American Horror Story: Asylum Recap: Episode 10

Look, I know what you want to talk about, and I want to as well. But like any good TV viewer, let's get rid of the medicine so we can enjoy the icing that was Jessica Lange singing "The Name Game."

So Grace is back, pregnant as all hell and looked over by "pinhead" Pepper. Nazi Dr. James Cromwell is hot to trot to find out what's growing in her belly, but Pepper--and the aliens who resurrected Grace--are having none of it. So he leaves them behind, and eventually it is up to Bloody Face Zachary Quinto to deliver the baby. A baby with which he then turns around to blackmail Kit into revealing the hiding place of the confession Kit and Lana forced out of him.

Joke's on Bloody Face Quinto, though--Lana knows a weak man when she sees one and she replaced the tapes with a copy of See Spot Run. "Not to spoilt it, but Spot jumps," Lana says calmly. Unable to harm the mother of his unborn child, Bloody Face Quinto contents himself with glowering when Lana promises to deliver the confession to the police if he ever harms anyone again. "And you know I will," she says, "because I'm goddamn plucky."

As it turns out, Sister Lily Rabe is pretty good at spotting a weak man, too. After he's hauled down off the cross the Psycho Santa nailed him to, Father Joseph Fiennes remembers the Angel of Death warning him about the devil inside Sister Lily Rabe and the importance of his casting her out. Alas, his exorcism is, in his own words, an epic failure, since Sister Lily Rabe merely hikes up her habit and straddles his lap. "She took my virtue," he confesses tearfully to Sister Jessica Lange later, though he didn't fight too terribly hard to keep it intact. He was like one of those bad girls in high school, paying lip service to being a good girl but really just wanting more of what Sister Lily Rabe called her "warm, wet hug." (By the way, watching Joseph Fiennes act out his orgasm is a fine way to pass a Wednesday night.) Father Joseph Fiennes is at a loss as to what to do, but not Sister Jessica Lange. "Kill her," she mutters darkly.

Nazi Dr. Cromwell is even more disgusted by the tryst (which he witnessed) than Father Joseph Fiennes. So disgusted, in fact, that he stalks out to the woods and summons all of his experiments to put bullets into their skulls. He tries to put one in his own, but no dice. He's too weak. Of course Sister Lily Rabe is there to witness his failure and laugh at him, as she has all of his failures thus far.

Later, she tries to coerce Father Joseph Fiennes into a second round, but he's having none of it. At least from the neck up. She tries to prey on his ambition, promising that, with her beside him, he could go all the way to the Vatican. Instead, he calls out to the good girl slowly dying inside Sister Lily Rabe, who cries out that she's tired of fighting. As she lets go of his lapel, he pivots and throws her over the banister three floors up. Sister Lily Rabe is no more--and for good measure, Nazi Dr. Cromwell tosses himself onto her body as it slides into the crematorium. The Boris and Natasha of Briarcliff are ashes to ashes.

Now, at last, we can talk about what really matters: Jessica Lange singing "The Name Game." Dressed like a rejected Shirelle with an immovable bouffant, she teaches the kids on Smash a thing or two, gamely executing choreography and turning the names of the asylum's inmates into catchy nonsense words, even getting Lana and Kit (who was looking particularly hunky this week) into the act as her backup dancers. It was a surreal moment of high camp, low comedy, and proof in the existence of star power. When is her guest spot on Glee happening?

Next week a lot of things happen, apparently, but I'm focused on the shot of Lana dressed in black, slowly and perfectly putting on a pair of enormous sunglasses. There is nothing like a murderous, well-dressed woman going in for the kill.

The contents of Mark Peikert's brain play on shuffle at KarenCarpenterDiedForYourSins.com