AHS 1984: The biggest moments from “Slashdance”
By Tina Wargo
AHS: 1984 picks up right where it left off with its shocking, spoiler-heavy, and slash-dancing third episode of the season.
Good morning, campers. The weather today is mild, but certainly livable. Activities will begin, as always, in the dead of night. And the special of the day is a big old heaping pile of twists and turns. I hope you’re hungry because I’m serving up the most shocking, spoilery, and deliciously salacious moments you missed during this week’s episode of AHS: 1984.
Nurse Rita
The thing about Nurse Rita is that, while she has always been a core part of the group in the eight hours it has spent together in pure terror at Camp Redwood, we’ve never known a ton about her — until now.
The episode again picks up exactly where last week’s left off: with all of our friends split into two groups, cowering in fear, waiting for one of two serial killers to break down their doors and do the deed. Because our gang is full of young, scrappy, and hungry teens — plus a couple of plucky adults — they quickly break free and hatch a new plan: get the hell out of Redwood.
Brooke and Nurse Rita, who have successfully skittered away, wait for the rest of their crew in the parking lot. Brooke, trying to be an innocent little angel, offers to take Rita’s car to go look for help on the road. Rita agrees, but right as Brooke turns her back, she sneaks up behind her with a syringe and renders her floppy and confused.
Cut to: Nurse Rita aka Fake Rita aka Donna Chambers, days earlier, in the office of Dr. Hopple, who you may remember as the psychologist who tried to warn Margaret Booth of Jingles’ imminent arrival. She is now dead because — well, obviously. But back in the past of a few days ago, she sits across from Fake Rita, who is asking about Benjamin Richter (Mr. Jingles). She explains that she’s researching her PhD, and she’s pried confessions out of the most prolific of serial killers. Now, she wants a shot at Jingles.
Because this is set in the ’80s, and I guess no one was terrified constantly, Dr. Hopple grants permission. Fake Rita is taken to see Jingles and is set up with a tape recorder from the hospital. They need to be aware of everything said. The minute Fake Rita sits down, she’s being way too chill about it all. She immediately tells Jingles that she doesn’t believe him to be simply evil. And then she turns off the tape recorder.
She goes on to ask him about his time in the war, and she posits that that was likely the first time he’d ever killed anything. She lays out her theory: Serial killers are on the rise because otherwise good men have been damaged by pornography and the echo of the war. With this claim, she empowers Jingles; it’s the first time he’s heard that it may not be entirely his fault that he’s a serial murderer — even though it 100 percent is.
She convinces him to escape, assuring him that if she’s able to get him out into the world and study him in his natural habitat, she may be able to scientifically understand what makes murderers tick, even though that is not how science works. He tells her that if he goes back, he knows he’ll kill. Rita says, basically, “Doy!” She explains that sometimes sacrifices need to be made for science, and since she’s apparently super down for Margaret to die, she facilitates Jingles’ break out and tells him to meet her at the camp.
Hours later, we see Fake Rita on the road again, presumably on the way to camp. She is closely trailing a young woman, who we come to learn from the inscription on her uniform is actually Nurse Rita. Real Rita! Real Rita pulls into a gas station— the murder-only gas station we’ve now seen twice— and Fake Rita follows rights along. Real Rita confronts her quickly, but Fake Rita talks her down and gains her trust under the guise of female empowerment. As Real Rita returns from the bathroom (directly after Fake Rita has quoted Ted Bundy at her), she sees only one car in the lot. Fake Rita appears to have driven away.
As Real Rita continues her scenic drive, not-at-all-eerily listening to “Maneater,” Fake Rita pops up out of the back seat. We suddenly cut back to present-day (night) camp, and Brooke finally passes out. Fake Rita drags her away.
Bet-Ray-al
Chet and Ray — who definitely should have been lovers from the start but instead are kind of weird fake enemies — have attempted to run away from Mr. Jingles, but instead, fall straight into his trap. Literally. The two bros are stuck in a pit full of spikes: Ray, theoretically, and Chet, physically. He has fallen onto one, and lays, impaled through the shoulder, on top of it.
As they weigh their options (die is option 1-40), Chet passes out from the pain and probably blood loss and maybe to avoid talking to Ray who, of course, panics. In his mania, he begins confessing that he’d only left LA in the first place because he was in big trouble. What kind of trouble you may ask? Flashback time!
We cut back to last year during Ray’s fraternity’s hell week. They’re making the pledges chug beer, do shots, get naked, and other weird dude stuff. Ray takes one of the sickly looking pledges out into the hall to give him a well-meaning pep talk, but the pledge can’t keep it together. He falls down the stairs, drunkenly. Ray attempts to help him as a fellow frat bro appears, reminding him that the frat needs to remain free of scandal. Ray takes this to mean that he should put the pledge in his car, drive to the top of a cliff, and push it off with him in the driver’s seat.
As he does exactly this, the pledge wakes up, confused and horrified. Ray attempts to pull him out through the open window, but can’t swing it. In the midst of his rescue mission, Ray’s watch falls off into the car, which goes tumbling off the cliff. Back in the present, Ray continues to freak out, admitting that the catalyst for his coming to camp was reading in the paper that they’d found the car. He knows his watch will be found, too, and so he made an escape.
At the very climax of this confession, Chet finally wakes up and is like, “Dude, that is all very bad.” Ray, who has learned nothing, becomes irate and decides to climb out of the pit and leave Chet to die. So, I guess the best way to get over being a murderer is to murder again?
As Ray scurries away, he runs into Montana, Trevor, and Xavier, and the two groups essentially just give each other the run down of what the others missed in the past 30 minutes. Ray agrees to go with Montana and take Trevor’s motorcycle to a call box down the road.
The duo reaches the parking lot when the Night Stalker appears! Ray, ever the gentleman, hops on the bike and abandons Montana. As he smugly rides off down the street, a wild Jingles appears on the side of the road, and quite literally whacks Ray’s head right off its body. Sor-Ray, not sorry!
Montana’s lament
Back in the parking lot, where we (read: dumb dead Ray) have left Montana alone with the Night Stalker, things aren’t looking good. He slinks close to her, extending his knife in a troubling mix of eroticism and a threat, and he traces her body with it. She sizes him up and suddenly makes the strange but possibly life-saving decision to pull him in for a kiss. We think maybe she’s doing it to trick him or catch him off guard, but when she pulls away, she demands, “Why the hell haven’t you killed her yet?”
And that’s that! Everyone is bad except maybe Brooke, but of course she is, because hello!
Next. AHS: 1984: Episode 2 recap and review. dark