of course without Tate around, Violet would already have been dead like three times. I just don't know. But I can't wait for next episode.
The two young actors certainly shoulder some incredible material! It'll be interesting to see if they stretch their story into another season, or kill off the Harmons and bring in a new family next season as they've talked about. Either way, the next episode's a good one!