'Scream Queens' Recap: A Maze'n Grace

When you emerge from a corn maze, or perhaps one made of snowy hedges, nobody asks you which dead-end you liked best. That’s because each dead-end was equally as frustrating as the overall experience was exhilarating, and they needed to be there for the maze to be worth anything. (Unless you were brutally murdered in the maze, in which case my prayers go out to your family, you did not deserve that.) But what I am saying is this: Scream Queens is a big picture experience. It’s a visceral, appalling, entirely ridiculous enterprise and it will never matter how little sense each twist and turn makes so long as it keeps us distracted with increasing thrills, and we emerge on the other side delighted.

Unfortunately, “Pumpkin Patch” was distressingly wheel-spinny: No real plot development, no shocking murders, no particularly inspired comedic interludes. And if we’re being real, it’s that last aspect that hurt the most. This show can totally get away with just being an hour of Niecy Nash and Nasim Pedrad having a conversation and it could be totally amazing as long as the jokes are there. But while it was slightly less funny and inspired than what’s come before, “Pumpkin Patch” nevertheless had its moments. Let’s talk about this episode!

We began with Chanel consulting with her party planner to create the Halloween bash of her dreams. (Which would have to rival her previous best party, wherein she and her friends intentionally burned a derelict house down and the responding firemen were strippers who extinguished the flames with champagne.) This Halloween party would feature all the musts: Artisanal pumpkins, performances by BOTH Fergies, and demon boy statues that pee Vodka and Redbull.

According to Chanel, her father would spare NO expense, and that included paying for a full replica of the hedge maze from The Shining. WITH SNOW.

The second order of business was when Chanel unveiled which costumes they’d all be wearing: All of them would go as first ladies of assassinated (or attempted-assassinated) presidents. Chanel would go as blonde Jackie Kennedy, and the rest would go as homely, sad, and less famous wives. Or, in Chanel No. 3′s case, she’d go as “Hollywood mattress” Nancy Reagan. But Chanel No. 5 was NOT having it, and suddenly revolted against Chanel’s tyranny. That’s when Hester stepped up to reveal herself as surprisingly ruthless!

I loved that even Chanel seemed kinda freaked out by Hester’s brown-nosiness. Relax, girl. But yeah, this rift between Chanel and Chanel No. 5 was widening at an alarming rate. One might even be so bold as to call them frenemies at this point!

Then we were all back in the sorority living room with Dean Munsch informing everyone that she was shutting down Halloween campus-wide despite Chanel’s protests. This led to Chad standing up and delivering a lengthy, extremely stupid speech about the importance of Halloween that was very stirring and very incomprehensible. I was sold. Also, shout-out to Chad’s armless fraternity brother, who truly bounced back from his double-amputation only a few days earlier.

Ultimately Dean Munsch put the kibosh on Halloween festivities, and Chanel had no other choice but to put on her thinking turban and pen an angry screed to the student body about how they should all defy The Man and attend Chanel’s Halloween party anyway. Brutal murder be damned.

Meanwhile Hester surprised Chanel No. 5 by offering to help her overthrow Chanel, even though just two scenes earlier she’d pretended to be Chanel’s bestie. So then the two of them enlisted Jennifer, who had apparently set up an enormous ant farm in her room mostly to draw the comparison between a queen and her drones and Chanel and her drones. Or something? Anyway, Jennifer was skeptical at first, but once Hester pointed out that Chanel wastes fancy candles, Jennifer was so livid she agreed to help take her down.

Next thing we knew, Chanel was arrested right in the middle of cheating on a test with the help of her personal Asian! Someone had turned her in for the murder of Miss Beane, and by the looks of Chanel’s friends, it was probably all four of them.

Meanwhile we finally learned what had happened to Zayday: She’d been whisked away to a poor man’s recreation of the Buffalo Bill scenes from Silence of the Lambs!

Okay, fine, the Red Devil was blasting Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” instead of Q Lazzarus’ “Goodbye Horses,” but look at that poodle. I know Precious when I see her! In related news, Zayday was not stoked to be trapped in an underground pit:

Fair enough.

With all the debate over who the killer or killers are, I think it’s now 100 percent clear that the biggest villain of Scream Queens by far is Grace’s hat collection. In this episode alone she wore two different po’ boy caps. This is now a trend with her and it’s a horrifying one. But anyway, she and Pete tried to convince the sisters to help find Zayday, but Hester suggested that if Zayday can’t escape from a killer on her own, then maybe she doesn’t deserve to be chapter president. Even Predatory Lez claimed to see the logic in that argument. So Grace and Pete were just going to have to be on their own for this one.

Meanwhile in Grace’s dad’s apartment he was mouth-attacking Gigi, who was driven wild by the fact that “Black Velvet” was playing. (“It is the most sensual song ever written!”) But things got awkward when Grace walked in on them and Gigi had to explain what a salad date was. We’ve all been there.

Apparently Chanel’s dad refused to bail her out of jail or even acknowledge her in any way, but luckily she immediately found herself in a protective posse that bore a striking resemblance to the ladies of Orange Is the New Black.

If Laverne Cox doesn’t come for Brad Falchuk after this defamation (that wig!), then I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Because this was just rude!

Here was a surprising moment: Dean Munsch and Denise Hemphill had both slept with Chad Radwell! Dean Munsch did not appreciate his lovemaking skills, but Denise Hemphill was BOUT IT.

And you know what? Denise Hemphill more than made the case that she and Chad had a real connection. For example, their lovemaking involved a lot of role play, character work, and “a surprising amount of dialogue.” No joke, if we don’t get to see at least one of these sessions before the end of the season I will feel CHEATED.

So then for some reason I could not discern, Chanel No. 5 and the two twins who had Eiffel Tower’d her showed up to Chanel’s Shining maze to light the candles inside jack-o-lanterns. But of course it immediately devolved into a chase through the maze by the Red Devil, culminating in a kill that directly referenced perhaps the greatest jump-scare in horror history… The zoom-in beheading from Exorcist 3!

Credit where credit’s due, I did NOT expect this show to reference Exorcist 3 right in the middle of a Shining homage.

Anyway, one of the twins was killed and left frozen in the man-made snow, a la Jack Torrance from The Shining. We barely knew this character, so it didn’t necessarily count as shocking. But fare thee well, foppish blonde twin!

So then Grace, Pete, Gigi, Grace’s Dad, and Denise Hemphill agreed to team up and find Zayday. They were able to trace her phone (using her password, O-A-K-L-A-N-D-N-A-C-H-O-S, named for her favorite snack of tortilla chips covered in chocolate syrup) which led them to a scary old house with underground rooms. And suddenly we were in the middle of the climax of Silence of the Lambs, complete with nightvision stalking!

At this point, obviously Denise Hemphill tazed Gigi by accident, but fortunately Gigi had the wherewithal to taze the Red Devil in turn!

So then Denise Hemphill ran to go find the others, collect her breath, drink some nice red wine, then inform them of what had happened. But by the time they all returned, Gigi was holding her head and reporting that the Red Devil had escaped. But still, her efforts had been enough to warm Grace’s heart, and Grace finally gave Gigi permission to date her dad.

I loved how weird Gigi was being about it, referring to herself as a veritable step-mom to Grace now. Man, salad dates ARE more intense than coffee dates. But anyway, where was Zayday? They’d definitely found where she’d been kept, but she was nowhere to be found.

Then back at the sorority house Zayday burst in and interrupted Chanel’s presidential election. There Zayday explained that she’d been straight-up ROMANCED by the Red Devil and had escaped when he tried to serve her Oakland Nachos.

Which brought us to our final twist: Gigi’s been working with the Red Devil all along! Or it at least appeared that way. She told him (or her) something cryptic along the lines of “take care of him” and then mentioned she had another salad date to attend. There’s a chance this is all misdirection and this scene wasn’t what it seemed. But for now that makes it TWO episodes in a row that revealed Gigi to be a sinister weirdo. As is becoming clear, her insanity isn’t merely limited to her wardrobe choices.

Ultimately “Pumpkin Patch” was an amusing, if inessential, hour even by Scream Queens standards. Rather than being shocking or even laugh-out-loud hilarious, it heaped on the movie references, which is fine! Who doesn’t love a Shining or Silence of the Lambs or Exorcist 3 riff? And again, Denise Hemphill and Chad Radwell had some fun moments, so that was good. And I’m just gonna say this now: Emma Roberts is so, so great in this thing. It’s hard playing someone so despicable but endlessly hilarious. Roberts is now officially one of network TV’s MVPs for sure. But we’re now 1/3 of our way through the season and its premise is admittedly showing signs of wear. Can the formidable cast and team of joke-writers distract us from the occasional narrative dead-ends? We’re about to find out.

What did YOU think of “Pumpkin Patch”?

Scream Queens airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.