‘American Horror Story’ Recap: Everyone’s Back at Camp Redwood in ‘Rest in Pieces’

Andrea Reiher

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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Rest in Pieces,” the eighth episode of “American Horror Story: 1984.”

It’s almost time for the big finish on “American Horror Story” Season 9. The penultimate episode of the “1984” season, entitled “Rest in Pieces,” started on the day before Halloween, 1989, and saw a return to Camp Redwood for all of the key players.

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Sitting in a diner, Brooke (Emma Roberts) vowed to Donna (Angelica Ross) that she was going to kill Margaret (Leslie Grossman) before she runs off to start a new life. But because they were talking about such dark things in a public place, it didn’t take long for a motor-mouth reporter named Stacy to wander up to them. At first she just wanted to complain about how awful their time period is, ranting about “Iran-Contra, the TV show ‘Small Wonder’ and crack.” But she obviously knew who they were and later showed up at their hotel room to tell them as much.

Stacy told Donna and Brooke about her obsession with the 1984 Camp Redwood massacre, which led Brooke to bargain with her, offering a better story than the fact that Brooke and Donna faked Brooke’s execution — instead, she admitted she only ever killed one person (Montana), and that was in self-defense. Instead, she told Stacy, Margaret was the real killer. This was the scoop the woman was looking for and agreed to be smuggled into camp.

Brooke had her own ideas, though: After being brought back from the dead, she has new darkness inside of her and now felt killing the reporter was a more appropriate ending to her story. In a somewhat surprising move given her past, Donna stopped her, convincing her not to feed the evil beast inside her. Donna reminded Brooke that they have a purpose — an act of revenge and justice — but they have to do it without hurting anyone else. This led Brooke to ask if they would be final girls if they succeeded in this purpose, and Donna answered affirmatively. With the finale episode actually entitled “Final Girl,” though, it remains to be seen who will be left standing at the end of the Nov. 13 episode.

Meanwhile, Bruce (Dylan McDermott) kidnapped a Mary Kay saleswoman after she pulled over to the side of the road to help him out of the restraints in which Brooke and Donna had left him in a previous episode. He returned her kindness by throwing her in the trunk of her own pink car and taking off in it, eventually picking up Jonas (Lou Taylor Pucci), the ghost counselor. How Bruce managed to smoke and drive without thumbs was quite impressive. He also managed to stab her in the heart for interrupting Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”

Speaking of stabbings, Margaret found out about the untimely massacre of Kajagoogoo and demanded that her assistant, Courtney (Leslie Jordan), get rid of the bodies and clean up the blood. As poor Courtney was hauling bodies into the back of a van, suddenly Kajagoogoo appeared behind the bus, performing “Too Shy.” So now the camp had a ghost band, and new wheels began turning in Margaret’s mind.

Margaret announced that her big plan was to have Bruce and Richard Ramirez aka the Night Stalker (Zach Villa) kill all the acts coming to play at her music festival, so that Camp Redwood would become a Mecca for people who are obsessed with the places their favorite musicians died. And it would be an exclusive venue for ghost concerts? That last part was a bit unclear. But either way, the Go-Gos better watch out.

Ramirez wanted to make sure Billy Idol wasn’t killed, though, and he was still a fanboy, lurking around the singer’s crew before Jingles (John Carroll Lynch) came to take care of the nemesis who was threatening his son. Jingles couldn’t get his guy, though, as Bruce intervened, and Jingles ended up running into the woods.

When Bruce figured out he was talking to the Night Stalker, he became the fanboy: “You’re a major inspiration! I’m looking to get into the blood game, aiming for a high body count.” So Ramirez recruited Bruce to help him find Jingles, but Jingles found them first. He relished telling Ramirez he killed himself so that Ramirez couldn’t do it, but Ramirez reminded him that he now can’t leave the camp, so Ramirez was going to Alaska to kill Jingles’ son like he did his wife. But before Ramirez could kill Jingles, Margaret did it for him and then asked Ramirez and Bruce if they would help her out with her plan.

Cut to Jingles strung up by his wrists, being yelled at by all the people he killed. Jingles pleaded with them to let him kill Ramirez before they torture him and in his pleadings, he revealed that Montana (Billie Lourd) made Ramirez who he was. All the other victims were rightly horrified that Montana was involved with him, but they still didn’t let Jingles go. Xavier (Cody Fern) and the Jingles prank guys took Jingles to the lake and stabbed him repeatedly, sending him off in a rowboat to bleed out and promising he would never know peace while at the camp. Then in a great “Friday the 13th” moment, Jingles was pulled overboard by the rotting corpse of his little brother while Montana watched from the shore.

Speaking of Montana, she didn’t really make Ramirez. Ramirez was screwed up all on his own. As she told Trevor (Matthew Morrison), she was tired of women being the scapegoat for men and all their bulls—. Trevor wanted to kill himself and stay at Camp Redwood with her forever because he hated his wife and felt like his life was plateauing in general, but she told him she was a monster who didn’t deserve love and no better than Ramirez. She confessed that by now she had killed just as many people as Ramirez did and she liked it. So she screamed at Trevor to just leave her alone and he slunk off, just like the movie cliche where someone has to throw a rock at their pet dog to get the dog to go away so the dog doesn’t get hurt.

In the final moments of the episode, Jingles woke up on the lake’s shore with his mother (Lily Rabe) and little brother. Jingles stammered that he didn’t deserve happiness like this, but his mom apologized to him and said that he made the ultimate sacrifice for his son. She was so grateful that Jingles helped her find her Bobby that she and Bobby asked him to stay with them, where nothing would hurt him. As he got up to play with his little brother, it seemed like he was accepting this invitation, even though Ramirez still vowed harm to come to his son.

But there’s still one more episode left for the season, so anything can still happen before the true end!

“American Horror Story: 1984” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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