TV Recap – American Horror Story: Hotel ‘She Wants Revenge’
7 min read
We’re entering the home stretch of Hotel with this episode, and after the serial killer reveal last episode, it was time to touch on the myriad of other characters we forgot about whilst learning about how psychotic John is. The title is a give away to the main theme of this episode: The Countess is going to get revenge after being lied to for almost 100 years.
It starts off with an eerie monologue by our leading lady. The Countess states that men and women age differently; men’s hearts grow larger as women’s hearts grow smaller. She supposes her own heart must be tiny, which means that anything held there is VERY dear to her. Of course she means her one true love Valentino. She heads to the room where Valentino and Natasha were trapped for 100 years, and finds the train tickets she was going to use to leave March and the Hotel Cortez. She now knows that she wasn’t abandoned.
We then see the Countess planning her wedding to Will Drake. He likes a spectacle, it’s who he is. But the Countess shys away from press for obvious reasons, and demands to have a small and intimate wedding. Drake concedes, with his only task being to design a wedding dress for his finace. Countess asks Liz to order the flowers for the wedding ceremony, an order to which Liz responds with outrage. Liz doesn’t want anything to do with Countess after what she did to Tristan, despite Countess’ claims that Tristan didn’t know how to love. The sassy Dennis O’Hare responds with: “Get your own. damn. flowerrrrsss,” before sashsaying off.
The Countess hires a private investigator to find out where her beloved Valentino went, and he soon finds Rudy and Natasha at a motel. Countess heads to the motel where a gobsmacked Valentino greets her, before greeting her with a kiss and taking her inside. But nek minute, we see Countess in the throes of passion with Donovan. Um, why would she call him back all of a sudden when her one true love is now alive? Donovan tells Countess that if they’re to be together, he wants a monogamous relationship; they can do whatever they like with other people, but he must be the only one that she loves. Countess reluctantly agrees, reminding him that she’s getting married on Wednesday, but she’ll be a widow on Thursday so it’s all good to begin planning their future together. They joke about making a hit list of people to get rid of, before starting their lives over together.
The Countess has more than a few aces up her sleeve, with one being that she wants an impenetrable security door placed on the recently unsealed corridor, which held Valentino and Natasha for so many years. She needs it done in one day, as a ‘wedding gift’ and a place to store Drake’s private art collection. The contractor is dismayed at the deadline, but March appears to give him a pep talk before getting into a tiff with Countess. After being lied to for the last 100 years, she never wants to see March again. March desperately crawls after her as she stalks off, claiming their monthly dinners are the only thing that keeps him going in a place of loneliness and madness. Well, he probably should have thought of that.
A trio checks in at the Hotel Cortez under the name Stormcock. They tell an unfazed Iris that they plan on making pornography in their hotel room, a trade known to the Cortez. On the way to her room, Iris muses that she doesn’t mind pornography when its done right. However, she doesn’t want it being done in her hotel anymore, so she barges in and kills two of the members. Donovan happens to walk by as Iris is draining the blood from them, and is exciting at this bold new mother he has created. Iris is worried when she finds out Donovan is with the Countess again. While he claims its because he has a plan, Iris warns him that its not safe to be at the Cortez at the moment. The Countess quizzed Iris on Bartholomew’s escape, and Iris tells her that it was Ramona Royale’s work. Surely the Countess should have worked out that Iris is a vampire by now? Anywho, its not safe for Donovan and Iris to be affiliated with Royale anymore, as the Countess is sure to be after her.
Donovan is a sneaky little bastard this episode. He takes the remaining victim of Iris’ raid to Ramona as a gift, telling her he has a plan to take the Countess down once and for all. She doesn’t know if she can trust him, as he went soft on her last time he had a plan. But Donovan knows differently now. The Countess promised to love only him and he could almost believe it, except that he now knows she will never give him what she wants. With his motives explained, Donovan wants to know why Ramona has waited 20 years to go after the Countess to avenge her dead lover. We then get a heartbreaking backstory.
Ramona went home to visit her parents, where she cared for her dying mother and it became rapidly apparent that her father had Alzheimer’s disease. One night, after the death of her mother, two theives broke into the house and beat Ramona’s father to the brink of death. She gave him her blood, hoping that it might also restore his memory. But whilst it did slow down the disease, it did not cure it. For two decades she stayed by her father’s side, helping to feed him, before a tragic incident of deja vu occurred and two thieves broke in to rob the house. But alas, now being a vampire, Ramona’s father killed them. She realised he couldn’t live like this anymore, and she made the ultimate sacrifice by drowning him to set him free. Emerging into the outside world after two decades, people began to recognise Ramona from her movies again, as people were watching them on the Internet. It reminded her of everything the Countess had taken from her, and once again set her on the path to revenge. They then toast to their revenge plan.
Distracted by wedding plans, Donovan and Ramona put their plan into action. Donovan knocks the Countess out by putting pills in her drink, and then lets Ramona in to do the deed, because they both know he can’t do it himself. He lets Ramona in, brandishing her knife ready to – oh wait, Countess is awake annnd it was a trap. Donovan tases Ramona and they lock her up in the reinforced corridor, with the neon cage from episode 1. Iris is devastated to realise that Donovan has fallen under the Countess’ spell again, and she warns him that she’ll just move on from him like she did before. But Donovan’s in no mood to listen, and due to cameras Iris can’t help Ramona escape.
Then suddenly, it’s the big day. Drake and his son Lachlan are getting dressed for the wedding when Miss Evers appears, pleading with Drake not to marry the Countess or he’d end up dead. She reveals that she had been supposed to marry March, before Countess appeared and stole his heart with her beauty. Drake believes Countess is the one for him, and tells Miss Evers he never wants to see her again. She’s fine with this, and tells him that she’ll smile happily as he dies, because she knows that it’ll be left to her to clean the blood and shit from his suit. Who doesn’t love a sweet homemaker with a quirky side for blood violence? I certainly do.
They have their intimate ceremony, with only the celebrant, Lachlan and a very reluctant Liz as their witnesses. Once pronounced husband and wife, Countess heads upstairs to change ready for their honeymoon in Paris, whilst Drake decides to go to the bar to celebrate. At the bar one James Patrick March suddenly appears, congratulating Drake on his nuptials. Will muses on how lucky he is to call the Countess his wife, while March laughs and remarks at how progressive blended families are these days. Drake says that the Countess loves his son very much, but is confused when March remarks that he wasn’t talking about Lachlan. Nope, he was of course talking about the one and only demon child, aka Bartholomew. Drake recoils in horror from the baby (I don’t blame him), but unfortunately Countess hears his comments and can’t tolerate those things being said about her son. So she decides to kill him at the hotel, knocking him unconscious and putting him in the locked corridor with Ramona. After Drake makes the mistake of letting Ramona out of the cage, her lust for blood overtakes her and she kills Drake. Miss Evers stands there watching gleefully (as she said she would), while Countess watches on from a monitor.
Oh, the vampire children are back. Basically they’ve killed everyone, including the poor pizza delivery dude, but some of them are sick and don’t want to kill anymore. Alex tries to convince them to come to the Hotel Cortez for refuge, since the pizza guy will tip off the authorities to something suspicious. But the kids are cray and won’t go. Are they even important to the storyline? Only time will tell.
