FX’s American Horror Story
12×03 “When the Bough Breaks”
Directed by Jennifer Lynch
Written by Halley Feiffer

* For a recap & review of 12×02, click here.
* For a recap & review of 12×04, click here.
Anna dreams of the beautiful field and her happy, healthy baby. It quickly evaporates as flies start to swarm and blood seeps its way up Anna’s dress. When Anna snaps out of it she’s in the car with Dexter. He keeps assuring they’re going to figure out the stalker situation, yet she isn’t so sure. She knows “something really fucked up is happening” to her and she doubts the police are actually going to help her with anything. She’s also dead set on trying to get pregnant again. Dexter thinks they ought to wait until things blow over. But Anna thinks someone is purposefully trying to prevent her from having a child, and she doesn’t want to stop trying. She knows whoever’s doing all this is “up to something.” For right now, Dexter doesn’t want to try, at least not right away, and that upsets Anna. She wants to take some time alone and gets out of the vehicle to walk home.
After walking a while, Anna comes upon a fire. She hears someone singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” and sees Io Preecher in a tree. The woman says: “I‘ve been looking for you.” It sends Anna running off towards home. She gets back and Dexter tells her she’s been gone for hours. She’s losing time more and more these days. She mentions seeing the woman in tree, she’s sure that’s her stalker. This sends Dexter and Kamal back out into the woods, along with Anna now, to look for Io. But, of course, they find nothing out there other than an owl. Dexter questions Anna about whether she actually saw the lady. She’d rather go home than be scrutinised yet again about her version of reality.

Anna can’t stop looking online to see what people are saying about her, nor can she stop picking at the sore on her face. She looks for anything about Preecher, but nothing comes up. She goes to sleep and sees visions of the dead bird outside her apartment, along with her own dripping blood. When she comes to it’s the morning. Dexter’s asleep. But Anna hears someone singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” in the house. She goes downstairs and discovers Nicolette (MJ Rodriguez) listening to a video. Nicolette is a single mom and the house manager for Talia’s Hamptons getaway. She shows Anna the video she was watching; it’s her singing to her child. Anna then discovers that Hamish sent them a gift basket. She freaks out because nobody’s supposed to have the address of where they’re staying. She confronts Dexter and he says he never let Hamish know the address. Dexter asks about the sore on Anna’s face and she flashes back to Ivy at the hospital, who had a similar mark on her face, too. He also says that by the time Anna’s forty her stalker will have “moved onto the next It girl.” He reflects on young women wanting to be “the next Marilyn Monroe” but never really knowing what it entails, as if it’s the women’s fault, as if they’re asking for these things to happen, and, y’know, not the fault of the creeps.
When Anna sees her phone ringing she loses time again. She thought that Siobhan just called her but three hours have passed and Siobhan is right there in the room with her. She doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. Siobhan decides to make Anna something good to eat. They go down to the kitchen and make a viral TikTok dressing for a salad. Siobhan says she was once going through similar things while doing IVF. She talks about all the chemicals rushing through women’s bodies while they’re going through the process and how after it’s over there’s still a strange, lingering feeling. She tells Anna that exercise is a good idea, too. So once the salad is eaten, the ladies go for a walk on the beach.
Anna worries that Dexter might be having an affair with Sonia. But Siobhan tells Anna to drop all that. She says being famous is a lot of bullshit and that’s partly what Anna’s been going through. She then mentions getting Anna a photoshoot with Vogue. Siobhan says: “Nobody‘s ready for anything; motherhood, stardom, miscarriages. We‘re all just learning on the job.” Not long after Siobhan leaves for a call with Anna Wintour, Anna stumbles onto a doll in the sand; one of the rare dolls from her old show. And in the distance on the beach are two figures covered head-to-toe in black along with goats. Yes, something dark is lurking on the periphery of Anna’s existence, and it’s not going away.

In the basement, Anna looks through a box labelled TALIA’S BABY STUFF. She sees photographs from Talia’s childhood documenting the early stages of her life. She watches Talia grow up through the years from one photo to the next. Then the crib almost comes alive as “Rock-a-bye Baby” plays from a baby’s mobile. This frightens Anna, but she just chugs a bit of wine and continues looking through Talia’s childhood relics. Probably not the healthiest thing to do after having such an awful miscarriage. Anna eventually curls into a ball and falls asleep on the basement floor. She wakes later to hear laughter. She hears whispering coming from a small door in the basement. She opens the door and has to crawl through it to get inside. The whispering stops, as Anna gets into the space far enough to stand.
A voice laughs from somewhere deep inside the house and someone says “Shh.” The place is like a labyrinth. Anna navigates the halls like a dungeon of a medieval castle. She comes to a room filled with jars; one has a baby’s head inside, others have various parts in them, and one has a whole baby in it. Anna continues through a hole lined with branches and finds a hospital chair with stirrups in a room with Satanic writing on it; the writing reads SALVE, O PUER! AVE SATANAS! (roughly “Hail, O Child! Hail Satan!”) among other things. Cloaked figures grab Anna and strap her into the chair. She sees a goat’s head above her before she’s knocked unconscious.
After Anna wakes up she’s lying on the basement floor, back out in the main basement before entering the door. She rushes up to a locked basement door. She calls out until Dexter opens the door. She says she felt the baby moving in her stomach. Anna thinks this means something but Dexter’s sure it’s all just lack of sleep and stress. When she trips up she finds the creepy doll from her old show; it has nails in it. She tries explaining things to Dexter but he treats her almost like she’s crazy. He breaks down a bit, as well. He’s still reeling from losing their potential child, and Anna realises she’s forgotten this in the whole ordeal. That’s not to say Anna isn’t giving up on her visions. She calls Dr. Hill about feeling the baby move and he says it’s common for women who’ve had miscarriages to feel these kind of phantom tremors. She also asks about “scary dreams” after miscarrying. Dr. Hill says a miscarriage is a trauma and urges her to take time to get through things properly.

Nicolette turns up again and immediately notices that Anna is bleeding from the mouth. So Anna goes to look in the mirror and she even Googles her latest mouth issue, which produces all manner of results. That afternoon, Anna goes to the store and she looks at baby things; not in a depressed way, either. She’s smiling and thinking hopefully about the future. She rubs her face against some baby clothes, then the lights flicker. She sees the strange black figures walking with a lantern. There’s a great muzak version of “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt playing on the radio. Then, suddenly, it’s nighttime. Anna’s lost a bunch of time. She gets chatting with a woman who works at the store. The lady feels her stomach and says the baby is “a kicker.” This gives Anna even more hope. She purchases the baby clothes and heads back to the Hamptons house feeling good. Along the way, she sees Sonia on a street corner smiling at her. She stops long enough to see Sonia meeting Dexter before they head off into an alley together. Then Ms. Preecher turns up again warning: “Watch out for her.” She disappears as quickly as she appeared. Kamal chases the lady off and Anna gets angry with him for not believing her before about being followed.

On the way home, Anna changes her password again. She schedules “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” into her phone, as if hoping to communicate with whoever it is that’s hacking/stalking her, believing it must be Ms. Preecher. Soon there’s an alert on the calendar reading: “I WANT TO WARN YOU. THEY DID SOMETHING TO YOUR BABY.” Anna writes back asking if they killed her baby. She gets a note back telling her the baby isn’t dead. An emotional moment, yet also a disturbing one. Anna then notices a dead animal outside rotting with maggots. Not sure what it means, or why it’s happening. There’s also Nicolette watching intently from inside. There’s so much weird, disjointed shit happening in this season. Hopefully it’ll make more sense soon because Delicate is just not grabbing me as well as most other seasons. We’ll see how Anna’s terror develops in the coming episodes.