FX’s American Horror Story
10×09: “Blue Moon”
Directed by Laura Belsey & John J. Gray
Written by Kristen Reidel, Manny Coto, & Reilly Smith

* For a recap & review of 10×08, click here.
* For a recap & review of the Season 10 finale, click here.
1954. Dwight Eisenhower’s having trouble signing over American lives for a bit of technology. But the alien inhabiting his wife Mamie insists it’s best for the United States if the President complies. Either he does so or Mamie will have her brains splattered. And thus Dwight signs the agreement with the extraterrestrials; history is made. Later, Eisenhower’s shown pictures of the aliens abducting people, including a nine-year-old girl.

Skip ahead three years and Eisenhower’s administration are together, tallying all the abductions: “two hundred and ninety eight” over the past few years. The POTUS thinks they got a bad deal. Ole Nixon warns against any quick judgements, right as the administration gets a visit from another alien being called Valiant Thor (Cody Fern). Chaos erupts across the White House grounds as Valiant makes his way to the Oval Office. Eisenhower orders his men to stand down and Valiant arrives to meet him.
It seems Valiant’s a kind of “liaison” and he’s briefing Eisenhower’s people about the alien-human hybrids that we’ve seen evidence of in the current day portions of Death Valley. He’s not quite an alien, more a robot. He’s also brought futuristic technology, part of the whole deal Eisenhower signed: a tiny iPhone-like computer that he believes will eventually usher in “peace and harmony” for the world; a bit of hilarious dark comedy.
Mamie’s busy moving from birthday parties to Halloween celebrations, hoping to help America embrace the end of October as a festive time. Dwight has much bigger things on his mind, such as selling out the nation to the aliens. He reads the papers, looking at stories about missing people, and knows he’s done the American people a disservice after all. At night, he hears screams coming through the pipes, so he goes on a search to investigate. He finds a room somewhere in the basement and it unlocks with a handprint technology. Inside is an elevator. Dwight’s taken floors and floors below the surface. He hears more screams from the darkness and heads down a long, thin corridor. Down in the sub-basement, Eisenhower discovers terrifying things, all overseen by Valiant. Thor shows Dwight alien foetuses growing in tanks.

Later, Dwight tells Mamie about what’s happening beneath the White House. She doesn’t exactly care for her husband’s “moody spells” and she isn’t as upset about the human experimentation occurring downstairs. That’s just because she’s been well-versed in “state secrets.” She then suggests her husband offer the aliens some land in Nevada to use, rather than the White House. Then, President Eisenhower creates Area 51 as a bioexperimentation lab for top secret purposes, and he swears his administration to secrecy.
Yet Dwight keeps hearing strange things from the vents. This time it’s Mamie having sex with Valiant. Dwight’s shocked and passes out, waking up to a very level-headed Mamie explaining things to him. Mamie considers Valiant a living “personal massager,” considering the guy’s not even a human. It’s a lot for the President to handle.

Five years later at FBI HQ, Nixon and Eisenhower are watching a film reel featuring Marilyn Monroe talking about the alien deal. Troublesome for their secrets. They wonder if JFK knows, considering he’s sleeping with Monroe. Eisenhower doesn’t think anyone will take Marilyn seriously because of her addiction issues, while Nixon thinks it’s more serious than that, suggesting drastic measures to sew this situation up. Meanwhile, poor Marilyn’s sinking deeper into her issues, feeling isolated, and it’s sadly the perfect time for a conspiracy to strike, as a couple men attack her in the night and murder her, making it look like an accidental overdose.
A year later we see Eisenhower, Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson (Karl Makinen) together at an army base meeting with Valiant. They’re headed into a hangar to take a look at the alien-human hybrids, much further along in their growth. Cut back to current day as Troy’s about to go into labour. He’s sedated and then his stomach cut open to deliver the baby. Troy can suddenly not feel anything and he can hear Theta speak to him without actually speaking. Then the alien child is taken out of Troy; it’s healthy but has “physical abnormalities.” So the alien baby gets killed, yet Troy feels it, like they’re psychically linked as one.
A week later, Troy’s back with Cal and the others, though traumatised. He tells them what happened, from being mentally sedated to the killing of the baby, and they’re rightly horrified. He’s so upset because he and Cal had come around to the idea of having a child together someday. He got attached to the thing inside him, only for it to be murdered. Calico interrupts to tell the group they ought to get used to being “a mongrel” dogs meant for breeding. But they’re not ready to accept that.

Calico takes the group for a tour around Area 51, specifically the moon landing set. Jump back to 1969, when Calico was working as a server at a bar. She was just making money and having fun. One night she saw Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong at her bar when they were supposed to be
“floating in space.” She had drinks with the pair, who drunkenly told her the entire tale of filming the moon landing, complete with making up dialogue. It’s because of that meeting Calico was taken by the government, abducted back to Area 51 where she became a breeding vessel for the hybrids. She woke up and wandered onto the moon landing set, where Stanley Kubrick (Jeff Heapy) was busy directing the whole thing. Point being? Calico once had a life, now she’s birthing alien-human hybrids until a good one pops out for the aliens to use. A terrible existence.

The next day, Cal’s feeling strange and the pregnancy’s moving along. He doesn’t want to part with the child. So Troy decides to take Cal someplace to hide for now. They go to the moon landing set. But Troy thinks they have to cut the baby out now. He doesn’t want the government to take this baby from them. They know from Calico this will never end. And this begins homemade surgery.
Troy cuts Cal’s abdomen open, reaching inside to pull the child out. The baby’s alive and healthy, and it pops out with tentacles to snatch its mother/father’s face. Nasty.