American Horror Story: Freak Show Recap ‘Monsters Among Us’: We Are All Freaks

Meet Elsa Mars and her traveling band of freaks as they settle down in Jupiter, Florida before finding the new stars of the show while an evil clown lurks in the shadows….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Welcome to the Freak Show in Jupiter, Florida circa 1952 where clowns go on killing sprees and vaudeville singers perform David Bowie tunes that weren’t actually released until almost 20 years later. Where conjoined twins are the stars of the show and a Lobster boy is the 1950’s version of the Hitachi wand. Where bearded ladies speak in non-descript Baltimore accents and over privileged brats try to buy people to add to their own personal collections.

Welcome to American Horror Story version 4.0

The fourth incarnation of the show from creator Ryan Murphy once again revamps the series with all new characters and stories, this time set in a freak show carnival act in Florida with a town full of people more interested in watching television than paying a few dollars to see a local freak show act complete with the tiniest woman on Earth, an illustrated man with no arms and all kinds of other abnormalities put on display to mystify the eye and send chills down your spine.

Almost all of the actors and actresses from ‘Coven’ have returned in one form or another with more of them showing up in episode two next week. In the debut episode titled “Monsters Among Us”, we mostly meet the core group of characters with a brief set up for the action that’s ahead, although the story didn’t go as detailed as some previous seasons. There were a lot of balls tossed into the air in this episode, but I trust Murphy and Co. to bring them all back down again into a more singular cohesive story by season’s end.

The setting for the show in the 1950’s was well executed outside of the Bowie song that star Jessica Lange broke into near the end of the episode. While adding a song and dance act to the show seems like a forgone conclusion at this point, I’m not sure why Lange’s character couldn’t have stuck to a song created before this show is supposedly taking place? One of the best parts of another carny sideshow series ‘Carnivale’ was the authentic music used as a backdrop. ‘Freak Show’ could follow that same format especially considering the shift in musical tastes that started to unfold in the 1950’s, but alas a minor detail. Murphy explained in another interview that the music in ‘Freak Show’ is akin to ‘Moulin Rouge’ or ‘The Great Gatsby’ where it’s more about the songs that fit the movie than the movie fitting the time period of the songs. I can live with that.

Everything starts this year with a milkman making a delivery to a secluded farmhouse in Jupiter where he discovers a grisly murder scene and upon a search of the house finds a monstrosity hiding in a room upstairs. The ‘monsters’ in question are conjoined twins Bette and Dot Tattler. While the rest of the world sees them as freaks of nature, Elsa Mars, the queen of the local carnival sees them as a gold mine. Her show is teetering on the brink of extinction, currently staying on a plot of land where she had to sleep with the owner to get the lease extended, and she needs something to get the crowds off the streets and into her freak show.

Not of a Feather

Elsa has her work cut out for her to convince the twins that they should leave the hospital where they are currently staying after the death of their mother and join her on the freak show circuit. Elsa worms her way into the secure wing after switching outfits with a candy striper (who ends up at the freak show, smoking opium and filming orgies with the cast and crew) and she eventually figures out that Bette is the half who wants to be a star with her name up in lights while Dot is a more cynical type, angry and shut off from the world. As it turns out, however, bubbly Bette is the one who plunged a knife into their mother’s throat when she refused to let them leave the house to see a movie.

Elsa has no problem using this information to her advantage, promising to help the twins evade the long arm of the law so long as they come work for her in the show. Upon arriving, Bette is smiling ear to ear, while Dot believes this is like walking down a fiery path to hell. The twins are meant to be the stars of the show and Elsa is convinced they will bring in plenty of paying customers.

The Outcast Lover

Jimmy Darling is one of the stars of Elsa’s freak show, complete with fingers fused together on both hands as if he’s a lobster. In his spare time, Jimmy likes to go to the local diner and hit on the waitresses or attend Tupperware parties with sexually thirsty married women where he provides a valuable service for a small price of course ($18 for a room full of women, not the worst job in the world I suppose).

At the carnival, he’s one of the people who doesn’t like the term ‘freak’ and hates being looked at like he’s something different from the rest of the world. He’s quick to lash out at anybody who has a bad word to say about his fellow carnies and he loves his mama Ethel, who happens to be the bearded lady and Elsa’s right hand at the show. When he meets the twins it doesn’t take long for Dot to take a liking to Jimmy, which is the first time we see the previously agitated girl let her guard down.

Jimmy’s fiercely protective of the people who share the stage with him and when a detective comes to the show to arrest Bette and Dot for the murder of their mother, he has no problem grabbing the straight razor from his pocket and slitting the lawman’s throat. This only endears him to the twins even more, but also potentially brings a world of trouble to the freak show’s door because dead cops don’t just go away.

Carnies Go Home

The big bad this season on American Horror Story: Freak Show is a giant clown named Twisty, who wears a tattered old costume and a mask over the bottom half of his face in the shape of a gigantic, disproportionate smile. He’s also a psychopathic killer who kidnaps children and locks them in a giant school bus so that should totally help people with a fear of clowns get over that real quick.

Twisty first appears when a young couple are about to have a little picnic sex before he bludgeons both of them with some juggling pins and then stabs the guy to death. He shows up at a family’s home later in the episode and kills the husband and wife before kidnapping their young son. Twisty’s intentions aren’t known much at this point although Murphy has revealed in several interviews that he’s not a happy clown especially when Elsa’s freak show rolls into town.

He was the only freak show in Jupiter and he’s not happy that they’ve arrived to steal his ‘audience’. To make matters worse following Jimmy’s murderous rage where he offs the local cop, Twisty is hiding in the shadows as the carnies all unite to chop up the body and hide it in the woods. He hasn’t said a word yet, but something tells me this is a story he’s going to want to share with someone at some point.

I don’t have an extreme fear of clowns like a lot of people do, but I can certainly see why this creature will be haunting more than a few nightmares this season. John Carroll Lynch, who plays Twisty, is a vastly underrated actor and he knows how to play evil as witnessed in his previous role in the HBO series ‘Carnivale’. There’s just something about sideshows that bring out the worst (best) in Lynch apparently.

Start the Show

When the curtains finally go up on the show, Elsa does her big musical number performing Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ to a small audience of a rich mother and her petulant son Dandy. Following the song and dance, Dandy wants mommy to buy Bette and Dot for him, but they refuse to go because this is their family now and that’s exactly what Elsa’s been waiting to hear. She welcomes the girls into the fold officially before retiring to her own tent for the night.

There Elsa downs a few too many drinks before revealing to her bestie Ethel that bringing in Bette and Dot was really just an attempt to get more people to see her perform. She behaves like she’s been a star her entire life, but the reality is no one has ever paid to see Elsa by herself and all she wants is her star to shine brighter than anyone else. Before she retires for the evening, Elsa makes her big reveal when she lifts up her skirt and unfastens a pair of knee braces holding on her lower legs.

It appears Elsa is an amputee, although no one in her troupe seems to know this secret. She’s going to be a star in spite of her affliction, not because of it.

Thus we came to an end of the first episode of American Horror Story: Freak Show. Not necessarily my favorite of the four season debuts from this show’s history, but not a bad offering either. My only disappointment is considering this was a 90-minute debut, it seemed like things could have been a bit more focused but the story building around the twins and their arrival at the carnival really ate up about the first half hour of the show. So far this season appears to be based in reality and not a ton of supernatural influence, but Halloween is just around the corner and that’s destined to be a fright fest wrought with things that go bump in the night.

Next week, Michael Chiklis and Angela Bassett make their first appearances on the show as the Freak Show expands to welcome in more children to this warm and warped traveling family. American Horror Story: Freak Show returns next Tuesday at 10pm ET on FX