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Episode 9: The Coat Hanger

By Christine Petralia

Images courtesy of FX Networks

December 16, 2012


Episode 9: The Coat Hanger (Aired December 12, 2012)



 The present day Bloody Face is revealed!!!!! And I was totally right, he is Thredson’s son. In some flashbacks, we see him skinning our newlywed Teresa, so we know how that ended up. In a little homage to last season, Dylan McDermott plays the current day Bloody Face seeing a psychiatrist. But of course, as soon as he reveals himself, we cut back to 1964 at Briarcliff.



In the rest of the episode, Sister Jude is locked down, stripped of her duties as a nun and admitted into the asylum. Later, we see her trying to befriend Lana, promising her she’s changed and that she’ll get her out of Briarcliff. Meanwhile, in an attempt to keep Jude locked away, the monsignor, Sister Mary, Arden and Lee Emersen, our psycho Santa all lie to the cops about what happened. Emersen in particular catches the monsignor’s eye during his confession and repentance.



Sister Mary confides in the monsignor that she will have no issues helping him get to Rome, while I know she has something up her sleeve with that, as she is still possessed by our demon.



Lana Winters finds out she is pregnant and attempts to kill the child herself, though she is not successful, clearly since present day Bloody Face is alive. However, with the help of Kit, she uses her pregnancy to get Thredson to confess to all the killings. Later on, though, he goes missing. Lana assumes that Sister Mary is responsible for letting him out.



And Arden, on a mission to figure out the alien situation, convinces Kit that he is the key to getting the aliens to show up. He mentioned that each time the aliens came, Kit had relations with the women that were abducted. Kit agrees to let Arden ‘kill’ him, or rather bring him to the brink of death, to lure the aliens back to the asylum. While the procedure works, Arden is confused when he finds Grace alive, full-term and ready to give birth. In addition, that creepy inmate Pepper is seen helping her.



Lastly, we find the monsignor, who helped Emersen and trusted him, found by a janitor hanging from a cross in the chapel. One can only assume that it was the handy work of Emersen, who is now missing. On the brink of death, the Dark Angel shows up. Of course, that’s how the episode ends.



The episode was slow moving and then ramped up at the end. It was a lot to digest really, with all the story lines. And it was shocking to see that Grace is still alive. And what does Pepper have to do with it. Maybe she’s an alien too? And to see Sister Jude stripped of her role as a nun was depressing. She is finally realizing that all she did to patients was wrong, or as Lana said, criminal. But now she’s stuck and getting treated just like a patient.



And what does Sister Mary/the devil have up her sleeve? She clearly has a mission, I’m just not sure what it is. And where the hell did Thredson go? In a short flashback to the present, we see that Bloody Face killed his shrink and eventually another patient of hers. But it was so fast and spliced in, it almost slipped by without me realizing what the scene was.



I am really curious as to how the season will wrap up, as we only have four more episodes. And now we have to wait until Jan. 2, 2013 for the next episode, I really hope I don’t lose interest.

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