Make America Scared Still: AHS Cult E1 recap

The lightly fictionalized state of the nation portrayed in American Horror Story: Cult is so real it’s scary, and it is so scary that it’s real.

Another season of AHS is upon us, and it would be incredibly generic and categorically true to say that even with just the first episode of Cult-themed season 7 under our belts, we’re in the scariest era of the show. If you don’t believe me, you need look no further than its wholly nightmarish opening scene, where we find ourselves back in the middle of one of the most terrifying moments in recent memory: election night. We’ve been through a LOT on this show, but my skin has never crawled in such a way as when Sarah Paulson desperately declared: “I won’t believe anything until I hear Rachel Maddow say it!”

And so with a few key news bites and the warranted panic of a very hip
lesbian couple, our initial scene is set. After Rachel Maddow says it, across town in what could easily pass as an innocent gamer bro’s basement, a surely non-innocent Evan Peters with gross blue hair and a thirst for chaos is shouting alone at his TV. Except he’s not scared or angry; he’s thrilled.

Back in suburbia, Ally (Paulson) is taking the news exactly in the way that makes sense, which is to scream and bellow “F*** you, Nate Silver!” into the abyss. She is fully breaking down, but Kai (Peters) is elated, because he wants America to suffer. Wish granted, my dude!

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT — Pictured: Sarah Paulson as Ally Mayfair-Richards. CR: Frank Ockenfels/FX

Mr. Chang, half of The Changs, neighbors who had been election night-ing with Ally and her wife Ivy (Alison Pill) promptly freaks out at his wife because she didn’t vote. At the same time, back across town in the basement, Kai puts some cheese puffs in a blender, then smears the blender Cheetos all over his face and—VOILA! Instant cosplay!

In another part of the Cheeto Mansion, Winter (Billie Lourd) is on the phone and appears rather terrifying. She’s worrying about what will happen to the country, and also what will happen to her should she need an abortion. Kai enters in full Cheeto Face, and she tells him she’s scared. He (kinda giddily) tells her that everyone is.

Cut to: two teens are hooking up in a park. One looks like Vampire Michael Bublé and one looks like she auditioned for the movie Thirteen. This scene is strangely reminiscent of the first time we saw Twisty the Clown (remember that guy??!) go on a murder spree in Freak Show, so I am not ready to trust again. Vampire Bublé actually brings up the legend of Twisty exactly one second before he shows up to attack. V. M. Bublé quickly points a gun at the clown (who doesn’t bring a gun to a picnic—THIS IS TRUMP’S AMERICA!!!) and shoots him, but it straight up doesn’t work, so Twisty attacks him and Not Thirteen.

BUT, JK, it’s all good because it turns out that this had all just been happening within a comic book that Ally and Ivy’s son, Oz, is reading. It is at this moment we learn that these women are very woke and usually chill moms who are not worried about the possibility of him looking at porn, so that’s fun. But as Ally realizes he’s looking at a clown mag instead of a nudie mag, she has a
full breakdown. Luckily, Ivy is really good at comforting Ally and Ally is really good at crying and panicking and being a dope mom, except she is not good at being regular around clowns.

Later in a law-ish looking arena (that is the professional term), Mr. Chang is on the board of….something, and Kai is standing before thag board to give a speech to. He mostly talks about how we (Americans) are all too afraid of everything to make any progress. He thinks chaos should reign so that our fear will weed out those who can’t cope, and those who remain in tact will give the government “unlimited power to protect them.” Mr. Chang reminds him that this (Trump) is a blip on the radar, and just a mistake. He also says a lot of real rude but real true things about Kai being a loser who lives in his parents’ basement and who now feels empowered by a bully in the White House. Kai leaves, saying “There is nothing more dangerous in this world than
a humiliated man.” Which I believe was Trump’s original campaign slogan???!!!

Ally is in therapy talking about how her phobias have been taking over her life again since election night. She’s afraid of clowns but also she’s afraid of holes. She tells her therapist (Cheyanne Jackson!) that it’s as bad as it had been when she was in college during 9/11. But back then, she recounts, Ivy had gotten her through it because Ally had wanted to be better so that they could build a life together. Then, Ally remembers, Obama was elected, and that era had made her feel like she was finally part of the national conversation. Her doctor promptly prescribes her anxiety medication even though she’s reluctant to take it and he’s (allegedly) reluctant to prescribe it.

She leaves therapy and goes to the grocery store in the middle of the night (??!!) and immediately runs into Chaz Bono with half an arm (!!?!!), who calls Trump “a real leader” and then puts on that God forsaken red hat. At this point, Ally should take Chaz’s mom’s advice to “keep your eyes open, bitch” and leave the damn store, but NOPE!!!

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT — Pictured: Alison Pill as Ivy Mayfair-Richards. CR: Frank Ockenfels/FX

Instead, she wanders around aimlessly and sees very scary clown things with every turn down every aisle. She chooses some rosé as her weapon of choice, obviously, and tries to attack a three-faced clown on a scooter!!!!! She runs out of the store into her car and calls Ivy, telling her “They’re trying to kill me.” Ivy tells her she’s going to call the police and Ally sees a clown person in her rear view mirror, goes rogue, and crashes her car into a lamppost in the parking lot.

Later, Ivy is talking to the police at the door and Ally is cowering upstairs. She tells Ally that on the grocery store security tapes,they’d just seen her screaming and throwing rosé; they saw no clown sex or knife-wielding monsters. Ally is certain these things were targeting her and wanted to murder her because their masks had HOLES, meaning they were playing on her fears. Ozzie sees Ally crying and gets worried, so they quickly pull him away and reassure him that everything’s okay.

We’re now at a restaurant Ivy and Ally apparently own together (Ivy cooks, Ally is front of house), which is VERY HOT!! Ivy calls Ally out for not even trying with the restaurant, or with their sex life, or with their marriage, which is not as hot. Ally accuses her of wanting to leave the marriage, and Ivy tells her she just wants Ally to try harder to transcend the “stupid election.” It is here, dear reader, that the Ryan Murphy-ness of it all clicked in my lil’ brain, and I realized how damn brilliant this season is going to be in exploring the seemingly universal struggle of “Can I still be a person and have a life while the entire world is crumbling around me?” BUT I DIGRESS.

While Ally and Ivy leave the restaurant fighting over the fact that Ally VOTED FOR JILL STEIN (!!!!!!!!!!!!), Kai walks past and throws a latte on Ally, and then calls her a bitch.

Ally later writes a personal ad for the new nanny they now need because theirs disappeared after the election. Winter shows up for an interview and seems really sweet but actually kind of scary AF. We cut back and forth between her interview and some weird questioning ritual that Kai is orchestrating back in the basement house. In her interview, Winnie tells Ivy and Ally that she was a women’s studies major who quit college to campaign for Hillary and whose proudest moment was a retweet from Lena Dunham. This season, I have just come to understand, was made for me and only me to enjoy. Interview Winter seems pointedly, how-yousay, snowflake-ish (PLEASE @ me, Tomi Lahren). But “real” (?) Winnie seems darker and mysterious and admits, in the basement questioning, that the thing that scares her most in the world is Kai.

We then cut to a parking lot, where a bunch of workers climb out of a truck coming back from what looks like a day of manual labor. Kai, who seems pretty drunk, shows up and immediately starts harassing them. Let me be specific here: he pees in a condom and throws it at them. When we see someone begin filming the scene on a phone just as the workers attack Kai, it becomes clear that he’d been intentionally provoking them.

Ally and Ivy are having a romantic dinner at their restaurant, where Ivy admits she’s trying to get Ally all drunk because she is hard up because it’s Sarah Paulson and who wouldn’t be. Back at home, Winnie (who was hired as nanny!) and Ozzie are just chilling and by that I mean Ozzie is drawing pics of Twisty murdering people and Winnie is showing him photos of dead bodies on the internet.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT — Pictured: Evan Peters as Kai Anderson. CR: Frank Ockenfels/FX

Ally is being pretty regular at the restaurant until she reads Trump’s tweets on her phone and then immediately sees blood seeping out of her food and a  clown masturbating next to her. She causes a real scene until Ivy comes out of the kitchen and is like “Excuse me, please be less crazy,” and Ally is like “No thanks, can’t.” Ivy tells her she needs to take her medicine and Ally admits she thinks she’s losing her mind.

At home, Winnie and Ozzie are watching someone stab someone else on
the “dark web,” and Winnie tells him that watching this will make him strong. Winnie leaves him alone for a minute and he looks out the window, seeing a gaggle of clowns getting out of a van. PLEASE BELIEVE HIM, MOMS! HE’S NOT JUST MIMICKING HIS CRAZY MOM! HE’S TRUSTWORTHY!!!!! Probably.

Ally and Ivy are driving home and Ally admits that she’s taken her pill. When they pull up to the house, there are cops everywhere who tell them it’s a crime scene. They push past, calling for their son until he finally comes outside. He tells them that the Changs are dead—”It was the clowns.” He explains that he saw them get out of the ice cream truck across the street. We cut back to Winnie and Oz investigating the ice cream truck and hearing screaming across the street. Winnie takes him there and makes him watch the Changs being tortured and murdered through the window. In the present, Winnie tells the moms that actually, none of that happened. She says, though, that she did find a Twisty comic in his room, which he’d been reading in his bed. Ally and Ivy are pissed at Winnie for even letting Oz get at all involved in this, so they talk to the cops to get the real scoop, but they tell them it looks like a murder/suicide.

That night, Ally is laying in bed and hears a noise. She rolls over to ask Ivy if she’d heard it, but guess the hell what. YUP! IVY IS SUDDENLY A DAMN CLOWN!

And that’s episode 1. I laughed, I cried, I felt sicker to my stomach at the election night footage than I did at images of clowns murdering people and boning each other. But I still cannot wait for more. What is Winter’s deal?? Will Ozzie’s moms believe him? Is Ally crazy, or is the world crazy? AND WILL IVY EVER GET LAID AGAIN?!

Next: “Feud” season 2 is About Princess Diana, and we have some ideas about who will portray her

Tune in next Tuesday on FX at 10 p.m. EST where these questions and more might just be answered.