What a freaking fantastic episode! Scream Queens hit it out of the park in their fourth episode, and I’m not kidding when I say it had everything. I looked away from the screen twice because of the eerie cinematography, only to be tricked into witnessing a campy murder. I guess Screen Queens really is the exact combination of American Horror Story and Glee, and what a concoction!
The first few scenes manage to throw punches at Taylor Swift and her gift giving rituals through Chanel-o-ween, and draw out the outrageous accusation against Dean Munch in a hilarious bit of banter. Denise shows up to remind us that she is still Denise, but that the Devil also ‘possibly’ dismembered a few fraternity brothers.
Grace and Pete track down Mandy, one of the Kappa sisters present the night of the Bathtub Baby. Pete does an excellent Matthew McConaughey, which had me laughing through this somber scene. When Mandy opens the door she asks if they are there asking about the Bathtub Baby, and when they reply yes she says, ‘I have been waiting twenty years for someone to come around to ask about it’ which pokes fun at that classic ‘always ready to tell a traumatic story’ trope.
Mandy describes that night and how Munch, not yet the Dean, orchestrates everything and forces the girls to leave the university immediately. These flashbacks are more and more ridiculous each time. I hope Scream Queens does something clever with these skewed stories soon.
Zayday makes a bid to run for Kappa president after Earl Grey provides some encouragement to become the first black president of Kappa house. (Guys that dude’s name is really Earl Grey, well done). Zayday chooses to run on a campaign to rid the world of sickle cell anemia, which is nice until the Kappa sisters reminder that all of her voters are in the same room as her and there isn’t much point to campaigning. No matter, Zayday is going to throw an awesome Halloween party. Right on.
There’s a fantastic ensemble scene with the remaining Chanels. It involved Chanel carelessly flinging knives around as she talked, and the girls decide to throw a bigger party to secure Chanel’s presidency.
Then we come to the first scary scene: Mandy, alone in her trailer. There are a series of knocks at her front door and then around the entire trailer. The whole scene is shot with just Mandy scuttling around her small home in fear for her own safety. The scene went much longer than I expected and I found that because of its length it was much scarier to me. The scene ends with Mandy’s inevitable death by, guess who, the Devil, poses precariously in her shower.
We find Chad creeping around a cemetery for all the wrong reasons, and Hester pops out of nowhere, as she does. She makes a plea that she truly understands him and his interests, and of course, Chad is so into it. This Chanel make-over may have made over more than just Hester’s appearance, or has Hester been playing everyone all along? I guess we shall see.
Grace makes an immature accusation to her father that he is the killer and she is the Bathtub Baby after she learns that the baby was a girl. Then she promptly meets Pete at the creepy house off campus. Everyone is there! Zayday and Earl pop up to scare Grace and Pete, and then Denise follows suit. Pete and Denise tell the exact same story about researching what happened in this weird house, and it’s actually pretty funny and not annoying! I find Denise extremely fun, so it hard for me to dislike any scene she’s in.
Reportedly, a hag used to live in the house and no one believed it until some kids went into the house to the second floor and found a room full of baby dolls. Denise accuses Zayday of being the killer once again, and finally Zayday fights back. She’s done her own research and learned that Denise also went to this university, and pledged Kappa but wasn’t allowed in because of her race. Zayday suggests she has it out for her simply because she is jealous. If this is true, I hope Zayday and Denise can team up, because there is not much point in having the only remaining women of color at each other’s throats.
Speaking of women empowering other women, the Chanels and Hester stand up for themselves against catcallers in the cafeteria. It started with a really gross scene where the Chanels urge Hester to eat cotton balls instead of food. It was really hard to watch this, and equally hard to understand exactly what Scream Queens is trying to imply when it constantly references eating disorders. Scream Queens does need to make a decision about this very serious issue, because flip-flopping on this issue for humor could actually be harmful to younger viewers.
In any case, they decide to get real food, but not before schooling the catcallers about the patriarchal system that she learned about in her women’s studies course. This entire sequence is soaked in irony as the girls physically beat up the two men, and everyone cheers. None of this really lines up, but I’ll give Scream Queens the benefit of the doubt in this case. I think the writers are trying to demonstrate the polarization of some serious issues, and how contradictory they can feel within society. Wow, that was pretty serious for a horror-comedy.
Someone mysteriously lures both Chad and Hester to the creepy Hag house, and they enter it long before Zayday’s party begins. Chad asks Hester what her name is and looks slightly at the camera when he learns it with a very confused expression, so funny! After a short separation, Hester and Chad enter a room with Mrs. Bean on the bed. Yes, the really dead Mrs. Bean. Hester thinks it’s wax, but it’s not and really gross! Wow! My notes for this scene were just in all CAPS as everything happened so fast. Chad and Hester run throughout the house and at nearly every corner there’s another dead body. First Mrs. Bean, then Shondell, Coney, Chanel #2 and finally Mandy. (But where is Boone’s body? Just kidding, he’s alive, and possibly conducting the entire serial murder).
Chad and Hester’s warning to the campus about the ‘real dead bodies’ backfires terribly and everyone shows up to the Hag house early. Zayday and company find out that the party has already started with ‘real dead bodies’ and even her plan to call 911 backfires when the operator has plans to come to the party after his shift ends. Whoops! Zayday gets ‘kidnapped,’ and that better be all she is, because if they kill Zayday I may have to stop watching Scream Queens in protest.
The police and Dean Munch reason that they do not have to shut down campus because the bodies were found in off campus housing, and they were not students. Some of them were, but whatever Dean Munch, let your campus fall into chaos, it’s probably what you want.
Grace reveals her final thoughts on the true nature of the Hag house and how in 1995 a ‘haggish’ woman was seen stealing diapers and milk (‘They still had milkman in 1995?”), and Grace decides that the Hag was taking care of the Bathtub Baby. Here’s where the second scary scene begins. The camera slowly wanders around the house, ending at the top of the stairs where a figure sits in the rocking chair in the baby doll room. A final close up reveals Gigi sitting in the chair in a black cloak. Was I right? Is Gigi the Devil? Maybe! But probably not, as I suspect Scram Queens will throw us on a few more tangents before giving us substantial clues.
“Haunted House” was an almost flawless episode in my eyes. What did you think?
[Photo credit: Hilary Gayle/FOX]
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