'American Horror Story: Hotel' Recap: Thou Shalt Not Be Surprised

Warning: This recap for the “The Ten Commandments Killer” episode of American Horror Story: Hotel contains spoilers.

A for effort? You know, it’s hard enough for a movie to pull off a mind-bender of a twist, and those things only have to misdirect us for about ninety minutes. But prolonging the mystery throughout eight hours of a TV series? It’s nearly impossible, our brains are just too engaged for too long to find any revelation even remotely surprising. Take Dexter’s infamous sixth season when — SPOILER, obviously — we instantly knew that one of the villains was imaginary, yet the show waited ten more episodes to “reveal” this. Unfortunately, there was basically zero else going on for us to be interested in, so the disastrous disappointment felt even more pronounced. Not so with AHS: Hotel! Sure, it’s been painfully obvious for a while now that Detective John Lowe himself was the Ten Commandments Killer, but we never truly grew frustrated with the show playing coy about it because there were a dozen other amazing plotlines to concern ourselves with. Long story short: Nobody was surprised. But I’m not even mad! It was an audacious attempt to shock us, anyway. Points for trying.

Related: Wes Bentley Talks that Killer ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ Reveal

“The Ten Commandments Killer” more or less recognized how uneventful the reveal was by getting it out of the way in the cold open, and the rest of the episode was a detailed and disturbing look at how John came to become a serial killer. From that standpoint it was a fine piece of writing, and Wes Bentley did a great job showing us his descent into madness. Let’s talk about it!

We began with a quick replay of how the previous episode ended: John watching slack-jawed as Wren darted out into traffic and specifically into welcoming arms of a big rig. With a dead child on the ground and a lot of confusion in his heart, John had HAD IT. It was time for him to find out who that dang Ten Commandments Killer was!

So he showed up at the hotel and shouted at everybody. Liz Taylor was still bummed about Tristan getting killed, so she was not super jazzed about helping John in any way, shape, or form. Luckily Hypodermic Sally was more than happy to give John the 411.

The first thing she showed him was HIS OWN HOTEL ROOM, and specifically the secret vault hidden behind the armoire. And inside? Tons of glass bell jars full of body parts that corresponded to each murder. This scene went on for what felt like ten minutes as John kept saying things like “Hey! Some of these body parts were personally locked away in a storage facility under my watch!” while Sally rolled her eyes like she was dealing with a major dummy.

And then FINALLY he started getting some memories back, and for good measure Sally just straight up said it: “It’s you, John. It was always you.” So he cried a little and that was that. Bingo! Shocker of the century.

Next thing we knew, John was looking haunted and haggard and he met up with his former partner where they had a long discussion over Wren’s corpse. The rest of the episode was basically John confessing everything he’d done over the past five years. I guess once he got his memories back, he truly got ALLLLL of them back. He was suddenly a real chatty Cathy, is what I’m saying.

It all started with that time John found the family that had accidentally been gassed to death and he decided to go downtown and get very wasted on whatever he could find. In this case, he wandered into the Cortez and Matt Bomer invited him upstairs to an “afterparty” which in my opinion ended up being more like an afterLIFEparty. Because they were all either vampires or ghosts there. You get it now? Afterlifeparty. It’s a play on words.

Anyway, James Patrick March took an especial liking to John, mostly on account of the fact that he could see John’s aura and John’s aura was JET BLACK. Also John loved to pound shots of absinthe, so he was a walking party. It wasn’t long before the two of them were trading rants about how society needed to be punished, and James was trying to talk John into becoming Batman basically.

Later, John got real wasted and James decided it was a good opportunity for Lady Gaga to go kidnap his child and turn him into a vampire. If THAT didn’t drive John to the dark side, nothing would.

So that was why Lady Gaga kidnapped Holden all those years ago! See? Answers. (Also, it was fun getting to see Alex’s old hairdo again. Missed it.)

Even though John wasn’t 100 percent sold yet on becoming a vigilante murderer, his friendship with James March was deepening into something approaching a sort of deranged Hardy Boys vibe. I loved when James March brought him into his secret taxidermy room but refused to light it by anything other than a single candle so as to prevent John from seeing ALL of his trophies. He was fine with showing him the stuffed and mounted HUMAN HEAD, though. John was not super stoked to see that particular trophy, but he didn’t make a big fuss about it.

Meanwhile, John revealed that Sally had independently begun creeping on him and they started having a sexual romance whenever possible. This was when she was full-on Marla from Fight Club and to be fair, it looked like they DID have a great time together considering she’s a ghost. John got hella ghost laid and he did not seem mad about it.

So then James March framed a recent guest to make him seem like a pedophile by presenting John with polaroids he claimed he’d found in his room. That was IT. John suddenly showed up at the guy’s house and bludgeoned him to death with an Oscar. I know what you’re thinking… How did John go from a righteous exactor of justice to killing a dude to honor the Ten Commandments? It was not explained. I guess it’s just a slippery slope? One minute you’re going above the law to protect the innocent and the next minute you’re committing fanciful, over the top, Grand Guignol grotesqueries in the name of a Judeo-Christian world view. Could happen to anybody!

The main thing was, John REALLY enjoyed himself. To be quite frank, he enjoyed himself TOO much, so he decided it was time to commit suicide.

Sally was even chilling in the room and didn’t do anything to stop him. I think it was because she really wanted a ghost boyfriend. But then James March appeared and quickly cut John down. And he was STEAMED at Sally for almost letting John die.

Though we didn’t get any specifics, we definitely learned that James March and Sally have “an arrangement.” I honestly watched this part about five times, but between James March’s wacky accent and my admittedly subpar brain, I couldn’t make total sense of it. (That drill-do demon chilling behind him wasn’t making things easier either.) But basically Sally creates creatures that need to feed, and something something she better watch out. I honestly don’t know. I feel like Sally needs more explanation. We know she’s a ghost, but what’s that drill-do demon? Does she control it? And what about the ones that get sewn into mattresses? Stay tuned for those answers, hopefully.

We also learned that Sally had been the one to enlist Wren to go stalk and take care of John as he went out and did his murder chores. Did Sally have some kind of mind control powers, or was Wren just tired of Tetris? Either way.

In the end, wouldn’t you know it? John’s partner straight-up didn’t believe his story! All the grisly details, the five years’ worth of updates. And nope! He remained skeptical. Man, cops really DO take care of their own. Unfortunately his biggest mistake was possibly having slept with John’s wife, and THAT was something John couldn’t abide. I think there’s even a commandment about it.

Rest in peace, Other Detective. To be fair, he wasn’t a very good detective. Generally when someone claims to be a serial killer to your face, maybe believe them?

Now that John had gotten all his memories back and also had murdered his partner, he was very zen and cool about it. So he returned to the hotel with a bloody doggie bag and a look of accomplishment.

Iris was just glad she didn’t have to keep doing Improv games with him anymore. Who could blame her?

But with the new addition (which I think was probably a D. and balls?) this meant that John and James March were only TWO trophies away from completing their collection. This called for a long, lingering hug!

Boys, boys, boys. Get a room! (Hotel humor.)

As I have been saying, the reveal that Detective John Lowe had been the Ten Commandments Killer (well, the 2015 edition, anyway) wasn’t surprising or even terribly interesting. But the strengths of this episode were in just how he came to accept his fate as a bringer of death to those who James March felt deserved it. Not only that, but the weird inner workings of the hotel and the ghostly bureaucrats that inhabit it, and how they’ve been accomplices or facilitators to James March’s schemes all along. Interesting stuff! By far this episode’s greatest accomplishment, though, was in how it more or less ended the part of the season that relied on back story for thrills and directly led us to the final act in which actual present tense conflicts will arise. Now that we know (mostly) who everyone is and what they want, it’ll be nothing short of riveting to see just who will prevail in this paranormal royal rumble! Let’s do this.

What did YOU think about “The Ten Commandments Killer”?

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