The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 12: Echoes of Memory

Eve is the last person who remembers the Library and desperately she constructs a memory palace in her own mind - to desperately hold on to it a long as possible.

She is the only one who remembers and she is in a whole new world - a world where the Library never existed. A world where people don’t know curiosity or imagination (yet still manage to invent cars and televisions so… yeah it’s not perfect). Everything is grey. Everyone wears white. Cafes serve fat and flour (which is bland and tasteless but would also kill everyone pretty damn quickly). Everything is dull and bland and boring and mundane. We also have lots of ominous posters about the Company which is all about thought policing, and encouraging people not to think or question: be complacent, content and obedient. It’s very 1984 but more boring.

She has her tethering ring from Flynn which prompts her to go to one of the bland televisions which is quickly possessed by Flynn: who quickly tells her to make a memory palace (and acknowledges that she’s smart enough to already have figured this out). He also reveals that he never left the Library - when Nicole came to him to ask him to run away with her, he told her no. He told her that hearing she was a prisoner of the Library reminded him that he wasn’t - that he could leave - that he stayed with the Library because he wanted to, because he loved it, because it meant everything to him (which was kind of my point about Flynn’s motivations as well, the Library is his dream always was) AND because he loves Eve.

So Nicole kidnapped him.

I have to say this makes far far far more sense with his character and motivation.

Watching the television, Eve also sees an advert with Jake on it - selling average cars known for their averageness. She, goes to him and… rather easily convinces him to join her (he doesn’t remember her to the Library but has dreamed about it). The same applies to Cassandra. I’d say it’s more than a little simple to convince them both - but they are creative geniuses living in ridiculously dull, unstimulating lives. I can see them leaping on any opportunity to get away. Especially with Eve praising their specialties.

They do raise the suspicions of the Thought Police who catch up with them when trying to recruit Ezekiel. Since Ezekiel is a television celebrity of the most boring show ever (sadly, I do remember and abysmal home video show which seemed to consist of an interminable number of people falling over to a terrible canned laughter track. Alas, I had a grandparent who unreasonably loved this appalling show). Living a life of relative luxury, Ezekiel is less willing to join (and informs us that dreams are illegal) and the Thought Police capture Eve.

They take her to an asylum where the inmates are gathered and trained to suppress imagination, wonder and curiosity. Aided by medication

Naturally the person running the Company is Nicole, who is also using an artefact to prevent her losing her memory - as such giving her the intelligence and knowledge to rule the world easily. Eve defies her… but she loses the last few crumbs of memory left to her. She loses the Library and herself.

You’d think that Nicole would be intelligent enough not to lock Eve up in the same building as Flynn (or intelligent enough to just kill Eve).

But apparently not - and Flynn, babbling, semi-coherent (more so than usual) and talking randomly talks to Eve, noticing her high levels of colour next to the monochrome of everyone else. He recognises her as coming from another world and he has a fascinating idea about how worlds are defined by their words and names because this is what we call and define everyone around us with (which is, of course, very Librarian-y). The guards take him into confinement again but not before he has an almost dance number battle with them - again, very Flynn. He remembers everything because, ultimately, he is the Librarian and his memory does not fuzz easily

Librarians, Season 4, Episode 11: And the Trial of One

Well, things really came to a head this episode, with the villain finally revealing herself, everyone rising up and everything kind of falling apart - in other words, a perfect pentultimate episode

The deadline for tethering has arrived. They have only 24 hours to tether someone to the Library or it uncouples from reality. Jenkins even resorts to using the very first scroll in the Library to create a temporary tether. If it isn’t tethered to a Librarian soon not only will it uncouple but it will revert to its basic purpose: protecting the artefacts within the Library. Not aiding, helping or protecting humanity - just the artefacts within its halls. Eve needs to pick someone. And it can’t be Jenkins

Damn it

But none of the Librarians are especially eager to become immortal - and they think they find a way out when Cassandra (against Jenkins orders) opens the scroll and finds a spell of picking the one true Librarian - just what they need

Of course they cast it

Of course it has unforeseen consequences

Because that “test” for the one true librarian is more a trial and by trial we mean fight to the death between the candidates - officiated by Jenkins who is possessed by the Library itself

And the untethered Library is a bastard. While Eve and the Librarians all protest that they don’t believe that the Library can be so cruel or uncaring the Library is completely dismissive of them. When Eve appeals about the Librarians, the library makes it clear it only cares about Artefacts. And Librarians are not artefacts. The Library doesn’t care about people, it’s custodian or librarians - it isn’t nice, it isn’t kind.

They are magically transported to the testing zone and Library Jenkins is wearing a magical suicide vest - they obey or Jenkins dies. Everyone is forced to go along but they still insist they’re far too loyal to each other to ever hurt each other

The Library admires loyalty. To the Library. Not to people. Because the Library is an arsehole.

Each librarian is forced to put on a ring which forces them to confront their greatest fear (Cassandra’s fear is bullies? Really? C’mon, she’s had 4 seasons of facing the worst supernatural monsters she could vanquish, she was literally terminally ill - but her fear is bullies? Can we stop infantilising her like this?). In their fears they face enemies trying to torture them - enemies that resemble the other two Librarians. They’re each set up to fight the others to escape their fears - and the only way they can do this is tom press a button which makes them forget who the other two are

Each presses a button and move to the final arena where the disembodied voice of Jenkins appeals to them to press the final button - and stop the other two. The other two Librarians who they can’t remember: and who they will kill if it means saving Jenkins

All this time Eve has been desperately trying to appeal to the Library - and each time it’s clearer and clearer that the Library is The Worst and Eve is doomed to helplessly watch the Librarians struggle and fight without being able to help them… and she realises this is her worst fear. And proving the Guardian can be as smart as a Librarian, she figures out she has been made to put on a nightmare ring as well and uses the artefacts in the library to show the truth and remove it from her finger

Now free of her nightmare, she can intervene with the Librarians who have been outbraining each other in the field. She steps in, makes them remember each other and ensures there are no Librarian deaths.

But there’s still an issue - only one Librarian can leave. And now all the Librarians volunteer to be the ones to die, each holds up the others, each is willing to sacrifice. The Librarian won’t hear it: he needs one.

Eve pulls out another Librarian-level plan and plants an artefact on Jenkins - one that should hold his suicide vest in place. They all return to the Library, apparently victorious

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 10: And Some Guy Named Jeff

The Librarians have an issue with sabre tooth tigers which they have to deal with with the help of… Jeff

He looks like Jenkins in the mirror but we see a much younger man. Yes, it’s a body swap episode. And fake Jenkins - or Jeff - is much less skilled and knowledgeable that Jenkins. And he is definitely not qualified enough or awesome enough to be Jenkins.

Oh - Easter Egg, are those the Game of Thrones house banners?

Baratheon and Greyjoy it seems

Jenkins is clearly in Jeff’s body - which means dealing with frustrations like Jeff’s mother and her vast horde of cats and his three friends, all of which are somewhat bemused by a rather obviously bemused Jenkins. He tries to get back in the Library but Jeff manages to do enough to distract the team so they don’t let him in

This leaves Jenkins to convince Jeff’s friends to help him. There’s some things going for this since it seems that Jeff was completely obsessed with the Librarians and had full dossiers on all the Librarians including Jenkins - so much so they’d turned them into RPG characters

It’s still a stretch that everyone decides to believe Jenkins - and the whole idea that the fact they play DND makes them more likely to believe this is both dubious and a weird misreading of their audience. Seriously, you’re a show about magical artefacts with an arthurian knight, us DnD players (well, I’m more a WoD but I have a players guide and monster manual) are not going to be vanishingly rare among your audience

Still while we do have a lot of tropes with them, we also have them being generally genuinely likeable, intelligent and making a good case for being outsiders WITHOUT falling heavily on the “woe to the geeky” (because “woe geeky” hasn’t been that on point for some time) with some nice looks at Jenkin’s own past

He learns that Jeff had a very bad magical book so he needs to get in the Library back door. Surprisingly the back door doesn’t require magical, say, aura reading or quizzes, but instead a series of puzzles which Jenkins, the man who actually has been in the Library longer than anyone else in history, cannot actually solve. Instead they’re solved by his new friends. And I totally get that the story is to show these folks are kind of awesome, but it seems weird that the emergency entrance to the Library is not actually accessible by Library people but is by random DnD players. This security system needs addressing.

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 9: A Town Called Feud

This week we have American civil war re-enactors and a pesky case of haunting.

This naturally pings the Library’s radar - and in part it’s well timed because the librarians are at each other’s throats: Cassandra is very much in favour of multiple Librarians (supported by Jenkins - who is still heartbreakingly dealing with creeping mortality, bodily function, food etc. And even talking retirement! NOOOOOOO. Stop this! stop)

The tethering ceremony is coming soon and Eve needs a Librarian to tether with, just one (JENKINS! CHOOSE JENKINS! PLEASE GODS CHOOSE JENKINS! We know he can handle immortality, he’s an incredible asset! JENKINGS!)

This is why Jenkins and Cassandra stay back in the Library for an awesome high tea and looking for the Librarian’s correspondence so they can see why the two warring Librarians actually attacked each other. Which means a scavenger hunt because some previous Librarians decided to move them and leave a series of cryptic clues

Look, I’m no fan of the Dewey Decimal system either - but this is ludicrous

The civil war re-enactment takes place in a town called Feud which is right on the Mason-Dixie line and is all about the civil war, museums and turning it into a vast tourist attraction

Jake doesn’t approve of this because he’s a historian and all the fudging of facts for the sake of entertainment Does Not Amuse Him.

Eve is also not best pleased because, as a soldier who has actually been in combat, she is also Not Amused by turning it into entertainment.

Both of them are a little hostile when it comes to questioning the museum director about ghosts etc. It doesn’t help that they all kind of assume she should accept the reality of ghosts which just kind of feels so very very weird. I mean, I think we’re expected to see her as unreasonable or evil or… something? For not just believing these three random people telling her to shut down her big money making event because ghosts? And she does mean things like call the police on her when they break into her office and safe… so she’s definitely bad apparently?

The story is that during the war two brothers fought for separate sides and were not super happy with each other. Their dear mother wasn’t thrilled by her little boys trying to shoot each other in the face so left them a locket - broken in half in the hope they would reconcile and reunite the rocket. The museum had one locket for a while and now has found the second locket. Apparently separately so the assumption is these brothers didn’t make up at all.

The town was renamed “Feud” and this whole town built itself around this story. And the curator, Janet Hedge, is very invested in it

Through this we have plenty of ghostly visitations - including a woman in widow-weeds and a small child who has lost things. And we have lots of snarking between Ezekiel Jake, each showing off their skills to prove who is the greatest Librarian of them all, much to Eve’s annoyance.

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 8 and the Hidden Sanctuary

Opening prologue: a boy abandoned and alone in the woods happen to find a fairy which he frees…

Now to the Library - and Cassandra having a terrible nightmare/memory of a recent mission in Ecuador which nearly went badly because everyone was relying in Cassandra and she panicked and had a meltdown.

More terrifying - Jenkins is losing his vision and reminding us of his mortality...

Jenkins encourages her to talk because Jenkins is made of awesome. She faced death and panicked - and though she has faced death before it was the certainty of it. She was terminally ill, she knew she was going to die soon. Knowing that she could die on missions meant less to her when she didn’t have much life left, when the possibility of a long, normal life was completely out of the question… now it’s possible to have that long life she’s afraid to risk that. And that fear stops her thinking

Jenkins sympathises, as a man who has had his own life so tragically shortened (nooooooooo!!!!!) has spent time reflecting on his own life, what his purpose is and what he wants to do and what he wants to be. He doesn’t share his own answers (immortal and around forever as a pillar of endless awesomeness) but suggests Cassandra do the same.

She does - and decides to take a sabbatical to the normal world. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, Cassandra doesn’t know what this means. She’s never had a normal life - she needs to experience this if she wants to make an informed decision.

Eve freaks out. And it’s perfect. From seeing her team dissolve, to the abandonment she already feels after Flynn to a HUGE dollop of mother-figure-empty-nest-syndrome, Eve is not remotely happy with this. But Jake and Ezekiel are much more supportive

So she chooses a town that is the safest in America. There she finds… an improbably nice and peaceful with dubious barbershop and creepily friendly town. I would be running but Cassandra fits right in. She rents a room from Karla (who has a son called Freddie who is far far more sensible than anyone else in the town). She gets a job improbably easily as a librarian and quickly fits in in this impossibly perfect town, taking up baking, public events, quilting and all to a superior degree because she’s a Librarian and awesome. It’s in the job description.

The Librarians: Season 4, Episode 7: And the Disenchanted Forest

It falls to Eve to tell the rest of the Librarians that Flynn has gone - and not on a temporary jaunt as is his habit: he’s actually resigned. There’s lots of theories as to why - what the Library did to Nicole. Nicole herself but Eve thinks it’s because of Dare’s notes about more than one librarian being a disaster. They interpret this the most impossibly noble way - rather than ask one of them to resign, Flynn has resigned to lead the others by example

I think they’ve rather put Flynn on a pedestal here.

Of course they begin arguing over who should resign - Jake and Cassandra musing that they have considered normal lives while Ezekiel isn’t playing this game and he definitely wants to be a Librarian.

Eve steps in she’s clear: Flynn is wrong. Dare is wrong. The Library invited them all and didn’t revoke any of those invitations: They are a team and will definitely continue as one

Go Eve - just because there was a war before doesn’t mean these Librarians - who have always been an excellent team together.

More tragically, the immortal Jenkins is ill. Jenkins!

And to prove it she decides to find a mission - and they find one at a camp - a corporate team building camp. Eve leaps on this with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm, pushing the Librarians to join in, to work together to work as a team and listen to all the nonsense claptrap these places like to spout.

At the same time Cassandra dives in with an adorable hyper-enthusiastic love for camp and pranks and fun and generally just loves every second of it while driving everyone up the wall

As Ezekiel comments - he seems to be the only adult left. I assume Ezekiel doesn’t camp because he’s Australian and camping in the Australian wilderness sounds like an especially unpleasant way to commit suicide. He keeps trying to get the guys back on topic; finding something supernatural that the Library has sent them to.

We have some good character confrontations: Ezekiel, sick of Cassandra’s pranks demands to know why she’s doing it. Her ideas of camp have all been from television - which sums up Cassandra entirely. As Ezekiel, perhaps cruelly, tells her - she has no idea how real people live, how real people have fun. It’s harsh - but not inaccurate: Cassandra hasn’t seen to real world except through the media (and lots of terrible teen camp movies)

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 6: And the Graves of Time

The sinister group this episode are creepy Russian grave robbers robbing graves around the world belonging to Nicole Noon; yes the ex-guardian with dubious motives

While at the Library Flynn and Jenkins are arguing. Flynn has taking Dare’s warnings to heart while Jenkins vehemently declares “screw Mr. Dare” which is surprisingly crude for Galahad. He thinks Dare’s fears are ridiculous, antiquated and paranoid and it’s ludicrous that Flynn should be dodging the tethering ceremony because of it, especially with time running out. He thinks Flynn’s real doubts come down to Nicole - and the doubts she seeded in the first episode. And hey he’s willing to debate Nicole’s guilt (which he still thinks is set) but the Library needs tethering now.

Mid argument, they realise that Eve is missing.

Eve has managed to catch up with Nicole who is trying to stop the Russians from raiding all of her graves. I think if she wanted to keep secret sites with artefacts hidden she maybe shouldn’t put her name on them all.

Eve and Nicole meet with Eve assuring Nicole she just wants to bring Nicole back to the Library, she doesn’t like leaving people behind and she wants her to be part of the team again. While Nicole is also very aware that Eve does not 100% trust Nicole and also wants to keep an eye on her. And she doesn’t need the Library to be a Guardian, she will still be a Guardian working alone. There’s a lot of competition and snark including lots of critique of each others’ fighting styles which ends up with the Russians escaping despite being thoroughly beaten. They are most snarky and I like it.

Nicole tries to run off alone but Eve makes it clear: she accepts Eve and Eve doesn’t call the team. Otherwise she gets 4 Librarians and a Custodian following her around. So it’s Eve and Nicole, not trusting but opening up a little. As Eve sees many graves of Nicole she also sees the memories and photos she stored - including all the people she left behind. It brings home to Eve just how hard being an immortal is, especially without a person to ground them. Nicole touches on her fears but Eve is clear: she IS afraid - but not necessarily of immortality but being alone. Of turning into Nicole, basically. Of course that also raises the fear that maybe the others may leave the Library and leave her

Nicole does try to leave Eve behind but it doesn’t go well

Their actual quest is to find Koshi’s needle, an artefact capable of various terribad awfulness.

At the Library everyone’s tracking Eve and Nicole - and by everyone I mean Jenkins (who doesn’t trust Flynn to be objective) and Flynn, after Ezekiel uses some computer hacking to find them. Being Librarians they quickly catch up on the trail, following them through England...

Ok, can we stop saying “just outside of Lancashire” or “she’s gone to Lancashire” because that is a completely useless direction. Lancashire isn’t a town or city. It’s a county - a region, 3,000+ square kilometers.

Also I am deeply amused that anyone thinks a beverage of choice in Lancashire is “cucumber water”.

...through to Rome and then Ukraine outside of Chechnya - so as Eve and Nicole climb a cliff they find Flynn and Jenkins already there (the riddle closely following the legend of Koschie)

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 5: And the Bleeding Crown

The magical quandary this episode is a town where everyone is old. Worse, The Librarians made the Florida joke before I could!

So the whole town has been artificially aged and it’s time to investigate why with lots of questions and investigations with all five of the main gang going to the town (ok I know many will disagree but I kind of love that Flynn manages to make the “We’re Librarians” line work when Stone and everyone else never can). We also have a nice small moment of Cassandra being almost intrigued by aging since she’s finally considering the possibility for herself now she’s not facing terminal illness any more.

The gang is attacked by some creepy monsters and are saved by a very dramatic man: a very dramatic man called Derrington Dare who calls himself the Librarian

I’m all ready to call imposter but it turns out we have a genuine time travelling Librarian. I then cringed and expected lots of posturing between Flynn and Dare - but it turns out Flynn is a complete and utter fanboy of Dare’s, having read his Library record and clearly stylising a lot of his persona and technique on Dare’s. His fanboiing is both cringeworthy and cute - and Eve is wonderfully clear in tolerating his silliness.The other Librarians are less amused that Dare considers them “assistants” and it’s annoying that that’s pretty much how they’re considered for this whole episode.

The aging is caused by Dare’s nemesis, Ambrose Gethic. It seems Dare and Gethic have been fighting each other for pretty much ever to the extent that it consumes both of their lives. Gethic was the one who created a time travel portal which Dare followed him through. As Dare recounts his story, Flynn also realises that Dare is close to the date of his death - when he goes back he dies tomorrow. Cue angsty “can’t alter the time line” trope.

There’s lots more adorkable fanpoodling from Flynn and when they go to the Library, Dare keeps calling Jenkins “Galahad” which is always cool. But Dare also has a problem: 4 librarians. He reveals some secret history which Jenkins has kept hidden (Jenkins is kind of repentant but not very): the last time there were 2 librarians (many many centuries ago) they went to war and because of that the Library was cut from the world, cutting off human curiosity and learning and wonder: which caused the Dark Ages

Ok let’s poke this. First of all, the “Dark Ages” are a terribad eurocentric term which should never be used unless you’re only talking about Europe. While Dark Ages Europe had relatively little “progress” (little but not none), the Middle East, China and more were quite happily chugging along with lots of this curiosity and learning and wonder stuff. The Library, as a world wide institution, needs to recognise that

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 2: The Steal of Fortune

This season seems to be aimed, based on these 2 episodes, on what it means to be a Librarian - we had some shaky moral worrying about the nature of the Library last episode and here we have a look at what the commitment to being a Librarian means

For Flynn, now dedicated to tethering himself to the Library, this means studying it and learning a lot of the tricks that Jenkins knows. The motive for this is easily skewered by Jenkins - Flynn is having the iciest of cold feet and is actually afraid of leaving the Library in case he doesn’t come back.

For a practical stand point this means Flynn is a support figure for this episode rather than a main character. And I approve. As the most experienced and the Original Librarian as well as having a larger-than-life personality, Flynn just eats every scene he is part of. Which works as a solo character but not as an ensemble cast. But I will say, Librarians does an excellent job of keeping him both part of the show and making sure he is put in supporting roles for most episodes so he doesn’t take over. If this show has a protagonist rather than 4 co-protagonists, it’s Eve, not Flynn.

The rest of the gang are facing the truth that being a Librarian means you can’t have a normal life - no friends, no relationships. As Flynn points out, you have to be like celibate monks (Ezekiel protests that Flynn and Eve are together which Flynn declares doesn’t count - as she’s Library attached though Eve doesn’t hear “doesn’t count” well, obviously).

Cassandra is especially unhappy about this because she’s just learned she can have a life after living so long with the understanding she would die young and now having a reprieve. Jake is also really not willing to give up the friends he’s already made and to prove it he takes Ezekiel to meet one of his friends who is breeding and racing horses

Even from the beginning it’s clear that things are awkward - there’s just so much about Jake’s life he can’t share with his friends (also Ezekiel not a fan of horses; though not afraid being Australian and used to everything that breathes being terribly lethal). But they all become far more concerned by this friend being struck with a bizarre chain of extreme bad luck that ends up with him being in the hospital from a million-to-one accident

And in the hospital they find dozens of examples of similar people having million to one accidents and naturally suspect woo-woo

So the team, sans Flynn, arrive a the Casino race course to investigate and find a major weirdness: no-one is winning. Entire horse races are run without a single winner over and over. Cassandra bets over and over at Roulette and doesn’t win, Ezekiel can’t get a single slot machine to pay out

American Horror Story Season 7 (Cult), Episode 11: Great Again

Dear gods of mercy, it’s nearly over, it’s nearly over. The end is in sight… this season of American Horror Story is ending!

I made it! I made it people! By heroic effort and stoic endurance I actually made it

Shouldn’t I be getting a medal or something? A parade? A plaque? I think I deserve a plaque

So let’s begin with my least favourite narrative trope in the world ever - a broken time line! Because telling stories in chronological order is just passe. Which means we start with Kai in prison building his own cult again

Yes, Kai is imprison. And yes, the guy who is a notorious is a cult leader so wouldn’t they have precautions about this? In a prison system where you can be put in solitary for just about any reason it seems bizarre that Kai is allowed to roam around and recruit his own army of followers.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves - why is Kai in prison?

Because Ally. After murdering “speedwagon” the poor schlub blackmailed by the local police into becoming an informant and then playing Kai like a fiddle, revealing Winter was innocent, being his peddler of anxiety meds, being his shoulder to cry on and generally wrapping him round her finger. She’s masterful at it, definitely out manipulating the ever more degrading Kai.

At the same time Beverley has just collapsed and in the end just begs Ally to kill her - but Ally just implores her to hold on a little longer

When Kai has his master plan of murdering 100 pregnant women, Ally unleashes the FBI. many of his minions die in the shoot out, Kai is arrested and Beverley released

How is she released? Well she catches up with Ally later who is living a wonderful new life, with a new restaurant, a new girlfriend and even celebrity status as the woman who survived Kai, she’s a feminist icon.

American Horror Story, Season 7, Episode 10: Charles (Manson) in Charge

Who wants to know more about Kai’s background?

Nobody? Yeah me too - but we’re getting it anyway. Because being traumatised by his parents and keeping their corpses just isn’t enough reason to believe he became a serial killer cult leader

So, back to the past and the election, oh yay, and we have Winter and some white lady friends playing Oppression Olympics between sexism and racism, they’re super confident Hillary will win while Kai dismisses this because they’re underestimating the power of futile white male rage. They argue and Kai slaps Winter’s friend - and she presses charges despite his begging. Yes this is Kai in a more pathetic time

He’s sentenced to Anger Management with the improbable counsellor, Bebe. Yes that Bebe. How anyone could consider her qualified is bemusing. More bemusing is how she decides to recruit Kai to her mission to destroy all men within 10 minutes of seeing him. Seriously can you imagine her office? Within 5 minutes of meeting a new patient she’s trying to recruitment them on her genocide campaign and she keeps her license?

More unlikely, Kai agrees to call himself  a turd and get on board to unleash the mighty power of female rage on the whole world. She’s decided that centuries of patriarchy mean women are just ready to rise up and burn it all down and they just need the number one misogynist to finally provoke them.

This is actually a bullshit argument we’ve been hearing a lot since Trump has been elected - that by hitting the Utter Worst it will provoke a backlash, nearly inevitably from people who on the whole won’t have their lives completely ruined by that Utter Worst. And it comes with a bizarre lack of historical knowledge about just how fecking bad things were. It wasn’t that long ago when men could legally rape their wives beat their wives, women couldn’t own property - and women didn’t explode and murder all men.

Anyway, Kai, after this 5 minutes speech, decides indeed he does want to be a martyr in the name of exploding female rage. Because who needs coherent motives?

To the present we get more political drama with protestors protesting Kai’s naziness and run for Senate. But mainly we have Kai getting steadily more paranoid, believing the feds are everywhere and bugging his house

That would be the house with 3-5 rotting corpses in one of the bedrooms. Seriously if the Feds can sneak in microphones, they will notice the stench of death. You don’t need to record incriminating evidence if you have actual murdered corpses.

American Horror Story, Season 7 (Cult), Episode 9: Drink the Kool-Aid

It’s time for another episode of American Horror Story

And this begins with a quick tour of murderous suicide cults, told from the point of view of Kai all played by Evan Peters. And you may think that maybe it’s tasteless to use so many desperately tragic mass deaths for entertainment foddder

This is American Horror Story

This counts as his bedtime story he tells his own cult of sleep-over mindless cultists all wearing Mormon underwear

I am sure there’s a porn site that looks so much like this.

Kai makes the not-so-subtle point that he wants true loyalty and everyone being ready to die for him and all these guys will for reasons we won’t go into because they’re extras and who cares?

He’s also ranting nonsense at the city council meeting and using his goons to intimidate them into agreeing to his rule that all internet in town is banned except through a specific server which filters the internet

Even assuming the town can possibly afford this, the lawsuit from this will be hilarious. He also wants to run for the Senate. Like people would elect a violent bigoted avatar of vileness for…

...honestly I don’t even know why I began saying that. His dyed hair is likely to be more controversial than his violence

He also notices that the women are all missing

Time to catch up with Ally and Ivy - and Ally is officially done. Having waved her magic wand and banished all of her mental health issues, she demands some explanations from Ivy about why everything