American Horror Story: Asylum Recap Episode 11: Spilt Milk

Any time Philip Glass's score for Candyman is used, you know you're in for a sophisticated treat, and the "Spilt Milk" episode of American Horror Story: Asylum did not disappoint. (Please note that when I say that, it is because I am purposely pretending that the aliens/floating brains/water scenes didn't happen. Sorry Grace!) Chilly and elegant, the hour was filled with graceful camera work and some truly
gorgeous camerawork involving Lana in sunglasses and all black, surrounded by the white marble of crypts.

Reunited at last, Kit and Grace have big plans for their baby until Father Joseph Fiennes and some hatchet-faced nuns wrench him out of their loving arms for a life at the foundlings home. As Kit begs Bloody Face Quinto to get his baby back--because growing up at Briarcliff is just what any baby could want--the Mother Superior appears like a guardian angel to Lana, telling her that a cab was waiting outside to take her wherever she wants and handing Lana her patient file. Of course, now that Lana has proven herself goddamn plucky, she can't go out looking bedraggled. So she ties a scarf around her head, dons the clothes she wore when she was admitted, and walks boldly right past Bloody Face, who realizes she's slipped out of his grasp too late.

Or has she? Because Lana isn't content with just giving Bloody Face's taped confession to the police; she hightails it over to his apartment (after having her hair done) to wait there with a gun. He tells some tales over a martini about practicing giving his intimacy to poor dead Clea DuVall, but just as he seems likely to cash in his insanity get out of jail free card and shoot Lana in the process, she blows his
brains out.

With Lana exposing every scandal she witnessed at Briarcliff, the asylum and Father Joseph Fiennes are both under siege, which makes it easier for Kit--freshly released thanks to Lana's good aim--to hit the road with Grace and their baby in tow. Grace is legally dead, after all; Nazi Dr. Cromwell signed her death certificate.

Unfortunately, Grace's freedom comes at the cost of Sister Jessica Lange's, because that faked death certificate gives Father Joseph Fiennes ideas. And Sister Jessica Lange, who confronted him about his worldly ambition and forfeited virtue in the common room, is at the very least an inconvenience to what she sarcastically refers to as Joseph Fiennes's "magic carpet ride to Rome." So she goes into what looks like a dungeon, and Lana is thwarted by yet another false alarm death.

Babies and false alarm deaths were everywhere this week. In addition to the languishing Sister Jessica Lange, Alma, Kit's wife, appeared in their home with her own baby, just in time to interrupt Kit and Grace's happy homecoming. Since Grace told Kit that Alma was dead, this may come as a particular shock to the happy father. But, as Father Fiennes reminded us, Grace is an axe murderess. And though Lana dispensed with Bloody Face Quinto, she was unable to pull the metaphorical trigger on her abortion. She was in position for it--legs spread--but flashes of all the violent deaths she's witnessed flashed before her eyes and she had to stop the cycle. Which leaves us with Bloody Face McDermott, craving the feel of slicing a woman's skin off and indulging his mommy issues throughout the episode by breast feeding from a hooker who diagnoses him as having a Freudian complex or some serious calcium deficiencies. Oh honey. Don't taunt the serial killer.

Only two episodes left, and it looks as if Lana reneges on her promise to rescue Sister Jessica Lange. Let's not count that crafty chantootsie out for the count just yet, though. So far she's outlived Nazis and the devil; one ambitious priest shouldn't pose too much of a problem.