Episode 12: Continuum
By Christine Petralia
Images courtesy of FX Networks
January 17, 2013
Episode 12: Continuum (Aired Jan. 16, 2013)
In what seemed like a filler episode, we don’t really learn too much, other than Jude is completely insane and Briarcliff is a messed up place.
We pick up about three-four years after Kit and Grace are released, in 1967. Turns out, Alma really was alive with a child as well. The three of them try to make a life together with their two children. However, as Grace becomes more and more fascinated with the aliens that took them, Alma takes matters into her own hands to just make it all go away.
A year later, in 1968, Jude, who the asylum has now named Betty, finds out through the monsignor that Briarcliff is being taken over by the state for an overfill facility for the prison. And guess who is a new inmate? The angel of death, in the form of a psycho killer/possible lesbian. Or so Jude thinks, as we learn later, she is actually insane, as the asylum was taken over a few years earlier, and that is when the monsignor went to New York to become a cardinal. Oh, and he never actually promised her he’d get her out. Or did he? We’ll really never know because it’s clear Jude has lost it.
Guess who else is at Briarcliff, through way of the prison? Alma. And as Kit visits her, he witnesses Jude’s behavior. After his wife dies at the asylum, Kit seeks out Lana Winters, who is now a famous author and a cheap celebrity. She fabricated a lot of her novel to make it a best seller. At a book signing, Kit confronts Lana and asks why she’s become what she’s become, when she really should be shutting down Briarcliff, like she promised. Lana tells Kit she tried, but was told Jude died. Kit tells her that Jude is not dead, which gets her thinking again.
And in a weird ending, we go back to present day, where Johnny (aka present day Bloody Face) is seeking out an original signed copy of Lana’s book. He informs the book store owner, that he is her son. She seems confused, as in the book, Lana explains how she got pregnant when she was raped and the child died during birth. The clerk refused to give him the book. But when he explains he would like to confront Lana with the book and then kill her, she quickly obliges.
I wasn’t too pleased with this episode. It didn’t really get us any closer to how Briarcliff will be shut down and how/why Johnny becomes Bloody Face. I really hope all that gets wrapped up next week in the season finale. And was Jude’s brain really that fried that she just lost it? When did she give up hope? And what’s with the time gap? Or was that all a ploy to confuse her (and us) even more?
As a side note, American Horror Story will return for a third season and Jessica Lange signed on to star in it again. I really can’t wait to see what they come up with next year. But in a strange dream I had, I woke up with the feeling that that episode with the strange child murderer will be the theme of next season. Or maybe I’m the crazy one. I also believe in aliens and strange probings at night. Lock me away at Briarcliff and take away the key.
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