Marie Laveau’s zombie army has trapped our heroines—and Madame M. Delphine LaLaurie—in Witchwarts at the beginning of “Burn, Witch, Burn!” Chapter 5 of “American Horror Story: Coven.”
Spoilers! Stop reading if you haven’t seen it! (If you can’t see the video above, watch on YouTube.)
But first, we flash back to All Hallow’s Eve 1833 and Delphine’s warped Chamber of Horrors, where she tests a potential suitor for her daughter by having him guess what’s in the serving pots. Eyeballs and intestines!
“You’re not man enough for my Borquita,” she says as he runs off.
When Borquita and her sisters whisper about offing their mom, she locks them up in the chamber where she tortures and kills her slaves.
Flash forward to the present, and Delphine is a guilty ol’ bitty whose facing down the zombie versions of all her daughters. And they aren’t happy!
Zombie army and Spalding’s doll tea parties aside, this episode’s emotional focus was on mother-daughter relationships—as shitty as they are. Delphine and her daughters got nothing on Fiona and Delia, who got a face-full of sulphuric acid last week and now is carrying war wounds brought on by her mama.
Fiona takes Delia to what must be the worst hospital ever. Or maybe it just seems that way because Fiona raided the drug closet and popped a bunch of pills.
Anyway, the hospital feels an awful lot like that damn asylum from last season, with bad lighting and freaky inmates, er, patients, shuffling around the halls unsupervised.
“You didn’t throw that acid, but you might as well have,” one freak tells Fiona, which sends her into a tailspin of regret for being a crappy mother.
She stumbles into the room of a woman who has just lost her baby during birth. And no one has cleaned her up. And there’s the baby. Again, where the hell are the nurses and doctors in this joint?!
Fiona makes the woman hold her blue baby and berates her into saying she’ll love the baby girl until the day she dies–um, she’s already is dead, Fiona! Or maybe not. Fiona brings the bundle back to life. No more blue baby!
So if she can bring people back to life, why can’t she reverse the affects of the acid on Delia’s face? Is she or is she not the Supreme?
After Fiona compares dick sizes with Delia’s hubby, who we’ll continue to call Jean Jacket, she takes off and we discover Delia’s blindness has brought her a new witchy power. When she touches someone she can see what people have done in the past.
Bad news for that lying, cheating, serial killing hubby of hers! That’s going to come up in future episodes, I’m sure. But for now, back to Witchwarts.
Marie’s zombies are scaring the holy hell out of everyone in the school, but not hottie neighbor Luke or the trick-or-treating doofuses who happen on to the zombies.
Before you can say “Evil Dead,” they rip apart the humans. Those guys were too old to be trick-or-treating anyway.
Cute Nan attempts to save her boy toy, who miraculously hasn’t been torn apart. Sadly, the zombies haven’t even torn off his shirt. (Save his chest, Nan!) The zombies trap them in a car; that mind-reading trick really isn’t helping out Nan at the moment.
Back in the house, Queenie is stabbing herself and cutting her own throat trying to stop zombie Borquita from making lunch of her, Spalding and Delphine. That’s not working either. Leave it to bad mama Delphine to kill off her daughter, this time for real. Like Fiona, she regrets being a total bitch when her daughters were living.
Too late.
Back outside, Nan and Luke are looking like zombie food when Zoe finally snaps out of her boring, sulky teen thing and takes action—with a buzz saw!
That’s right, witch raids the gardening shed, grabs a chain saw and goes all Ash on the army of darkness. (Nice homage, writers!) She slices and dices and cut one clean in half from top to bottom.
Campy, yes, but I love it so. One question, though: are the neighbors deaf? And what about Luke’s holy roller mama? She at church? This is a lot of commotion to go unnoticed.
Speaking of, Zoe’s saw dies before she can stop the last one. Just as she’s about to be eaten, Zoe taps into some hidden hocus pocus power that zaps the zombies and knocks Marie Laveau right outta her levitating naptime.
“I don’t know what that was, but they got some real power in that witch house now,” Marie says.
Looks like we found the new Supreme, people! And she can do more than kill with her vagina.
I know, I know, the episode isn’t called “Slice, Witch, Slice.” It’s called “Burn, Witch, Burn!” I’m getting to it!
First, Fiona and the girls burn all the zombie parts, which apparently stinks as badly as a dead witch being locked in a cedar chest, Spalding! When Delphine tries to bond over their twisted ideas on motherhood, Fiona shuts her down. “I doubt it,” she says. “You are, after all, the maid.”
Anyway, back to witch burning…
You remember Myrtle Snow and the Witch Council came callin’ last week. They suspect Fiona took out Madison because Fiona thought she was the next Supreme. Oops, she wasn’t. And now she’s just a tea party doll for Spalding. (Tip, don’t pull so hard on her arm next time.)
Not even Marie’s zombie attack can slow down ol’ Myrtle’s plot to depose Fiona. It just ain’t going to happen. Fiona enlists Queenie to help frame Myrtle for the attack on Delia and convinces the other members of the Council that Myrtle may have killed Madison. She was in New Orleans, staying in a hotel under the alias Jennifer Wooley. (Leave it to the gay warlock to figure out the name is that of the Veronica Lake character in the film “I Married a Witch.”)
All that’s left to do is burn the witch, as they say. And Fiona’s ready, willing and able.
“You don’t mess with a Supreme,” Queenie says as the black-clad procession marches to a stake to torch Myrtle. After deed’s done, Queenie has second thoughts but Fiona sets her straight, suggesting she could be the new Supreme.
Gullible girl.
Still Myrtle’s down but not out. You know how things are when you have a Stevie Nicks-loving necromancer prancing around New Orleans. No one’s dead forever … unless you’re a zombie.
“Coven” taught a lot of lessons this week:
Be a good mom, or else.
If you’re married to a witch, best not cheat on her.
Don’t float in the air without a mattress beneath you.
Never mark up photos of the person you want to get rid of and then leave them hanging on your wall. That’s evidence!
Make sure you have enough wood or other flammable objects under the burning stake so there’s no chance the witch can be revived.
When zombies invade, a chain saw could be your best defense.
FX on Wednesday announced that it has renewed “American Horror Story” for a fourth season in 2014. What did you think of the “Burn, Witch, Burn!”?
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