The Innkeepers

After making a name for himself with The House of the Devil, a throwback to 80s Satanic cult horror films, director Ti West turned his attention to ghosts with The Innkeepers. Set in a New England hotel, the film follows two 20-somethings about to lose their jobs as hotel clerks due to the hotel’s upcoming closure. Rather than provide competent service to their guests, they choose to hunt for ghosts. Much like the humans searching for them, these ghosts can barely be bothered to do anything of substance, as the film takes its sweet time in getting to the spooky stuff. Is this an exercise in building tension, or the mark of a boring movie? Check into the Yankee Pedlar Inn with the nanobots to find out.

• This film was shot on location at a (supposedly) haunted hotel. = +10pts 
• Claire and Luke have the greatest job ever; little work and they can take shifts napping in cool hotel rooms. = +8pts 
• Claire acts like she’s never seen a screamer video before and Luke’s website was built in Angelfire. Is this a late '90s period piece? = +9pts 
• Claire is excited about the prospect of recording a ghost. Claire is doomed. = +4pts 
• Getting to geek out to your idol while she’s wearing nothing but a towel is a rare fan achievement. = +4pts 
• Before she played a barista on GIRLS, Lena Dunham played the local barista in The Innkeepers. = +4pts (For being the brewer of her generation.) 
• Apparently, this barista is even less self-aware than Hannah Horvath. = -5pts 
• “IM”? Yep, totally a late '90s period piece. = +5pts 
• “Quarter-life crisis.” = -5pts 
• Porn and ghosts are the only things Luke cares about. = +3pts 
• If you’re gonna do exposition, telling it to an impressionable kid in the form of a creepy ghost story is definitely the way to go. = +10pts 
• Generic jilted woman origin story. = -4pts 
• Wait, are the ghosts stealing all the towels? = -3pts 
• “I don’t spend my time trying to figure out what women want. Especially dead ones.” That’s why you’re alone, Luke. = -4pts 
• If Claire gets this freaked out by non-paranormal activity, maybe ghost hunting isn’t the right career path. = -6pts 
• “Enjoy your internet porn.” Oh, like you’ve never indulged a little bit, Claire? = -4pts 
• The obviousness of what’s going to happen doesn’t make it any less unsettling. = +6pts 
• For someone who runs a ghost hunting website, Luke cares surprisingly little about actually hunting ghosts. = -4pts 
• Leanne says that pendulums are used to answer life’s difficult questions. We were unaware that “what time is it” was a “difficult” question. = -5pts 
• Leigh needs to start a podcast called Spirits & Spirits, in which she talks to ghosts while drinking vodka. = +6pts 
• ANOTHER GHOSTLY TOWEL THEFT?? WHAT DO THESE GHOSTS HAVE AGAINST TOWELS? = +3pts 
• Again, holding on Claire while nothing is happening makes it obvious that something is going to happen. But the drawn out shots makes the something very effective. = +9pts 
• A mysterious old guest demanding a specific room in a haunted hotel? What kind of shit ghost hunters are these if they don’t question his connection to the ghosts? = -6pts 
• Now the creepy guest is referring to the hotel as a place like home. ASK HIM ABOUT GHOST SHIT! = -3pts 
• Drinking and haunting. = +4pts 
• Luke flirts like a high school guy trying to get to second base. = -5pts 
• “Let’s go to the basement and find out what that fucking ghost’s problem is.” Maybe it’s being referred to as a “fucking ghost?” She has a name, you know. = +6pts
• Mere minutes after awkwardly trying to hit on Claire, Luke adopts the George Constanza method of saving himself. = +7pts (for keeping the classics alive) 
• Vodka helps Leanne get in touch with the paranormal. = +5pts 
• We understand wanting to kill yourself in a place that holds personal significance, but doing it in a hotel, where underpaid cleaning staff will have to clean up after you, is just inconsiderate. = -8pts 
• Now this is putting your ghostliness to good use. Just because you can’t touch someone doesn’t mean you can’t be scary. = +15pts 
• We’re not sure what it is, but there’s just something about a ghost bride that is inherently creepy. = +5pts

The Innkeepers is not for people looking for non-stop terror. West takes his time and lets the creepy factor build up until the tension becomes unbearable. The film relies heavily on offscreen scares and playing with audience expectations. West knows that we are trained to expect certain things at certain times and either intentionally fails to deliver or waits until we think he won’t deliver. As a result, West pulls off a chilling film without relying on many jump scares or gory effects. (There are a few of those, though.)

Total Score = +47pts
Available on: Netflix, DVD

Score Technician: Andrew Daar

American Horror Story: Freak Show, Episode 6

projectfandom.com

After yet another episode of terrible things happening to nice characters, the nanobots are starting to grow uncomfortable with the goings-on in American Horror Story. Will this episode continue the unpleasant trend of, as Sean so eloquently put it, “assholes being stabby assholes to each other?” Probably.

• Breaking in your new maid by having her serve your deranged son condoms on a silver platter. = +2pts 
• Insinuating that your son is so crazily inbred that his impregnation of uterus-sharing Siamese twins would sully their gene pool. = -4pts 
• Wrapping up the World’s Most Adorable Woman as a birthday gift for Elsa. = +3pts 
• Elsa’s birthday demands: have fun or have knives thrown at you while shackled to a circus wheel. = -7pts (This is a really tough choice.) 
• Denying that anyone knows about your pity-fucking an aging starlet only to have The World’s Most Adorable Woman swaddled twenty feet away. = -5pts (The things she must have heard!) 
• Bringing up the time you shared in an opium-induced orgy is a great way to convince a guy to have sex with you again. = -4pts 
• If Woolworth's had been more successful in advertising their ice cream, maybe they wouldn't have been bought out by Foot Locker. Or maybe Foot Locker should just start serving ice cream. = +3pts (We need to make this happen. Email write-in campaign, ho!) 
• Tossing a hissy after being called out on the bullshit you told in a secret-telling game. = -4pts 
• Fantasizing about drowning the World’s Most Adorable Woman in formaldehyde. = -10pts 
• Making us watch the aforementioned fantasy play out in gruesome detail. = -40pts 
• Volunteering to let an egomaniacal amputee strap you to the Wheel of Death so that none of your friends get knives thrown at them. = +5pts 
• “Accidentally” murdering the only guy who pity-fucks you because he “spread rumors” about how you sold your star attraction to a crazy inbred serial killer.  = -10pts (Even though that's totally what happened – come on.)
• Losing your NRA membership for pointing a gun at your daughter and then pussing out on pulling the trigger. = -4pts 
• Even though she's about to get drowned in a toddler-sized mason jar, the World's Most Adorable Woman can't help but be 31 flavors of cute. = +5pts 
• Wait, they're not actually going to let Maggie kill her, are they? She's making butterfly hands and talking about wanting nothing more than to ride a pony. What the shit, guys? = -25pts 
• Maggie's choice to run away with Jimmy Darling instead of killing the World's Most Adorable Woman is the most positive thing to have happened this season. +50pts 
• Coming to the realization that you are the White Affluent Specter of Death after your mother reads aloud from your captive girlfriend’s scathing journal entry about how stinky and boring you are. = -5pts 
• “My son has no friends.” Nailed it! = +8pts 
• After Elsa calls Ethel the sister she never had (because – yikes – her real sister was stillborn), Ethel feels so warm and fuzzy that she threatens to kill Elsa if she was lying about what happened to the twins. Here's hoping that Ethel bumps into Dandy at the drugstore too! = +7pts 
• Realizing that the subplot of Denis O'Hare wanting to kill a circus freak is completely unnecessary given how many freak corpses are littering the camp grounds. Dig anywhere, Denis – you'll find one! = -15pts 

Episode Score = -60pts
Season Score = -44pts

This was the episode that made it clear that Freak Show was going to be more Coven and less Asylum.

It was so thickly foreshadowed that the newly-unveiled Wheel of Death coupled with the sudden focus on developing Paul's character meant curtains for our favorite Illustrated Seal. This greatly skewed the ratio of likeable characters to unlikeable ones, so much so that it's going to be even more difficult to continue watching the show.

Knowing American Horror Story's track record, however, the writers will introduce so many new characters that at least one of them will have to be likeable. We call this "The Papa Legba Effect." With news that Neil Patrick Harris will be guest starring in the later episodes, we're can only hope that The Papa Legba Effect will be proven correct!

Score Technician: TJ Geise

Road House

Well, mijo, the time has come to tell you a little story about a man named Dalton (Patrick Swayze), a sensitive, philosophy-major kind of man from one of them fancy schools back East, who wasn’t too proud to work the bars as a bouncer, keeping ‘em safe for gentler folk. Well, Dalton tried to be peaceful like, but he knew the time would come when he would be called upon to rip out a windpipe or two, and that time came when he was hired to clean up the roughest dive of all: The Double Deuce. To do that, he had to go toe to toe with one sumnabitch crime boss, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), and …what’s that, mijo? You (the reader) want to know why we (the scorecard technicians) keep referring to people in parentheticals? Shut up, mijo, don’t get distracted. Did you prepare yourself like we asked? Did you bring the box of nicotine gum, the surgical gauze, and a fresh pair of big-boy undies? That’s good, then. You may just be ready for the rest of Dalton’s story; the story men call: Road House.

• Ever notice that Swayze is wearing mom jeans in the poster? = -5pts 
• The way the guy in the opening sequence announces proudly, “How about some gold plastic?” = +4pts 
• Dalton - so cool, he only dances with his chin. = +3pts 
• Setting your movie in a world of famous bouncers who all know each other and brag about being “the best.” = +17pts 
• Dalton’s Travel Tips: Balls to the 1964 Buick! Roll into Jasper, Missouri in a brand new Benz! = +7pts 
• Because it’s a magic Benz, that goes from New York to Missouri in one frame. = +7pts 
• Jeff Healey, as a young, struggling musician, you probably played a lot of shitty bars. How would you like it now, at the height of your career, to play a role in a major motion picture as the front-man of a band playing in a shitty bar? = +27pts 
• Can everyone in this movie smoke more, please? = -7pts 
• John Doe as the sleazy bartender. = +3pts 
• Cheating a pimp out of his hard-earned breast squeezing remuneration. = -3pts 
• This dive can’t seem to turn a profit. We could cut back on furniture breaking, but that’d drive away our best clientele. = - 12pts 
• Dalton demonstrates his used-car negotiation skills: “I’ll take it.” = +2pts 
• The Double Deuce’s main problem might be that its entire staff consists of bouncers. = -8pts 
• “I think you’ll be my regular Saturday night thing, baby.” = +17pts 
• Welcome to Ben Gazzara’s Half-Naked Pool Party/Drunken Convertible Road Tour! = +6pts 
• Dalton flows through tai chi by the riverside, sweat dribbling down every muscle. Soon, it begins again: elderly men, approaching from all directions, staring, staring, staring at the ideal form of Dalton’s body, perhaps regretting the loss of a youthful prime, perhaps in awe of a heretofore unknown desire. = +23pts 
• The Jasper, MO Chamber of Commerce is right! It really is the stabbiest place on Earth! = -4pts 
• My other armpit smells like the top of a baby’s head. That’ll be 25 cents. = +14pts

• Welcome to Ben Gazzara’s fist in your face! = +2pts 
• “This place has a sign hanging over the urinal saying, don’t eat the big white mint.” = +3pts 
• Hey! Didn’t you see the sign? No extra-long bendy legs! = + 20pts 

• Breaking a guy’s leg and throwing his boot on the roof. = +12pts 
• From Road House Dating Tips: The best way to pick up a sexy doctor is to beat the shit out of some guys at a bar. = -7pts
• We’re getting lung cancer from this movie. = -27pts
• Dalton – so cool, you can trash his car, and he’s all like “sha bro, you trashed my car. Good one.” = +3pts 
• Doo dee doo, just a bouncer with an NYU degree in philosophy, lounging on the hood of my car, lookin’ cool in case anyone is watching me. Doo dee doo…. = +7pts 
• Ah, the picturesque Kansas City mountains. = -3pts 
• Remodeling the Double Deuce in one night. = +2pts 
• This radio only plays Otis Redding slow jams, over and over again, in case you want to have sex. = +6pts 
• Welcome to Ben Gazzara Watches you Do It! = - 10pts 
• Wade’s sage advice to Dalton on having killed a man: “I can’t believe you’re still dragging that shit around.” = - 7pts 
• Welcome to Ben Gazzara’s Monster Truck Rally! SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! = +5pts 
• I used to fuck guys like you in prison. And that’s also a line in this movie. = +45pts 
• Dalton resolves his guilt over ripping out a guy’s windpipe by ripping out Jimmy’s windpipe. = +25pts 
• Scratching your back with a shotgun. = +12pts 
• Shooting a stuffed bear, getting crushed by it. = -6pts 
• Welcome to The Whole Town Shoots Ben Gazzara! = +9pts 
• Elizabeth wasn’t sure about Dalton after he killed one guy, but killing two, that’s pretty hot. = -7pts 
• Wait, why does Jeff Healey wear a wristwatch? = -2pts 

Total Score: +167pts
Available on: Amazon rental

Yup, mijo, that’s the story of Road House, a story that, despite the lack of Keanu Reeves, flies to Point Break heights. Roger Ebert said it: “Road House is the kind of movie that leaves reality so far behind that you have to accept it on its own terms.” So yeah, it might have made more sense if the owner of The Double Deuce didn’t scour the country for the best bouncer ever, and instead hired an interior designer to give the place a family-friendly, T.G.I. Friday’s kind of vibe, but screw it. And did it make sense for a crime boss to cause millions of dollars of property damage for the sake of a pissing contest with that bouncer? Hell no, but did it make sense for Ahab to chase after the white whale? Well, we don’t think so. We don’t really understand the concept of metaphor. But you see what we’re saying, mijo? What made Moby Dick great was its fight choreography and quotes like “Pain don’t hurt,” and what makes Road House great is its trenchant use of symbolism and fun facts about whales. Or maybe we got our IMDB and Wikipedia references mixed up there, but here’s our point: if you want a story of frustrated, hot man-action smothered in folksy machismo, it’s tougher than a woodpecker’s lips to find a movie that delivers like Road House.

Score Technician: Alex Pearlstein

American Horror Story: Freak Show, Episode 5

Well, Edward Bore-Drake has come and gone, taking with him the world's saddest swamp clown. The only real question that remains is: Did he take the parts of the show worth watching with him? This is why we leave such things to the nanobots, they aren't distracted by shiny things, three-breasted women, or a pristine pair of tighty-whiteys. They only score the facts.

• Brushing aside a cohort's concern about committing a murder, Take 1: "Accidents happen all the time!" = -2pts
• Brushing aside a cohort's concern about committing a murder, Take 2: "People run away from the circus all the time!" = +4pts (For artful use of the word "from" in that argument.)
• Dandy's shock and horror at the site of a dead Patti Label not fooling Mumsie one bit. If Frances Conroy has a super power, it's seeing through terrible acting. = +3pts
• While reading the palms of someone called "lobster boy," missing the opportunity to predict that his future appears to be "full of cracks." = -5pts
• Slagging television to tout the glory of film when your biggest credit to date has been a Nazi snuff film where you lost both your legs. = -2pts
• Pulling a coin from behind the ear of a little person who has participated in the ritual stabbing of a local police officer. = -2pts
• Trying to kiss every woman who says, "You're a nice guy." = -5pts
• Musical numbers with no music. = +2pts
• Musical numbers with no music and a crowd throwing popcorn. = +4pts (For reading our minds.)
• Suffering from a terminal illness while listening to your son's father's three-breasted lover tell her doctor about how your son probably poked "something loose" in her vagina with his lobster hands. = -3pts
• Turning a dead black servant into an opportunity to build that tulip mausoleum you've always wanted. = (In, the '50s = +10pts; In 2014 = -20pts) -10pts
• Steal my spotlight once, shame on you. Steal my spotlight twice, shame on me. Steal my spotlight thrice, you need to stop buying me spotlights because I clearly can't hold on to them. = -3pts
• Working out in your playroom in your tighty-whiteys. = +3pts
• Yelling "There are no other guys but me!" in a gay bar where there are a lot of guys around. = -2pts
• Watching the stripper with the dreamiest eyes from Magic Mike reinvent the black knight scene from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail. = +5pts
• Yelling at the guy you are dismembering because his refusal to die, "makes you feel bad." = +5pts

Episode Score = -5pts
Season Score = +16pts

Apparently when you run a show called American Horror Story, it's much easier to come up with new concepts/settings when you've eliminated the need to create any likable characters whatsoever. It's a sad state for a show when the nicest character you can point to is an old doctor who apparently doesn't have an ounce of prejudice in his body. But this also helps to illustrate how necessary those kinds of characters are in horror. Watching Michael Chiklis pulverize adorable Doctor Jupiter's fingers was far more horrific than anything the swamp clown did the last two episodes. At this point the show should probably consider changing its name to American Assholes, because that's been the gist of this season: Assholes being stabby assholes to each other.

We would like to remind the readers that as AHS tanked its way into Real Housewives territory last season, Frances Conroy's Grace Coddington-like performance became the most interesting/enjoyable thing of the season. This time around, she's had to elevate her game even earlier and should be given special thanks for her efforts. Watching her chalk up Dandy's homicidal tendencies to "inbreeding," or turn a daughter's inquiry into the location of her mother into a confession about the child-rearing strategies of the uber-privileged has been awe-inspiring. So thank you, Frances Conroy. You remain the bright twisted lantern in this otherwise dreary swamp full of snakes.  

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Arrow, Season 3 (Eps 1-4)

And so begins The PCS coverage of the third season of CW's Arrow. In case you need a refresher on what's been happening, there's this. And, in case you're behind on how shirtless Stephen Amell became so shirtless, there's this. Now, with all of that out of the way, it's time to fire up the nanobots and see what can be done to SAVE THIS CITY. (Hint: It may involve rock n' roll.)

Episode 1

• Opening your season with a shot of Arrow and the Outsiders. = +10pts
• Re-establishing the most important love story in the show right out of the box, that being Oliver and Diggle. = +5pts (Oliggle 4-Eva!)
• Captain Chest Hair is promoted to Captain Police Face. = +3pts
• Superman Returns...as Roy Palmer. = +4pts (See what we did there?)
• Fight clubbing yourself. = +6pts (Because who else knows you better than you.)
• The Black Canary finds no air in the new Star City coal mine. = -2pts

Episode 2

• Delivering the body of your dead sister to her friend with benefits, who also happens to be your ex-boyfriend. Awkward. = -2pts
• Oliver embarks on a new series of flashbacks with Asian Slade Wilson. = +4pts
• Hanging out in a building where you witnessed a murder and then being surprised when someone shows up looking for said murder. = -3pts 
• Jousting on bikes instead of horses. = +4pts
• Using bows and arrows instead of lances, the event horizon of rubbing your belly while patting your head. = -2pts 
• Shooting an arrow out of the air with your own arrow and then catching the follow-up arrow and shooting someone with it. = +8pts
• It's good to know that Laurel has elected to continue her impressive streak of bad decisions. = -4pts
• Saving money on funeral costs by secretly being buried in a grave people already thought you were in. = +3pts
• You don't have to name your new baby after the most recent dead person you encountered. Baby names aren't a co-op in NYC, you know. = -3pts

Episode 3

• Star City, where the seven stages of grief include:
1. Infidelity
2. Confession
3. Karate (or Krav Maga depending on your sense of entitlement and injustice.)
4. Fashion shoot
5. The Club
6. Archery
7. MMA
• Total points = +7pts

• Corto Maltese, where Daddy Daughter Day includes adorable smiles and second degree burns to your hands. = -2pts
• Your dad crashing your AA meeting. = -4pts
• Macgyvering Arrow quality equipment from your hotel room. I may or may not be a an urban street vigilante but I did just stay at a Holiday Inn. = +2pts
• Oliver and guns. = +10pts

Episode 4

• Hunting your ex-GFs killer with her ex-GF, who also happens to be an assassin and daughter of the most dangerous man on the planet. Call us crazy, but this sounds like a sitcom on FX. = +5pts
•  Playing hide the dead daughter with your police chief dad. = -5pts
• It's a new episode so Laurel must want another person not responsible for her sister's death dead. = -3pts
• If being in the League of Shadows means that we could be the biggest, most popular,  businessman in our city and totally destroy an impoverished neighborhood, resulting in the death of over 500 people, and still be able to chill out in a trendy part of town while being completely unrecognizable despite no alterations to our face/hair/body, then sign us up! = +5pts (Because we love our perks!)
• Parkour flipping into a sleep dart in front of a chick you are trying to bang. = -2pts
• League of Shadow threeway. = +10pts
• We're not sure the "no prison can hold me" excuse means that you shouldn't at least give it the old college try. = -2pts

Season Score = +52pts

Slipping into a new season of Arrow is as comfortable as slipping into a nice comfy quiver. You know, assuming that you're an arrow yourself, metaphorically speaking. And who wouldn't be at this point, three seasons in? Many of the hits have, so far, been played very well:

• Random shocking death? Check! 
• At least one great action sequence per episode? Check! 
• At least one episode where Oliver displays one heretofore unknown talent/ability? Check! 
• Felicity cracking wise? Check! 
• Laurel acting completely erratically in order to still warrant screen time? Check! 
• Male physical specimens wandering around scenes with their shirts off? ch-wait? What?! 

Call us crazy, but there seems to have been a drastic reduction in the number of shirtless workout scenes this season. While the nanobots aren't in panic mode yet, we hope this doesn't signal a turn towards self-seriousness. Arrow is good when it is serious, but not too serious. So here's to hoping the popular DC villain Gym Rat makes an appearance at some point this season. Otherwise we may start to worry.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

American Horror Story: Freak Show, Episode 3 & 4

Lots of Halloween stuff to get out of the way as we begin preparations to celebrate the American Day of the Lots of Dead that is Thanksgiving. So let's just get into it.

• Dispassionately going through the motions as a lead tour guide/owner of the American Morbidity University. = +3pts (For staying in character.)
• Dennis O'Hare being allowed to act in AHS without make-up. = +5pts
• Twisty the Swamp Clown covers the classics. = +2pts

 

• Freakshow performers handle grief the way carnies traditionally do, by eating bales of hay and bobbing for apples. = +4pts
• It appears Edward Moondrake has moved on from the elliptical meaning of floating plastic bags and embraced the certainty awarded from the bodies of dead carnies. = -2pts
• Watching Pattie Labelle humiliate herself on the offhand chance she gets to sing a song that at some point reminds people she is Pattie Labelle. = -5pts
• Just to be sure, carney freaks confirm Meep's death by tossing a bunch of chicken heads on a ratty coffin while emptying a fifth of whiskey. = +2pts (You never know with Meep, he sure was a prankster!)
• Sharing dreams with your sister whom you also share a body with. = -3pts
• Those dreams involving fantasies of her brutally sawing you from her. = -6pts
• Evaluating a potential new psychic while high on opiates. = -3pts
• What you missed that Halloween reference earlier in the episode? Don't worry, Ryan Murphy has you covered with the obligatory Carpenter mask-cam! = -2pts
• Dandy totally dandies up his first kill. = +2pts
• Minority Horror Survival Tips for the Modern Age: When confronted by someone who's planning to murder you, don't run. Just tell them what you really think of them. The more disdain in your delivery the better! = +4pts
• Forcing your little sister to call you Master Mike. = -5pts (Ew.)
• Oh look, another musical number. = -10pts
• Edward Moondrake's super power apparently resides in his gamma farts. He who smelt it...is dead. = -2pts
• 10-cent live freak birth ticket leads to a show that's about as awful as you imagined. = -10pts

Episode Score: -18pts

Things aren't looking so great for AHS this season. You wouldn't know that this was the "Halloween" episodes of AHS, unless of course you caught all of the Halloween references, which rather than playing like clever Easter eggs, feel more like desperate mining for proven ideas. Your turn, TJ!

Thanks, Sean!

Have you heard the news about Edward? Though he’s been an urban legend since the 1800s, he hasn't turned up with much significance in modern storytelling apart from Tom Waits immortalizing him in song. That was until Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy stylized him as the Phantom of the Freak Show. When we last left off, Poor Edward was currently shaking the freaks down for their deepest, darkest secrets. Let the scoring resume!

• True Freakshow Confessions, hosted by Poor Edward. = +5pts 
• Bleeding to death from a leg wound inflicted by a legless woman. = +2pts 
• “Tattered waste of oxygen” is the Scorecard’s new go-to for pretentious insults. = +3pts 
• When asked what the clown makes the children watch, we're really glad that his victim answered with, “clown stuff.” Knowing how Falchuk and Murphy are, we barely scraped by from seeing the Swamp Clown twisting his filthy whirligig. = +6pts 
• Jimmy Darling and his psychic friend are as horrified at seeing the Swamp Clown tackle a young girl as we were. = +4pts

• When the ghost of a dual-faced aristocrat asks you to tell your darkest story, we hope that you could come up with something more interesting than the time a guy thanked you for making him sit on a torture toilet in a Berlin bondage club. = -5pts 
• German chainsaw amputation porn, established 1932. = -8pts 
• Dandy and the Swamp Clown entertain the kids and Jimmy Darling with the old “saw the fortune teller in half” routine. = +3pts (Because she didn't see that one coming!) 
• Jimmy Darling doesn't use his lobster claws to Zoidberg himself free. = -2pts 
• Instead, he knocks Dandy the eff out with a wild haymaker. = +4pts 
• The Swamp Clown tears his face off once again to regale Poor Edward with the tale of how he went from this jovial entertainer of children:
  
  ...to this wretched murderer of Floridians. = +6pts

• Lesson learned: never be nice to children around dwarves. Your simple kindnesses and lack of worldy experience are a canvass for them to paint with the bitter tar of reality. = -15pts 
• The nanobots are relieved to find that even characters on the show want nothing to do with the Swamp Clown’s filthy whirligig. = +2pts 
• Clown Shotgun Suicide will be opening for Puddle of Mudd and Trapt at the nu-metal revival concert at this summer's Palm Beach County Fair. = -8pts 
• As the Swamp Clown vanishes into the mists with his new friends, his old pal Dandy puts on a happy face. = -6pts 
• In true renegade style, Jimmy back-sasses the coppers when they congratulate him on being Jupiter's man of the hour. = +4pts 
• Though Jimmy and the rest of the freak show soak up praise from the very people who drove them to the outskirts of town, Bette and Dot get damn near booted out of the performance. Harsh! = -4pts 
• Patti LaBelle is too sassy for her own good. = -7pts 
• Ending the show with no musical number (which is infinitely better than listening to Jessica Lange belting out Tom Waits). = +10pts

Episode Score = -6pts
Season Score = +21pts

We hope that you scorehards enjoyed origin stories, because almost everyone spilled their necks (literally and figuratively) over the course of the past two episodes. While the whole idea of Edward listening to tragic tales had so much potential, learning too much about a character as enigmatic as Twisty sapped the terror from him.

As the silent Swamp Clown whose efficiency in the area of murder was proportional to his inefficiency at entertaining children, Twisty was pure nightmare fuel. Knowing that he did so in some innocent campaign to save children just took too much of the menace away. We liked him better when he was as bloodthirsty as he was mysterious!

Moreover, the steps that Twisty took from being a developmentally impaired clown to a junkyard artisan to a cunning psychopath desperately needed to be fleshed out. An entire episode could have been devoted both to Twisty's fall from sanity and to explore the grit of why he became the menace to south Florida. Instead, his story lost too much steam from rushing at the start and ended up more stitched together than his costume. Though he was most assuredly a sympathetic character, he devolved too quickly into a monster whose credo was, “I hate freaks and love kids – blargh!”

Oh, well! Now we'll have to put up with Dandy following in Twisty's big floppy footsteps for the rest of the season. Thanks, Brad and Ryan!

Score Technician(s): Sean McConnell & T. J. Geise