Father Son Holy Gore

FX’s American Horror Story
Season 5, Episode 5: “Room Service”
Directed by Michael Goi
Written by Ned Martel

* For a review of the previous episode, “Devil’s Night” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “Room 33” – click here
Greetings, friends – another night at Hotel Cortez, is it?
“Room Service” starts out back with Alex Lowe (Chloë Sevigny), whose recent path has taken her into the arms of The Countess (Lady Gaga). Remember last episode at the finish, Alex had taken the drink, she now has the ancient virus. Here, she sort of wanders the hospital where she doctors in a fugue. Her senses, especially sound, are heightened. I love the P.O.V shots we often get on American Horror Story, but these are so great. Alex can hear a woman’s pulse pounding in her neck, almost as if it could pop right through the skin.
Then – nasty – Dr. Lowe heads in to where the blood is stored. Kind of perfect, isn’t it? She’s a vampire now and essentially has an almost unending supply of blood without all the murder.
Yet she further decides to inject a young sick boy’s IV with a syringe full of blood. An unsettling moment, watching the boy shake around, speckled with what looks like measles possibly. And his eyes come upon, springing alive before the credits. A spooky sequence to start off this episode. Gotta love it.Donovan (Matt Bomers), with his mother Iris (Kathy Bates) in tow, shows up at the door of Ramona Royale (Angela Bassett). It seems the son wants to use his mom in order to help Ramona with her vengeance against The Countess. He is one truly scorned lover. I love how there are all these vampiric characters crashing against one another. Iris isn’t happy, though, she’s terrified. Though, Donovan brings up a good point: “She never looks at you. You‘re invisible.” Which is true, really. Iris is at the call of The Countess, but she is not a friend, barely an acquaintance. All boss. So this might be a damn good plan after all.
Does anything ever go the way it’s supposed to, though, in this series? No, no, no.
Then, in other ancient virus news, turns out the young boy Alex injected with the blood has made a speedy recovery. Well, is that a surprise? Certainly not.
Iris manages to get back to the Cortez where Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) chastises her a little. She can tell Iris is not feeling right, and mixes up “Liz‘s special sum‘in sum‘in.” Liz reveals the cocktail is blood with a splash of Triple Sec.
Poor Iris. Even though she was one of the people doing bad shit around the hotel (think: Swedish tourists), there’s been a consistently tragic aspect about her I find redeemable. The whole purpose of going to the Cortez in the first place, for Iris, was trying to save her son, and then she got roped into staying. And now – it’s for-e-ver.
Such a great meeting of the acting minds here with a solid scene of dialogue between Kathy Bates and Denis O’Hare. They’re two wonderful actors who I’ve enjoyed before American Horror Story. Yet Ryan Murphy/Brad Falchuk & Co. are able to bring out their best qualities here, giving them each very intriguing roles season after season.Oh, the bad little boy, Max, whom Alex saved has fed on his parents. Then off to school he goes. Awesome little scene right after we see his parents bled out on the floor, as Max digs his hands into eyeballs and guts at a table setup in his classroom; fake, of course. Still, there’s a creepy aspect to this moment. EVEN MORE INTENSELY UNNERVING – Max goes in a dark room with a young girl named Madeline, where he introduces her to a bit of the measles (or whatever the hell he had), as well as that tricky ancient virus. This begins on an insane outbreak of measles throughout the class. Plus, Max kills a couple teachers.
Some of the best gore we’ve seen yet in this episode! CREEPY CHILDREN – CREEPY CHILDREN EVERYWHERE. The part where they all attack and feed on the male teacher, blood spurting everywhere, his clothes soaked through… so damn good. Then, like there would be, absolute panic breaks out.
If anybody tells you there’s no wild horror in this series, promptly tell them to fuck off somewhere. Because this was one hell of a horrific sequence. It wasn’t all gore, either. Certain people want to try and act like the show simply goes for savagery over any substance. Wrong – the entire angle of what happens with the children, all those varied moments from the classroom to the chilling scene which follows as all the kids are brought out to their unsuspecting parents, they’re an amazing bunch of scenes. Truly full of gorgeous madness.
Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) is seeing the fallout from his little serial killer dinner party last episode. A Lieutenant (Robert Knepper; awesome) questions him on what exactly happened. Certainly the man is a bit disturbed by Lowe’s statements, involving John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer (et cetera). Lowe is a truly sympathetic character. Unless it turns out, as some believe online, John is the Ten Commandments Killer. Though, I think there are some time issues there that won’t play out correctly for that to be real. We’ll see! For now, I feel bad for John because he is being put through the ringer in so many different ways. He’s bound to snap, or fall into a vicious spiral which could lead to death.
A couple idiots show up to test Iris and her patience. Meanwhile, Tristan (Finn Wittrock) and The Countess are dressed up, to the nines, and heading out for Halloween; love Tristan’s Gary Oldman costume. Iris is clearly thrown off and nervous, while Tristan almost sniffs her out right there and then. Both of them, in fact.
What’s even better is the conversation Iris has afterwards with the douchebags who recently checked in. They want grilled salads and other things the hotel doesn’t offer. So, she enlists the help of Liz who really seems to know people well enough – these dummies are going to live to regret their stay, I would imagine.

“Bitches want pâté, pâté they shall have.”

Amazing bit of Liz Taylor here, as she gives us a look at the past, his old home life. Nick, her original name, was a medical representative. On trips out of town, he lived the life he WANTED while alone in the room. I can’t get enough of O’Hare. He is a constant treat, and it’s gold watching him do drag, the character finding himself.
Then once Countess shows up, things get even more interesting. She tells him “you smell like a woman“, but it’s not the perfume – “It‘s your skin, your blood,” she says. Such a dark yet also beautiful scene. We watch Nick become Liz Taylor in front of our eyes.
What’s most interesting to me here, above everything else, is how the Countess comes across as a helpful woman, someone who cares and loves and wants to be there for other people. Even when Liz is confronted in the hallway by the two men her former male self came to the hotel with, Countess kills them to save any trouble. Either way, Liz never went back to her life as Nick ever again. Neither did The Countess infect her. She and Iris bond over their respective strengths. He advises her to “teach that hipster couple some manners.” Oooh, I love this – delightful mischief! I won’t spoil this bit any longer. Wait and see the brutality for yourself.

“Become who you were born to be: a goddess.”

Now former detective John Lowe wakes up in his bed, scratches across the chest, next to Hypodermic Sally (Sarah Paulson). He appears to not remember, until a moment later when the foggy memories of the previous night come back. Obviously Lowe went on a nasty bender, which led him up to the room where he surely had unprotected sex with a half-woman/half-ghost. All the while dildo drillbit man shows up in the mirror behind John to spook him out. Wouldn’t that be awful? Hard enough to get one off when you’re drunk, let alone seeing that eerie bastard around your room.