In the fifth episode this season, we’re introduced to……TA DA!!!……fake news. Or rather fake news that becomes real simply, because it wasn’t scary enough.
We open with Bob, the town’s news director at the town’s only TV station, accuses Beverly, the now the town s on,y reporter, of exaggerated stats regarding a crime story and basically fires her.
For promoting……wait for it……FAKE NEWS!!!
Well, now that she’s officially in Kai’s Klown Kar of misery inducers, this termination simply won’t do. Kai can’t get his message of fear (his manipulative cult of personality) and his emergence to power across (even as a city councilman) without a mouthpiece and who’s better for that than a pissed off, murderous reporter with a camera crew and satellite truck at her disposal.
So, they plan to kill Bob in a very witchy way and they’ll film it in full clown costume with a Satanic twist. Kai insists they do this by stabbing him while chanting a Latin phrase which to me which sounded like “Oy vey, Satin!” Why Latin? According to Kai, it’s inherently more scary and fear is the name of the game, right?
All of this happens, in an apparent nod to Quentin Tarantino s Pulp Fiction, with a dead gimp in the background. He was once hooded and suspended to the attic ceiling by large hooks pierced through his stomach, chest, legs and elsewhere I’m sure. Bob was into some pretty kinky things apparently. The clowns arrived just after some attic fun, as Bob descends the attic stairs, licking blood off of his plastic gloves, the kind included in a box of L’Oréal Light Ash Blond/Shade #9A. Don’t ask me how I know.
Anyway, Bob dies alright, with a hatchet whack that basically splits his head in half, courtesy of Beverly who removed her mask, making her face….the very one he fired hours earlier….the last face he sees.
His murder makes the news and so does the video.
Unedited. But even that says, Kai doesn’t make the unwashed masses scary enough.
We also learn how the first couple died in the first episode, the ones who were placed in sealed coffins, beneath a big smiley face. The wife, was afraid of being enclosed in small places after a childhood that included a punishment of being locked in 1970’s era stereo cabinets. Well, as we discussed a few episodes/blogposts ago, the town’s only psychiatrist has to be involved somehow because we all agreed he knows his patient’s fears. He just happens to be Kai and Winter’s older brother! More on that in a bit.
Ally has a dream that her neck is full of holes in her neck. She has trypophobia, a very real fear of small clusters of holes. She tells her shrink all about it and he tries to read some heavy- duty psycho babble into it. Turns out, Ally is hurt Ivy left and took their son, little Izod (or whatever his name his) and she’s now living all alone in a house marked with a clown face the night whacko neighbor Meadow was killed.
All Ally wants is to feel safe and able to keep her son, little Oswald, or whatever his name is.
Flashback to September of last year: we learn that Ivy ad Ally are having money issues. The restaurant is not doing so well. This, plus Ally’s decision to vote for Green candidate, Jill Stein instead of Hillary, is adding to relationship woes. This makes it easier for her to leave Ally when the video of her semi-sexy bathtub romp with a little diddle from Winter was sent to their son Osgood or whatever his name is. It’s all very, very convenient. And Ally is just starting to figure that out.
We then flash forward and Ally is alone in the house, and looks across the street and watches neighbor Harrison, the gay bee keeper acting weird. She looks through the window and sees him kissing with his lover, which looked a helluva lot like Anderson Cooper, so naturally, this fear filled idiot grabs a baseball bat and runs across the street to snoop around. She finds Harrison’s wife of convenience, Meadow at the foot of a grave. She asks Ally to help her which prompts Ally to run home. She calls 911 which conveniently puts her on hold. She calls Ivy and begs her to come home and of course, Ivy thinks it’s just more of Ally’s delusion. Then Meadow somehow escapes her grave and pounds on the Ally’s doors and windows begging to be let in. She tells Ivy the murderous clown cult is trying to kill her and everyone is involved— her husband, Winter,and Ally’s wife.
Ivy is still on the line. Did she hear this?
At that moment, Meadow, still pounding on the window is quickly covered with a white 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton pillow case. Harrison might be murderous clown, but he’s also a gay man with good taste.
Ivy is screaming into the phone,and Ally just hangs up on her, looking even more lost and bewildered than usual.
The power bond between Beverly and Kai is becoming more obvious.
They decide to cull the clown herd.. The weakest link must be eliminated. It’s some clown named RJ who only wants to be a clown…not a murdering clown. So, he’s chosen to be killed with a nail gun. Each member gets a turn to shoot a nail into RJ, who I don’t remember. Guess his contract only allowed for a few episodes…..or he didn’t pat his SAG card dues.
Now, the power bond between Kai and Beverly is becoming more interesting.
In a pinky swear moment, he asks her about her fears, but she turns the table on him calling bullshit on all the stories he’s told people about who he really is. So, he spills. Turns out they died three years ago. His father was a successful, silver-tongued lawyer who loved riding his Harley on the weekends, but an accident left him a paraplegic. And he is angry about and a real asshole because of it.
His mother tries, but he’s verbally abusive to her and as physically abusive to her, well as much as a paraplegic can be.
One night during a fight, the mother shoots his father blows her head off. Kai, who was a normal kid then, witnessed the whole thing, which hardened him. What to do? What to to? He calls his brother, Vic or Vince…I wasn’t listening and yes, that’s the town shrink. He suggests they just keep this quiet, put the couple in their bed, cover them with lye to help in the decomposition process, and padlock the door. They agree they still need their father’s accident lawsuit money and their mother’s pension, plus Vic or Vince’s has just started his practice and Winter is a Freshman at Vassar. To report the murder/suicide would mean cutting off their money supply and besides, Vic/Vince doesn’t want to tell patients his parents were involved in a crime. Info like that could screw with his credibility as a shrink.
So, mom and dad are still in their master suite, upstairs rotting and this admission prompts Kai to collapse into crying jag. Head on table with full on sobs. We don’t see tears, but WHAT Beverly sees is his vulnerability. Perceived, perhaps but she’s buying it.
Beverly gets up, stands behind Kai as if to comfort him, but it’s almost like a transfer of power, of sorts. Maybe not literally, but Beverly now knows Kai’s real backstory.
And knowledge IS power…..maybe. This is Kai, after all.
