Ready for Valerie: American Horror Story Cult episode 7 recap

This week’s episode of AHS: Cult offered a historical heaping of radical girl power and set the stage for a bloody battle of the sexes.

Before we get into it, let me just say that this episode, though not necessarily plot-heavy or modern-election-focused, was absolutely riveting, completely alarming, and presented a total reversal for each and every character we thought we knew. It was one of the best of the season, and of any season, maybe. And this is all true despite there having been hardly any Sarah Paulson, so you KNOW I mean it!

Flashback to 1986

We start off in 1986, where some folks get it on real good in a car in an alley. One of the folks is none other than Lena Dunham as Valerie Solanas, famed radical feminist and almost murderer of Andy Warhol (but we’ll get to that). After getting in a dispute about the money she’s owed from the car situation, she makes her way over to Evan-Peters-as-Andy-Warhol’s studio, and demands her script back from him. She accuses him of losing it on purpose to silence her. Warhol admits he doesn’t think women can be serious artists.

After getting angry, she’s escorted out of the studio. At a not-so-later date, we see her shoving a gun into a paper bag. She makes her way back into his studio, where she learns Andy isn’t available. As she departs again, she paces around the elevator, messing around with her gun. Warhol soon joins her, and they ride back up to his studio together. She follows him silently inside, where Warhol tells her she looks pretty because she’d put on makeup and then they again immediately ask her to leave. Being a woman is cool! She takes out her gun and shoots at him twice, but misses. Then, she screams at him that he’s had too much control over her life. She yells “Down with the patriarchy!” and shoots him point blank in the chest.

Present time

We return to the present, where we see a bunch of news packages about the recent mass shooting. It seems as though it’s known that Meadow was the key perpetrator, but Ally has still been taken into custody and refuses to speak. Harrison also sees news and says that Meadow’s actions were politically motivated. He also says she wrote in her diary that, as a Hillary fan, she wanted to get revenge on Trump supporters. Kai then announces that he’s up in the polls and — SURPRISE — he’s also gotten a retweet from Eric Trump. Lol. Someone help.

Beverly leaves the station and runs into a half-coven, half-goth Frances Conroy smoking a giant cigar. She talks about how women are manipulated into thinking they need men, and also about how Meadow’s assassination attempt was clearly botched on purpose. She tells Beverly to give her a call at her hotel if she wants to talk further.

The next day, Beverly makes her way to Kai’s house, which is being heavily policed. Beverly has to fight her way in past a guard before Kai makes them let her pass. Once inside, she finds a bunch of white dudes in blue Oxford shirts slapping each other like they’re in a ski resort’s fight club.

Beverly asks lots of questions about next steps for the cult, but Kai seems to be slowing down. Or at least making new moves without consulting her. He tells her it’s time for them to relax, but she’s like, “Uh hello I thought we were gonna burn the world down.” She knows he’s being sketchy and calls him out, reminding him that they had agreed to share control. He continues to be weird to her but essentially just tells her to trust him. She eventually leaves, but not before dropping some truth about what had happened when Meadow did trust him.

Angrily, Beverly gets outta there, and heads right on over to Frances Conroy’s motel for some patriarchy-toppling deliberation, probably!

In another part of the worst town in the whole wide world, Winter and Ivy are at the restaurant discussing the aftermath of the shooting. We learn that Ally still hasn’t said a word to the cops, AND that Kai’s cult has suddenly shifted to a total sausage fest. Beverly enters a bit manically with Frances Conroy, who happens to actually be a woman named Bebe Babbitt. The ladies immediately commiserate about Kai’s sudden change of heart, which they all agree without even really needing to qualify that it’s because he’s a man. They outline the very real and infuriating truth that he basically manipulated the women of the cult into working for him until he could get ahead, take all the power, and then start to use that power against them.

Another Valerie flashback

Bebe recounts her story to the women. Of course, it totally entwined with the life and work of Valerie Solanas. She tells the origin story of Valerie, who she considered the love of her life. She recounts Valerie’s efforts to get rid of all men with a radical action group called SCUM. Valerie would write manifestos, host meetings, and perform her plans as speeches. She attempted to mobilize these women to act violently to destroy the male population.

Sounds chill.

As the women begin to put their faith in the group, Bebe and Valerie and the rest of SCUM soon move to San Francisco, where Valerie further concocts her plan.

Basically, it consisted of the women seeking out not just men, but also other “bad” women who actively allowed men to have sex with them, and then shooting both parties. As Bebe continues to tell the story, Winter, in the present day, interrupts. She points out that SCUM’s first victims were actually victims of the Zodiac killer. Bebe defiantly announces: “We were the Zodiac.”

As Bebe continues to tell the story of SCUM, we find ourselves back in time again, in a field where two lovers are canoodling. Bebe explains that Valerie meticulously crafted each murder. After she attempted to assassinate Warhol, the women knew it was time to start their work. We see the women in the field, wearing green velvet cloaks and stabbing the couple to death. After those murders, some trash MAN started writing letters to the newspaper under the alias of the Zodiac killer, sending ciphers and giving vague clues as to his identity.

We were the Zodiac.

Valerie grows hella pissed that a man wants to take credit for the work that SCUM has been doing, and honestly, even though it’s a totally insane thing to want credit for, SHE’S RIGHT! PREEEAACH, QUEEN! Back at a SCUM meeting, Valerie returns to confront one of the few men she allowed to be a part of SCUM.

She admits to her group that she’d been wrong even letting a few of the “good” men work with them, and presents the guys with a book she’d found under one of their mattresses — a book covered in handwriting that matches the “Zodiac’s.” When one of the men finally admits he assumed the identity of the Zodiac and effectively stole their thunder, the women go crazy and stab him to death. They cut his limbs off, put him in a field, and shove his, uhhhh, dude parts right on into his mouth. R.I.P.

Later, Valerie sits at a police station and tries to get a cop to believe that she and SCUM are actually responsible for the “Zodiac” killings. Even as she screams at them that she orchestrated it all, they don’t listen. She warns them not to take female rage lightly. But still, they escort her out of the station and refuse to accept her as anything other than a crazy lady.

So Valerie snapped … even further. She becomes obsessed with destroying men in positions of power, with documenting every offense perpetrated by men against women. Soon, she starts to spiral out of control. She wrote and wrote until she had hallucinations of men like Warhol, who even in her visions, told her that she wasn’t good enough. In one lucid hallucination that we see, Valerie screams at Warhol for stealing her life, her voice, her writing, and even her legacy — the only thing she’d be remembered for would be trying to assassinate him. She eventually died alone.

In the present again

Back in the present, Bebe warns our women not to let themselves suffer that same fate. She tells them that they have to take back their power. Beverly agrees, promising that when they strike back, this time, they won’t miss.

In their horrifying terror home, Winter skulks up to Kai, who’s holding the rotting hand of their dead skeleton mother. He expresses to her that he worries their parents wouldn’t be proud of him. She assures him that he’s doing some crazy stuff, not all of which she agrees with, but he’s her brother and she loves him. He then takes her hand and reminds her, seeming even kinda genuine, that because they’re family, they have to stick together. Actually, it sounds sorta like a very, very gentle threat. She promises him that she’ll be there for him.

As she leaves, Kai stops her and asks about the SCUM pamphlet he’d found in her room. She dismisses it, saying it’s just the ramblings of a crazy woman. He tells her the name of the manifesto inspired him to create his own campaign. Then, he suggests the name, “Men lead, women bleed”. Clearly, he wants to test her. She tells him that that name would piss off the wrong people. And he tells her that it’d been Harrison’s idea. When she actually leaves, Kai tells her to “Say hi to the girls for me.”

Harrison and Ivy are across town at the restaurant planning a surprise victory party for Kai. Except, guess what, it’s not that at all! Beverly, Ivy, Winter, and Bebe are actually there to tear down the damn patriarchy! They attack Harrison and bring him into the meat freezer, where they threaten him with a chainsaw. They grill him about Meadow, about the “men lead, women bleed” comment, about why he wouldn’t stick up for them as a marginalized person himself. Ivy shouts “We are SCUM!” and slices him all the hell up with the chainsaw.

Kai watches Beverly’s news report on the murder of Harrison, where she makes sure to note that they found the body in a pond under a film of scum. Kai suddenly says, “They’re at their best when they’re angry”. When the camera pulls out, we see none other than the cigar smoking goth coven leader Bebe. She answers, “Aren’t we all?”

Although this episode really only functioned to reframe the characters’ relationships and their motives, it surely changed the game in ways that I never would’ve even dared to guess. I mean, I’m all for girl power. But that was … actually exactly the hour of television I have been desperately craving since Nov. 8, 2016. Here’s hoping next week is just as radical, twisty, political, and absolutely nutso as this gem of a midseason shocker!

Stay tuned next week for Culturess’s coverage of American Horror Story: Cult on FX!

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