Contributor: Gregg Wright
Written by Brad Falchuk
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Surprisingly, this episodes is even more low-key than the previous one. And for being the second part of the “Anne Franke” two-parter, it’s surprisingly light on Anne Frank herself. I find myself feeling torn on this episode; more so than every previous one. It seems to take a heavier descent into the stylistic excesses that troubled the earliest episodes of the first season, and it’s certainly the most surreal episode of the season thus far.
These problems are relatively minor, though, compared some of the more confusing story and character issues. The episode does its level best to convince us that Anne Frank is simply suffering from a mental illness, and has fabricated the entire story of being the famous Holocaust victim. I thought it pretty unlikely that the episode would backtrack on the whole revelation that Arden was a Nazi war criminal, so the twist at the end fell a bit flat for me.
Most of the Anne Frank-centric elements of the episode take the form of flashbacks, stylized to an almost nonsensical degree at times. There may be some sort of subtext or symbolism intended by the 8mm/technicolor approach to those scenes, but it’s mostly lost on me. Overall, I felt a bit underwhelmed by the conclusion to Anne Frank’s story. And what happened to the Nazi hunter? I can understand needing a way to reveal such an important part of Arden’s past, but this episode never fully justified Anne Frank’s presence in the story.
I also found Sister Jude’s abrupt breakdown and relapse into her old ways to be poorly handled. I understand that she’s been feeling guilty over her vehicular manslaughter incident and has turned to drink because of it on one occasion. And having her belief that Dr. Arden is a former S.S. doctor destroyed before her eyes can’t have helped things. But this decision lacks build-up. It’s too sudden and extreme a deviation for Sister Jude.
This lack of coherency and sense seems to permeate much of the episode, but the bulk of it seems to rest on the Anne Frank arc. What happens in the rest of the episode heavily overshadows the conclusion to the Anne Frank arc. I refer primarily to the reveal of Bloody Face. The scenes at Thredson’s house are among the most effective of the season. Quinto is, of course, adept at playing monstrous psychopaths. So he’s fairly mesmerizing in the role.
However, I do have a couple of potential misgivings about this reveal. On the one hand, the reveal is an absolute surprise to me. I was pretty certain that Arden was Bloody Face, though I did momentarily consider the possibility that this was a red herring. I never considered the possibility that the compassionate and forward-thinking Dr. Thredsen could be the ruthless killer targeting women. And it makes a kind of sense. Thredson went out of his way to make Kit believe that he was the killer, after all.
On the other hand, though, such a dramatic shift in personality from Dr. Thredson is naturally going to be a bit hard to swallow. I might have preferred something a bit more subtle, instead of an all-out shift into mustache-twirling psychopathic monster. This concern has been mitigated somewhat by reading interviews with both Ryan Murphy and Zachary Quinto, which emphasize the care that went into creating the character and explaining his backstory. Quinto knew from the start that Thredson was Bloody Face, and this factored heavily into how he planned his performance.
The other element of the episode that I liked will come as no surprise to those who regularly read my reviews. The aliens make another, even more dramatic visit to Briarcliff; this time snatching up Grace right from solitary confinement. After that it’s bright white light, bodily invasion, and hey! There’s Alma! After a quick, horrifying visit with what appears to be Alma, Grace is returned to Briarcliff a little worse for wear. She regains consciousness and her memories of the experience just in time to see Kit being dragged off by detectives, having been successfully duped by Thredson into recording his confession.
The location of Grace’s bleed is pretty suspicious, if you ask me. And we did see Grace’s belly being sliced open during the alien “procedure”. Not only that, Alma looked pregnant. What’s going on here? Kit had sex with both women just before they were abducted. Are the aliens trying to create hybrids? That would certainly play into the whole “classic UFO lore” theme they have going so far.
This is the first episode of the season that just didn’t quite gel for me. There’s a lot that works, but this Anne Frank storyline seems to have sidetracked the momentum and direction of the season a bit. I was receptive to it at first, but the payoff was insufficient. In the end, I have to err on the forgiving side with the episode. The strengths still outweigh the weaknesses, and I suspect that some of my more minor issues will seem less egregious when put into context with the rest of the season.
Score: 8/10