American Horror Story: Asylum Recap: Episode 9

We waited nine episodes, but what fans of American Horror Story: Asylum have been craving all season finally happened this week: Lana and Sister Jessica Lange are teaming up!

Maybe it was the electroshock therapy that Sister Jessica Lange underwent this week, after Sister Lily Rabe and Nazi Dr. Cromwell framed her for the murder of the security guard and what turned out to be just the attempted murder of the psychotic Santa last week. Or maybe it was Lana's surprise pregnancy with Bloody Face Quinto's spawn, one that she failed to take care of with the episode's titular clothes hanger. Or maybe it was simply that Sister Jessica Lange has no friends left and she knows better than anyone else that Lana is the only sane person in the asylum, and Lana now knows that Sister Lily Rabe is a genuine sadist, one who joked about "Draino margaritas" being the cure for her rapidly growing embryo. Whatever the reason, Lana and Sister Jessica Lange finally realized that they needed each other.

"What did they do to you?" Lana asked Sister Jessica Lange when she finally joined the others in the common room, "Dominique" still playing on the record player. "Nothing I didn't do to you," Sister Jessica Lange replies, before adding, "Gimme a cigarette. C'mon, goddammit, I've earned it." To prove that she has truly turned over a new leaf, Sister Jessica Lange even smashes the Singing Nun's record. "Well, hot damn," Lana says.

As for the rest of the episode... The psychotic Santa put on a good show of having found redemption through Christ, certainly convincing enough for Father Joseph Fiennes to unshackle and baptize him. The joke was on the good father, though: The psychotic Santa held his head under water in the baptismal font and then literally crucified him. The Angel of Death appeared (perhaps to check out Father Joseph Fiennes' ripped torso?), but we know from previews that he does not, in fact, perish on the cross.

Convinced that he saw aliens take Grace's corpse from the death chute, Nazi Dr. Cromwell finds Kit and convinces him that the only way to bring the aliens back is for it to nearly die. With nothing to lose and the chance that he might see Alma again, Kit complies--and Nazi Dr. Arden follows the strobing white light to an empty cell, where the missing Pepper and a now very pregnant (and naked) Grace are waiting. "She'll need a room," Pepper calmly tells him. Kit, meanwhile, continues to languish on the operating table.

And before Sister Lily Rabe freed Bloody Face Quinto (whereabouts unknown), Lana and Kit recorded him confessing to Bloody Face's crimes. All it took was Lana putting on her serious voice and tormenting him with images of her bloody abortion--one that didn't take, as it turns out, and as Sister Lily Rabe is all too happy to let Lana know.

That baby will eventually be born and grow into Dylan McDermott, it seems from the scenes set in the present day that bookended the episode. (And anyone who ever thought that McDermott was too clean-cut to be sexy should check out his scruffy, bit of rough look here.)

Seeking out compulsion-curbing therapy, McDermott reveals that everything began for him when he skinned a dead cat, then branched out into killing animals and skinning them. Now he wants to skin women, which makes Brooke Smith, his therapist, very uncomfortable. He's even tried, on Adam Levine's wife, but he lacks his father's medical expertise. See, while he was serving time in prison, he had nothing to do but research his roots, and that's when he discovered who his parents really were. He's even living in his father's old home, the site of his conception! It's nice when people keep a sense of family, don't you think?

We get a breather for the holidays before Asylum returns Jan. 2. Enjoy it, and don't think too much about how sometimes Santas go psychotic, break into your home, tie you up, threaten you with rape, and then put a bullet in your head. This is the most wonderful time of the year, after all.

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