Go To Hell

After last weeks episode, which I thought one of the seasons best, Go To Hell was one of the worst, with writing that didn’t do this fine series justice. It wasn’t only the writing that was a let-down, also the filming style and sketchy pacing, as at times it looked to be picking itself back up again, only to suck big time with another poor scene. What this week’s episode felt like was a cobbled together collection of unused cuts and quickly shot scenes, thrown together in a rush because the real episode was accidently lost. Of course, not all was bad with a few nice scenes to only just save this one from being a complete loss.

The way I sometimes judge an episode of any show, is to imagine someone coming to it for the first time, and basing the series on what they see, and on that basis, Go To Hell was substandard and wouldn’t make someone want to see more. And remembering this episode is the second last in the series, there wasn’t anything at the end that I found gripping, where we’d normally be holding on with baited breath, demanding to know who the next Supreme was. If I wasn’t such a strong fan of this show, I don’t think I’d give a shit, but as it is, I do.

American Horror Story
Created by
Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk
Cast
Taissa Farmiga, Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, Frances Conroy, Kathy Bates, Lily Rabe, Jessica Lange
Episode Release Date
22 January 2014
Ed’s Grade: C+

The beginning of Go To Hell appeared to be set in Salem in ye olde days, with the witches getting their new Supreme, with “The Seven Wonders” being performed. It gave us a glimpse of things to come in the final episode. We then moved on to Fiona and Queenie having a chat, where Queenie shows Fiona disrespect and Fiona causes her to seize up, for giving her back-chat. (If Fiona can do that so easily to Queenie, who has shown a lot of power of late, it begs the question why she didn’t do something similar at the end of this episode. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but for those of you who have, surely you were asking yourself the same thing?) Queenie is also told “you will perform the seven wonders, or you’ll die trying.”

We last saw Marie being dragged away by Delphine, and Queenie makes an attempt at finding out where the voodoo queen has gone, by calling on Papa Legba, but Queenie’s taken into the fast food joint she used to work at in a rather pointless scene. It would appear Marie is not as immortal as she thought she was, thanks to Papa Legba, but Marie isn’t the only one who’s in serious trouble.


I thought it was good the way Delphine got a chance to show some of her old evil self again, but to allow her to get a new modern look, only to have it snatched away so quickly just seemed odd and hastily done. This is something that could have been drawn out over a couple of episodes, which I thought would have been fun to watch, especially after her punishment is doled out, but why it was done like this wasn’t very good at all.

Cordelia stabbed her eyes out last week, and the whole point of this gruesome act looked to be something that would be interesting, yet they gave her crappy-looking makeup that wasn’t fooling anyone, and reminded me a little of the old blind dude from (giving my age away here) Kung Fu. Cordelia did get her secondsight back, but it too didn’t add anything interesting to the story.

We recently, and quite suddenly had the witches displaying new powers without any warning, and these powers could have added a helluva lot to this series, yet Madison can now vanish and reappear from thin air, but only uses it to avoid being touched by Cordelia?! Again, this was another power I was thinking would have been ideal to use near the end of the episode, but was conveniently forgotten when she and Misty were fighting. Sloppy.

I enjoyed it when Fiona was getting her portrait painted by the guy who Myrtle brought in from London. As usual, Myrtle gave an amusing bit of spiel when she was telling Fiona about the artist; “he’s painted everyone you know, like Margaret Thatcher and Sting.” The ending wasn’t without some good scenes, but not anything like you’d expect from an episode leading to the final. The Axeman part was good, but no one could make their minds up (including the writers) who would do the deed, and to have everyone join the party was either extremely good, or just plain bad. I still haven’t made my mind up yet, but it would be fair to say I was very disappointed in this episode.

A few episodes back we had one titled, The Axeman Cometh. I feel this episode deserved that title, but maybe “Go To Hell” fitted this episode a little too well.

TV Review by Ed Blackadder, Lead Entertainment Writer