Welcome to the fifth episode of American Horror Story, the show that never met a horror trope it didn’t like to fuck with!

This week’s vocab word is “twitchery.” It’s a combo of “trickery” and “witches.” The Disney Channel even made a movie about it.

The episode opens with a flashback of a masked Halloween ball at the home of Delphine, who is rocking a serious feather hairpiece. A handsome dandy named Jacques has come to court her oldest daughter, Borquita.

Delphine wants to see if he can survive her chamber of horrors, which BTW is now what I’ll be calling my vagina. Apparently Delphine loves to see terror on a handsome face, whereas I like to see a handsome face all up in my terror, HEY HEY!

Delphine leads Jacques into a room where she is playing the old Halloween food prank. Peeled grapes are eyeballs, spaghetti is guts, and someone’s dad is dressed like the Fonz.

Except the grapes really are slave eyeballs and the guts are guts, and Jacques runs the fuck out of that creepy hell house like his fancy pants are on fire.

Delphine cackles that he’s not man enough for her daughter, because yeah, he’s obviously the one with the problem. Later, the three daughters gather and talk about how mom keeps scaring away potential husbands with her creepy murder house show.

One daughter laments how horrible Delphine is to them and the slaves. UM, HAVE YOU SEEN THE SLAVES, BITCH? Horrible is an understatement. They talk about killing mom once and for all. Unfortunately, Delphine overhears their plotting, and has the slaves drag her daughters up to the murder attic of horrors.

Delphine plans to keep her daughters locked up for a year, except for Borquita, who is getting a mouthful of shit for Christmas. A mouthful of shit. For Christmas. Let’s just sit with this a minute. “A Mouthful of Shit for Christmas” sounds like a lost Rankin-Bass TV special.

You know, people are surprised that I don’t watch this show stoned, considering I’m the “High Femme” girl and all. But I have to watch this show sober, because otherwise I WOULD NOT BELIEVE MY FUCKING EYES AND EARS. The opening credits haven’t even rolled at this point, y’all.

Also, can we talk about how Delphine is the least discreet serial killer ever? Won’t people notice her daughters are missing/have shit in their mouths? Won’t Jacques run off to the police? These are the things I think about.

Flash to present, where the zombie daughters are banging at the door, and the entire school is surrounded by zombies.

Fiona is nursing her drink at the bar when she sees Cordelia rush out of the bathroom screaming.

Cordelia is clutching her burnt face, and Fiona is horrified. She sees a black figure sneak out the door.

Fiona waits in a dimly lit, shitty hospital waiting room.

The doctor comes out and tells Fiona that Cordelia has been burnt with sulfuric acid. Fiona asks if she’s blind, and the doctor tells her the acid burned through her eyes. They couldn’t save her eyes. Fiona says, “what are you telling me?” and the doctor takes out a sock puppet and rips off its googly eyes. Not really, that would have been amazing.

Meanwhile, at Miss Robichaux’s Hometown Zombie Buffet, the zombies are closing in on the house. Shirtless thinks it’s a prank, but the witches know some serious shit is going down. Queenie calls them the army of darkness (nice reference, Queenie!)

Meanwhile, back at the beauty shop, Marie Laveau levitates, surrounded by candles and dead chickens. It’s just like that scene in The Craft, only with WAY more dead chickens.

Shirtless goes out to scare away the zombies, who have frozen in place like a bunch of mimes. Some costumed bros wander in and compliment the zombies on their cool prosthetics. Yep, they’re gonna die.

Marie, white eyed, tells them to begin. The zombies start murdering up a storm and attack the house.

Zoe jumps into the leadership role, which is surprising since she is terrible at everything all the time. With the exception of killing people with her vagina. She’s aces at that. She tells everyone to head upstairs to Spalding’s room, but he quickly waves them off that idea.

Delphine wants to let her zombie daughters into the house, but Zoe shuts that shit down right quick. Meanwhile, Nan sneaks out of the house to rescue Shirtless and drag him into a car.

Meanwhile at the hospital, Cordelia is asleep in bed. Fiona watches over her in the most poorly lit room ever. Seriously, what is with this hospital and its flickering lights?

Fiona runs out of pills, but guess where she can get some more? Fiona uses her magic/Costco card to break into the pharmacy and just starts bagging all the pills like it’s Supermarket Sweep.

Fiona stumbles out, high as a kite, and passes a variety of creepy patients before seeing the black figure slink around a corner. Fiona walks into a hospital room to see a stillborn baby and her sobbing mother.

Fiona, obviously reeling from Cordelia’s attack, picks up the dead baby and forces the mother to hold it and promise to love the dead baby. Well, this is uncomfortable.

Suddenly, Fiona magicks the baby back to life! The mother cries tears of joy. Not to rain on Fiona’s parade, but maybe she could magick some sight back into Cordelia’s face? I don’t know; I’m not a witch or anything.

Meanwhile, back at Miss Robichaux’s zombie apocalypse, Nan and Shirtless are trapped in a car, about to be eaten by zombies. Suddenly, the zombies are distracted by Zoe, who is banging pots and pans together like she’s Tanisha from The Bad Girls Club.

Zoe distracts the zombies, then runs off to hide in a shed. Meanwhile, Delphine puts Queenie back to bed, and tells Spalding to keep an eye on her while she gets some ice.

Delphine is in the kitchen when she hears noises. She sees Zombie Borquita outside the window, and opens the door to let her in. Delphine has obviously never seen a zombie movie ever.

She hopes there is something human remaining in her daughter. Maybe she’ll forgive her for the whole “mouthful of shit for Xmas” thing. Zombie Borquita starts strangling her. I guess she’s not into forgiveness.

Queenie asks Spalding to go see what’s keeping Delphine. When she hears a thump, she steps outside the room to see Spalding getting clobbered with a candle stick. What is it with the LaLaurie family and clubbing people with candle sticks?

Queenie backs away and starts slicing herself up with whatever she can find. Unfortunately, her voodoo doll skills have no effect on the zombie, other than looking really cool. Suddenly, the zombie is impaled by a poker; Delphine has stabbed her zombie daughter to save Queenie. Delphine collapses and cries into Queenie’s ample bosom.

Meanwhile, Nan and Shirtless make a run for it, but Shirtless collapses due to loss of blood. Nan tries to drag him inside, when obviously she should leave this Jabroni to die and make a run for it.

Just when all hope seems lost, Zoe beheads the zombie while wielding a motherfucking chainsaw! Look who just became an interesting character!

Zoe is mowing down zombies left and right, and it’s pretty awesome. More of this, please. Zoe, you are no longer the worst. A giant zombie comes after her just as her chainsaw sputters out. Classic Ryan Murphy move: as soon as a female character gets cool, you cut her off at the knees.

But wait! Zoe puts her hand out, mutters something in Latin, and the zombie collapses! She killed him with magic! Magic that didn’t come from her cooch!

Zoe’s magic is so powerful it knocks Marie out of the air and onto the floor. Marie senses a crazy strong magic coming from the school. Is Zoe the new Supreme?

Back at the hospital, Hank rushes in, straight from boning that redhead. Fiona smells bullshit all over him and calls him a loser. Hank says at least he didn’t abandon Cordelia like Fiona did.

A nurse wanders in and tells them to keep it the fuck down. She then leaves, hopefully to fix the incessantly flickering lights that are about to give me a seizure. Fiona walks away and demands that Hank leave by the time she gets back. Hank tries to comfort Cordelia, but when he touches her hand she immediately gets flashes of him fucking that other girl.

Looks like Cordelia got some new magical powers to compensate for her damaged face.

The next day, Fiona and the girls have a giant zombie corpse bonfire.

Fiona tells Zoe that she likes a witch who knows how to fight. She compliments Zoe on her newfound badassery. Delphine comes out and commiserates with Fiona about them being terrible mothers. Will their shared tragedy bring them closer? NOPE. Fiona calls her the maid and saunters back inside.

The witch council shows up to see what the fuck happened last night.

The council accuses Fiona of neglect and malfeasance, what with the zombie attack/missing students/injured daughter. They demand that Fiona resign, but that’s obviously not happening.

Fiona accuses Myrtle of plotting against her and attacking Cordelia. Fiona saw Myrtle in the hospital elevator, and she knew that Myrtle came to New Orleans weeks ago under a fake name.

Fiona knows this because she broke into Myrtle’s hotel room and found an angry photo shrine.

The coup de grace comes when Fiona rips Myrtle’s gloves off, revealing acid burned hands!

Myrtle tries to defend herself, but the council quickly sentences her to death. Myrtle tells them she won’t resist the burning; she’s used to being an outcast. She will go proudly into the flame. Well, good luck with that.

It’s time to burn a witch! Myrtle is dressed in white and is followed by everyone in black, including the black albinos. Hey guys!

Fiona lights a cigarette and asks if Myrtle has any last words. Myrtle tells everyone they suck/Fiona is going to drag them all to hell/she’d like to thank the academy/can anyone cancel my Netflix account?

Fiona tosses her cigarette onto the gasoline covered Myrtle and she goes up in flames.

Goodbye Myrtle. For the next 5 minutes at least.

Back at school, Queenie questions Fiona about framing Myrtle.

Turns out that Myrtle’s scarred hand was the work of Queenie burning herself! But Queenie is having second thoughts. She didn’t want to see Myrtle go up in flames.

Fiona tries to calm her with some sweet talk, and vaguely promises that Queenie could be the rising Supreme. This is not great news, considering the previous rising Supreme is rotting away in an attic right now.

Meanwhile, Spalding is just relaxing in his night gown and bonnet, spraying the attic with Lysol.

Dude, Lysol is not going to mask the rotting corpse in your trunk! You should know that after 50 years of buttling. Spalding tries to lift Madison’s corpse out of the trunk, but he rips her arm off. True story: I could watch a spinoff show that’s just Spalding in a night gown doing Buster Keaton-style physical comedy with body parts.

Meanwhile, back at the burning site, wild dogs are nomming on Myrtle’s charred corpse.

But guess who shows up? Misty Day, in all her Stevie Nicks glory! Misty holds Myrtle’s head in her hands and works her witchy magic. Myrtle opens her eyes.

So let’s look at the scorecard:

Dead babies revived: 1
Dead witches revived: 1
Dead eyeballs/cheek bones revived: 0

NEXT TIME on American Horror Story: Crispy witches hell-bent on vengeance! Rising Supreme misdirects! More corpse tomfoolery in the attic!

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