Alice Rush reviews the second episode of American Horror Story: Coven…
After last week’s arguably slow start I’ve been waiting for more grit and gore from American Horror Story Coven to sink my teeth into. One of the problems of an anthology series is making sure the pace is right so that the whole narrative flows well and comes to its natural conclusion. Whilst this week’s episode ‘Boy Parts’ continues to move the story along, it still feels like Coven is circling a main point of conflict that is yet to be addressed.
After last week’s revelation that Madame LaLaurie is alive and well, Fiona imprisons her within the boarding house, demanding to know how she’s still fresh after all these years. A flashback sequence shows that the woman who killed her, Marie Laveau, actually gave her a immortality potion so that she may suffer for the rest of her life. Having sparked her interest, Fiona tracks down Laveau, who is also still alive, and explains her desire for immortality. The conflict between the old and new is definitely a main theme within the show, with Laveau despising Fiona and her kind for taking the original voodoo magic and disregarding the black slaves who gave it to them. It’s a tense showdown between the powerhouses of their respective branches of magic, showing that the century’s long feud is far from over.
The younger witches also get the chance to try their hand at some meddling, with Zoe and Madison attempting to bring dismembered nice guy Kyle back to life. After nearly spilling the beans to the cops, the girls take a resurrection spell and make their way to the morgue, picking and choosing the best ‘Boy Parts’ of the frat boys corpses and sewing them together in a very Frankenstein-esque sequence. Whilst the older cast seem to be coming into their own as characters, the young witches feel like they are finding their feet, with their motives and personalities still quite ambiguous at this point. This scene did however tick the box for expected gore and bloodiness, and acted as a nice parallel to Cordelia, who also took life into her own hands and used magic to try and conceive a child with her husband. The whole sequence was very visual, with writhing bodies, snakes slithering across circles of salt and blood and Cordelia’s eyes turning a terrifying jet black. Whilst there may still be a lot of questions about where the real danger of the series lies, it’s obvious from this episode that playing with life and death is going to return on these characters in a big way.
Another character who returned from the dead was Misty Day, who opened the episode by murdering alligator hunters to the sound of Stevie Knicks. Misty’s place within the show is still yet to be shown fully, though her link with the dead and resurrection powers is starting to be handy, as Zoe takes a newly revived Kyle to her for help. The amount of secrecy already rife within the show will hopefully open the rest of the series up for some terrifying showdowns, as the clashes between the strong female characters are already slowly building up.
Though the series has only just started and I am trying to reserve my judgements for what is to come, I can’t help but feel the ball hasn’t totally started rolling for Coven yet. A lot of information is being given to us, but there isn’t that sense of imminent danger that we have seen with the previous two seasons. However, with the dead coming back to life and the black voodoo magic infiltrating the pristine white world of Miss Robichaux’s Academy, it could just prove to be a slow cooking series. I really hope the pressure gets turned up in the next few episodes.
Alice Rush
Originally published October 17, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
