The show opens again with our honeymooners, still plagued by Modern Day Bloody Face. A tried and true horror trope plays out, but we’re still no closer to understanding what the hell is going on. Someone is playing mind games with Sister Jude, Demon!Mary Eunice is getting awfully sassy, Dr. Arden is getting weirder by the second, and I got to hear the sentence “a sex crazed deviant, a Mexican and a pin head won’t get very far” on television. Another escape is attempted, and the viewer learns that the “beasts” in the yard are in fact Dr. Arden’s formally dead indigent patients. They aren’t dead anymore, and they really dig on flesh.

The show continues with its amazing cinematography. Tonight showcased many character confrontations that were shot with hand held close ups, quick cut with interesting and iconic framed shots. Sights of inmates and sisters against 1932’s “The Sign of the Cross” might have been the easiest metaphor available, but it made for gorgeous viewing. The score was heightened tonight with melodramatic string sweeps, timed perfectly with the aforementioned confrontations. Jessica Lange was the only reason I stayed through season one, and tonight she upped any previous performance by a mile. Tonight Lange gave a drunken, psuedo-psychedelic monologue without ever crossing into camp – it was tense and powerful, and gave insight and empathy to the character. I took the show seriously tonight, but only until Jude ran in to the alien. Yeah, don’t re-read that. The alien. The one whose appearance was wildly disproportionate to what I imagine the show’s budget might be.

I feel like American Horror Story is 50 shades of shocking. Is the average American viewer disturbed by the imagery? Do fans go to sleep still troubled by the sight of Dr. Arden drawing nipples on a Virgin Mary statue with red lipstick? I certainly am not. I wasn’t even terribly troubled by the final shot, which I will not disclose here (don’t want to get too spoilery, as it might be a shock to some viewers). This show could push so many more boundaries, and sometimes I think that the easy attempts, like lipstick nipples, trivialize  the possibilities of genuine shocks like Dr. Arden’s inadequate penis. Subtlety is a dirty word, apparently. But on the pro side, production values (excepting the alien) often compensate for sensationalist writing. A perfect example is Dr. Arden’s destruction of the same statue. The choreography of the show is so well crafted and executed it’s easier to forgive the absurdities.

The show is still trying to cram it all in (Aliens! Zombies! Teen psychopaths! Demons!), and Joseph Fiennes’s presence was definitely missed this week. We’re halfway to mid season, and I need AHS to make a new statement soon.