'American Horror Story: Hotel' Recap: Outbreaks and Breakdowns

When it comes to creatures that don’t exist, surely vampires are the most boring. According to a very thorough spreadsheet of statistics that I compiled a couple minutes ago, roughly one trillion vampire stories are written every hour. Like, we get it. They eat blood and live forever and have heightened fashion senses and exciting sex lives. How many different spins on the vampire mythos could we possibly tolerate? Back when Ryan Murphy first revealed that American Horror Story would reboot each season, he even famously promised that this show would never involve vampires or werewolves. Yet here we are and nobody’s mad! Know why? Because the AHS version of vampires somehow does feel fresh and modern and fascinating. Credit where credit’s due: Vampirism is suddenly interesting again.

The master stroke of this particular strain is these vampires don’t have super strength or healing or anything like that. They could die at any time, by regular means. Instead, the main upsides seem to be eternal beauty and health and, yes, immortality should the individual be lucky enough to avoid freak accidents. And while presenting vampirism as a mere addiction is nothing new, it fits into this season’s overarching themes very elegantly. Of course, it helps that we get to observe the vampire life cycle through the performances of some true heavyweight actors (and murderous children), so what more could we want? Question is rhetorical, because AHS: Hotel is giving us EVERYTHING this season. Now let’s talk about “Room Service”!

We began where many of life’s miracles, milestones, and beautiful events take place, and where a haggard, newborn vampire with a messy bun was currently crouched in the blood supply closet drinking pouch upon pouch of sweet, sweet blood: the hospital!

Depleting the hospital’s reserves of blood is generally frowned upon among medical professionals, but so is injecting dying patients with vampire blood in order to cure their measles.

Yet that’s just what Alex did! Theoretically this boy probably would have died, but turning him into a vampire is a major life decision and he probably should have been allowed to participate in that conversation. But this is not a think piece, so I will get down off my soap box now.

We then finally got some follow-up as to what happened after Donovan ran into the room and poured blood into his mom’s mouth when she was dying of drugs and plastic bags: He took her to Angela Bassett’s house! I was hoping this was because he just wanted to be her roommate, but it ended up being for a more important reason: He was going to help Angela Bassett destroy the Countess, and his mother was just the trusted inside operative they needed. If only she could get look a little less vampire haggard.

Later Iris returned to the hotel where Liz Taylor fixed her a delicious beverage of child blood and Triple Sec, and she began to unburden herself of some existential angst. Her vampirism was not the smoothest transition, but another new vampire was taking to the murder thing a little easier:

That’s right, on his first morning back from the hospital, measels boy murdered his parents! But it could be argued that he was just getting suuuper into character as far as his Halloween costume was concerned. (Pirates drank blood, right? Am I getting that mixed up?)

But instead of that being the end of AHS: Hotel’s little anti-vaxxer morality tale, we were then treated to an extended sequence of how the lil’ vampire’s day played out. It involved kissing a girl with a bleeding lip, and then how the two of them went on to murder several faculty members and then spread their virus to the rest of the classroom. With disgusting results!

I loved when the SWAT team was called in as though there had been a school shooting (shout-out to Tate) and the three main kids just sort of walked out looking dazed and scared so they could return to their homes and presumably spread the virus further.

I guess I was just really surprised about how committed this season had become with regard to spreading its terrors to the outside world at large! It makes sense that this season was not titled American Horror Story: Vampire Apocalypse, because it could have been a spoiler, but in retrospect, maybe that would’ve worked also? VERY intrigued to see just how far this goes.

Then John Lowe went to work and told his boss about the ghost serial killer dinner he’d been to the night before, and how do you think that went over?

He got straight-up FIRED for that. A rant doesn’t look good on anybody, let alone an unprofessional crazyperson who believes there is a cult of serial killer impersonators active in the Los Angeles area. (Though that reminds me there were serial killers in Season 1 who were impersonating the Manson family, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility in this world.) But yeah, the main take away here was that John Lowe was now very fired from his job, so that was just going to be another thing he had to deal with.

I’m pretty sure vampires can smell each other, so of course the Countess and Tristan immediately noticed that Iris smelled deader than usual. But the Countess’ facial expression cracked me up. She seemed bemused and almost charmed that Iris was now one of them. (I also loved that her costume of, I don’t know, Mina Harker (?), included two fang wounds. Vampire irony!)

One of the episode’s big highlights is we were treated to an origin story of sorts of Liz Taylor! As she explained to Iris during a surprise bonding sesh, she used to be a middle American family man who’d intentionally married a woman with a similar dress size so that he could wear her outfits when she wasn’t around.

Other than that, he pretty much hated his life and would take frequent business trips to the Hotel Cortez where he’d wear his nice furs and drink champagne alone, until one day when a certain immortal hotel proprietress showed up in his bedroom telling him to put his paws up.

Even though the Countess is a character of ambiguous… character, this scene was remarkably heartfelt and emotional. And guys? Lady Gaga absolutely knocked it out of the park. Equal parts seductive and sympathetic, her makeover cum midwifing of Liz Taylor was as humanistic as this show gets. Perfect, just perfect.

Of course, she also helpfully murdered Liz Taylor’s homophobic fellow salesmen after they accused her of giving them AIDS via a shared Sprite, but that’s just being a good friend.

I loved how touched and inspired Iris was by Liz Taylor’s journey. So much so that when a total trash couple (one of whom was played by Glee’s Darren Criss) checked in, she took the opportunity to embrace her newfound killer instinct.

Shouting things like “I am a person” and “I matter,” Iris self-actualized with every stab of that corkscrew. She might just make a decent vampire yet! (And not that it needs to be said, but wow, Kathy Bates is incredible.)

Then Detective John Lowe woke up from a fugue state wondering where his clothes and dignity were.

It turned out he and Hypodermic Sally had had quite a night! Now, by this point, what are the chances that he’s the 10 Commandments killer? 100 percent? 110 percent? Anyway, he f–ked a ghost junkie and that was the least crazy thing he’d done lately.

So then Alex returned to the hotel to chill with her child, and Lady Gaga informed her that in exchange for becoming a vampire she was now the acting governess to the vampire children. Which, seems like an okay gig. (Uh, is anyone looking after her daughter?)

One upside or downside of spending eternity with your vampire child would have to be the shared coffin situation. Like, what happens if one or both of you are snorers? Just think about THAT nightmare for a second.

We ended with this poignant moment: Alex was now fully in the life so to speak. But of course her journey was different from Iris’, and across town children were spreading the disease indiscriminately. It’s probably naive to be throwing around the word “eternity” around when things seem bound to take a turn for the vampires soon. The party might be over sooner than they think.

“Room Service” snapped us right back on track when it comes to escalating the stories of these fraught, emotional monsters. Sure, the serial killer cameos last week were fun, but it’s things like Liz Taylor’s origin story, or Donovan teaming up with Ramona that got me super invested again. I’m still so impressed by AHS: Hotel’s tactic of throwing tons of new characters at me in the beginning and then slowly opening up their backstories as we’ve gone along. This season began as an ostensibly shallow exercise in gore but has grown deeper and richer with every episode. Truly loving this thing so far. Non-boring vampirism? Imagine that!

What did YOU think of “Room Service”?

American Horror Story: Hotel airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.