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cult-of-kai · 7 years ago

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The Sword of Swift Justice

Thoughts on episode eight, ‘Winter of Our Discontent’:

This episode was like the ghost of predictions past for me…

The promo picture called Cheyenne Jackson’s character ‘Dr. Rudy Vincent’, but his name in the show is Dr. Vincent Anderson. Surely this was done to preserve the surprise reveal. Right away, we find out that Vincent is innocent of all but being a lousy shrink. But even then- wait. Is he a lousy shrink? He’s exasperated by Ally, to be sure- but so were we. So was Ivy, for all that she had other issues as well. Rosie, beaming, said that Vincent cured her and he responded by praising the work she’d put in. I thought he had to be loading Kai up on Adderall if nothing else, but nope. Kai steals prescription pads from him. Vincent’s eventual fate stings because it comes right when he’s trying to atone for mistakes he is just realizing he made. I reasoned early on that Vincent might not actually be involved in the cult, but I kind of assumed I was overthinking the whole thing. Nope again. Although… there was something a little creepy about the description of “pinky power” (which sounds even sillier than pinky promise), in my opinion. At any rate- RIP, Vincent.

I guess Bebe Babbitt… went missing? I don’t know, but the ladies of the cult are still pissed about being pushed aside. It’s gotten worse, actually, because now they’re stuck cooking for and serving Kai’s army of blueshirt drones. Ivy mentions The Handmaid’s Tale, which I’ll get back to later, and Beverly relates how Kai is manipulating the city council into going along with his decisions. The bit about the gated community is decent class-war commentary. Then it’s time for story time with Winter.

How did Kai-That-Was become the Kai we know? I think it was after the trailer’s release that I called Kai a manipulative whackjob with a messiah complex. But then back in ‘11/9′, we were given the impression of relative- if perhaps dreary- normalcy until Ms. Anderson commits a murder-suicide. This definitely effects him. A mutual of mine (@loonyloomis) pointed out that this was when Kai stopped cutting his hair- Adam Sheppard tease!- and he later gets into peddling fraudulent prescriptions. But he seems to bounce back for the most part, despite living in a house with two rotting corpses. Then the two younger Anderson siblings go to Judgment House on a lark, which Winter presents as the defining turning point in Kai’s life. Symbolically, it makes sense. In a twisted parody of a church, a horror *house of judgment*, Kai is stripped down to his essence- and found wanting. His first instinct upon realizing that Pastor Charles is torturing and killing people is to rescue them, which he does while Winter runs to save herself. This is Kai at his most genuinely heroic. He saved four people, including Winter, from terrible torment and death- not to mention any other victims Pastor Charles would have found. Now just take a minute to imagine how differently things might have gone if Kai had done as the female victim suggested and called the police. But he didn’t, because the better angel of his nature fails. Instead of shining a light on a great evil, he becomes it. He denies Pastor Charles’ victims the justice they choose to do as Winter suggests and kills him, becoming a killer. This- not his parents’ death- is the crack in Kai’s soul, the fissure in his mind. Everything since has been psychodramatic fallout and Kai bringing others down with him. He’s trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he’s on the rise when he is in free-fall.

I’m not sure how prevalent they are overall, but (fake!) Judgment Houses do definitely exist in the South. I specifically remember going to one that was split between heaven and hell. Everyone kept wandering back to hell because the heaven side- white sheets with scripture written all over them- was boring. Parts of Judgment House reminded me of ‘Se7en’, specifically Sloth. That’s undoubtedly deliberate, especially since Winter already name-dropped Fincher last episode. And randomly, AHS co-creator Brad Falchuk dates Gwyneth Paltrow. Others have mentioned similarities to the ‘Saw’ series, but I’ve never seen any of those. Rick Springfield was fine, but Pastor Charles would have been a nice little role for Denis O’Hare.

Anyway. Winter wants to try to reach Kai, because she believes that can happen. They’re all members of a murderous clown cult, but what do I know? Ivy and Beverly agree to give her some time. Winter and Kai meet, and we learn that Kai definitely knows how Harrison died and doesn’t care. They do a pinky power session and shit gets strange fast. Kai has decided, apropos of nothing, that they need to have a messiah baby. And for whatever reason, Winter has to be its mother. Logically, one’s mind goes to incest. But no- it’s going to be so much weirder than that! Kai says they’re going to have a threesome with Detective Samuels but somehow Winter will remain pure. At first I thought maybe Kai was just looking for an excuse to have sex with Samuels, but later events in the episode turned that idea on its head. Winter eventually calls the whole thing off because it gets to be too much nonsense for her. (I mean, it wasn’t until then?) Between the robes and the song and the behavior of all involved, it was undoubtedly one of the most bizarre AHS scenes ever- cringy as hell, but also hysterical and… oddly fitting in a satirical way? In the popular imagination and in reality (to a lesser degree), cult practices are often oddly sexual, cobbled together, and perversions of religious rituals. Kai has a degree in religious studies. Is he trying to sanctify what he and the cult are doing? His opening salvo during pinky power might lead us to believe he’s simply testing Winter, but I don’t know. The whole scenario also evokes ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a modern classic about women’s disenfranchisement via reproductive slavery.

As for Winter, what’s her deal? Why was she trolling “social justice warriors” with Kai? Sibling bonding? She seemed to be enjoying it. Was she perhaps also changed by Judgment House? Was her response to the trauma a hard left turn? But she swears to love and be loyal to her brother, who is politically on the opposite shore. In ‘11/9′, she told Ivy she wants to serve someone powerful. It’s all rather baffling. Regardless, Winter wearing a dunce cap and throwing recycling on the side of the road because Kai “doesn’t believe in global warming” is one of the funniest damn things I’ve seen all season. The following confrontation between her and Samuels- especially the line about losing when Hillary did- might suggest she would get more radical and truly join forces with the other women, but that’s not what happens. Instead, she… sells Beverly out? What? In turn, Beverly reads both Kai and Winter for filth.

We *finally* get a little backstory on Samuels, which I’ve been waiting for despite not caring about the character. I suspected he was a Nazi type way back in ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’, and I was right. He was also a dirty cop pre-cult, although it’s a little rich for Winter to accuse him of being a criminal when- once again- they’re both members of a *murderous clown cult*. He life is complicated by being gay and internalizing homophobia. Kai sees this and immediately goes to work, feeding Samuels a line of misogynistic bullshit and then fucking him for good measure. Kai seems particularly into it as well, which is interesting. I rather wonder how Evan would describe his character’s sexuality. So did Samuels just not care about Harrison at all? It didn’t seem like their involvement was only physical. I specifically remember them cuddling on the couch and discussing their favorite housewives. Eh. RIP, Samuels.

Finally, we have Ally to consider. We see her holding one of Oz’s toy trucks before inviting Kai over to rat Vincent out. She claims to be afraid of nothing now, and that’s after Kai has already noted a change in her. Their little exchange about Manwich is cute, as is her deliberately calling Speed Wagon ‘Aerosmith’. (Seriously, where did the drones’ names come from?) In the final scene, we see that that some drones have taken to wearing the masks of fallen clowns. Ally, staring Ivy down, is wearing the mask of Kai’s former “favorite”- the only one who impressed him. That’s no coincidence. Rise, Ally.

#it is *dumb* that I'm posting this only now #I've had it half-written since the night the episode aired #I've just been lazy #and busy #american horror story #AHS: cult #7.8 'winter of our discontent'#fandom thoughts #episode recaps #october 2017

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