American Horror Story: Asylum - S2E5 - I Am Anne Frank, Part 2

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Previously on American Horror Story: Asylum…

The episode starts with Sister Jude visiting some sort of investigator; she’s still convinced Dr. Arden used to be a Nazi at Auschwitz, so she wants this guy to find out if it’s true. Apparently, this is his hobby. Some people build model airplanes; this guy finds secret Nazis.

Back at the asylum, Dr. Arden busts through Sister Mary Eunice’s door, and he’s bleeding. If you’ll recall, in the last episode, a patient identifying herself as “Anne Frank” called Dr. Arden a Nazi and eventually ended up shooting him in the leg. She sends Sister Stupid (Sister Mary Eunice) out of the room but fails to mind her surroundings; a security guard gets the drop on her, and she ends up in a straightjacket. Sister Jude has returned to the asylum and questions our Anne Frank, who tells Sister Jude about having seen Shelley-the nymphomaniac whom Dr. Arden has mutilated and held prisoner in his lab.

Sister Jude tells “Anne” they searched Dr. Arden’s lab for any evidence of her story and found none. That’s when Sister Stupid comes in to let Sister Jude know a man is asking for Anne, but he doesn’t call her Anne; he says she is his wife. His story is that “Anne” is an actress who read The Diary of Anne Frank while pregnant and became confused about her identity. It seems very convenient, to me, but the guy has pictures and Sister Jude believes him, so Anne is sent home; that’s against the suggestion of Dr. Threadson, who believes our “Anne” should be admitted, anyway, because of the whole “thinking she’s Anne Frank” thing. He has a point.

You’ll also recall, Kit and Grace were put into solitary confinement after getting caught doing the nasty in the kitchen. I don’t think the “kitchen” part of the equation mattered quite as much as the “nasty” part, but I felt it was a worthy distinction to make. Kit and Grace are talking to each other through the wall, when Sister Stupid comes along to let them know Sister Jude has decided to let Kit out of his scheduled sterilzation; not Grace, though. That seems a little sexist, right? Anyway, that’s when things get weird-well, weirder-a bright light creeps in trough the cracks around Grace’s door… are the aliens back? Oh, shit, I think the aliens are back.

Of course the show can’t tell us, right away, whether or not the aliens are back. No, first, Dr. Threadson has to creepily let Lana know he’s getting her out after dinner. Dr. Threadson is a busy man, though, because he’s also working with Kit to get him… to stay in the asylum, by admitting he killed his wife. He didn’t kill his wife, though. You know how I know?

The aliens are back! Not only are they back, but they are freakier than Dr. Arden. They’re doing things to Grace that I’d think the good doctor would even squirm over.

Speaking of Dr. Arden, he’s out of the hospital (you know, after being shot), and he’s up to his old, intimidating ways. He lets Sister Jude know that he doesn’t rightly appreciate her releasing the crazy woman who shot him. He may be a psychotic asshole, but he has a fair point. Someone else Dr. Arden speaks to? Sister Stupid, and this is where we find out she’s the reason Sister Jude didn’t find Shelley, earlier. It turns out Sister Stupid snuck into Dr. Arden’s lab and dragged Shelley’s monstrously hideous body out into the woods. Those two are determined to get Sister Jude thrown out of the asylum, when I think they should try to bring her on board; she’s clearly of questionable morality, just like they are, and she even called off her Nazi investigator after learning of “Anne Frank”‘s true identity. I don’t know why the three of them can’t work together.

That conversation, however, is followed by something that would seem to indicate that Sister Stupid is living up to that nickname we’ve given her; apparently, she didn’t drag Shelley to an appropriate spot, because Shelley comes crawling up on some playground full of kids, who subsequently get all kinds of weirded the fuck out. You can’t blame them; Shelley is really jacked up.

“Anne Frank”‘s husband brings Charlotte back  Yeah, “Charlotte” is her real name, but I’m just going to keep calling her “Anne Frank”. She’s ours. Her husband wants Dr. Threadson to help his wife, since he seemed to know what was wrong with her, but Dr. Threadson is preoccupied with helping Lana escape, so he ain’t trying to get caught up in any “Anne Frank” bullshit. As a result, Lana escapes, but “Anne Frank” ends up on Dr. Arden’s death table, where he tries all kinds of obsolete medical procedures on her. I guess that’s the choice Dr. Threadson made.

With that, Sister Jude resigns herself to the fact that this shit just isn’t working out. She gets dolled up-with some of that evil, red lipstick, from an earlier episode-and heads out to a bar, where she is immediately picked up by some barfly. When she falls, she really falls far. I can see how she got so drunk, 15 years ago, to hit-and-run kill a kid.

Dr. Threadson’s first name is Oliver. He tells this to Lana after letting her into his house where she will be staying. Then he informs her they will be going to the police, the next day. For tonight? They’ll be drinking wine… and being incredibly creepy. Well, the “creepy” side of the evening’s festivities seems to be monopolized by Dr. Threadson. You see, Lana notices some interesting home furnishings in Dr. Threadson’s house. She excuses herself to the bathroom-trying to sneak out-but she runs directly into a “workshop”. In this workshop, Dr. Threadson makes lamps… using “all-natural” materials. You know, SKIN. He pulls a Scooby-Doo lever which drops Lana into a surprisingly spacious laboratory that would rival Bane’s questionably roomy hideout in The Dark Knight Rises, but I digress. Dr. Threadson is the killer who murdered the people Kit is accused of murdering; he pulls their skin off and uses it for his little projects. I told you that man was going to end up being the worst person on the show! He was too good. I like this because it gets Zachary Quinto into that Sylar zone he played so well on Heroes.

1. Speaking of Kit, you remember how it made no sense that Dr. Threadson told him confessing to the murders was the only way he could be kept safe? Yeah, well, I guess now we know why he did that; the police come into the asylum and take Kit away. Never mind the fact that the newly sterilized (or impregnated by aliens?) Grace tries her best to tell the police about her encounter with Kit’s supposedly dead wife/those aliens; they don’t care because they have Kit’s confession and Dr. Threadson’s conveniently convincing evaluation.

2. Speaking of Dr. Threadson using skin to make things. Lana wakes up in his laboratory, where a very frozen-and dead-Wendy is also splayed out on the floor (Remember, Wendy is Lana’s girlfriend), and Dr. Threadson informs Lana that, by now, he would have already had Wendy’s skin off, as well as her head, but she’s still a little too frosty. That’s when Dr. Threadson puts on a mask-it’s more like a hood, really-and what praytell does this mask look like? It’s Bloodyface from the future! You know, where the die-hard Adam Levine and his wife were trapped in Briarcliff? That Bloodyface! I love it when the plot lines start to come together.

Oh, then we see Sister Jude wake up in bed with the aforementioned barfly who picked her up. That may have been more shocking, if I hadn’t just seen Zachary Quinto put someone’s face on his face.

The episode ends with another apparent revelation: the husband and “Anne Frank” have a picture of Dr. Arden as a Nazi on their wall. I think. I’m not 100% sure about that; throughout the entire episode, the husband and “Anne Frank”‘s home life was shown to us as little vignettes and snippets of information. As far as I can tell, before Charlotte became obsessed with Anne Frank, she had been doing research into the character and had collected a lot of information, including pictures. One of those pictures she found had Dr. Arden in it, I guess, and that’s what planted the information into “Anne Frank”‘s mind. Long story short, apparently, even though she was psychotic, she was right about Dr. Arden.

Tangential note: You’ve probably noticed the way “Shelley” is spelled. During this episode, I realized it’s probably spelled that way as a nod to Mary Shelley, the creator of “Frankenstein”; you know, since American Horror Story: Asylum‘s Shelley has become Dr. Arden’s monster? Others probably already noticed that, but I hadn’t until this episode.