American Horror Story: Freak Show, Episode 9 & 10

Well it's a new year, which means that there must be a new episode of American Horror Story: Everybody Loves Drunk Jimmy on the horizon. Quick, before you can change your mind, let's get into it!

Episode 9

• Using your fortune telling powers to reinforce the manifest destiny of murderous white privilege. = -2pts
• On your first try, making a "mom puppet" that is almost as cool as this Jackson 5 one. = +5pts
• Bringing lobster hands to a sass fight. = -2pts
• Apparently carnies believe anything is possible because they believe anything anyone tells them. = -3pts
• Calling an overweight woman (in public) a nice pillow. Or a sock. Or a donut. = -6pts (-2pts for every failed attempt at saying something not douchey.)
• Following up those "terms of endearments" with a boob honk to sell your point. = -12pts
• Trying to manufacture pathos through the use of a dead character who speaks so on-the-nose she might as well be a nose. = -3pts
• Saying Dennis O'Hare is a great liar is just another way of calling him an awesome actor. = +4pts
• Unironically declaring yourself a god while standing in front of a pride of giant stuffed animals. = +2pts
• Dennie O'Hare doing something obscene out of frame with his even more obscene penis. Are you sure we are calling the right guy "twisty"?= +2pts
• Trying to hang yourself in a shitty trailer. = -2pts (If it was possible, Riggs would have never met Murtaugh.)
• At last! Justice has come to AHS in the form of a local police officer who has been brought in to investigate the death of a black woman at the hands of her psycho employer! = +5pts
• Oh, wait. We forgot it was the '50s... = -10pts
• Saying no to a hot two-and-a-half-way. = -2.5pts

Episode Score: -24.5pts
Season Score: -27.5pts

Who has time for a wrap-up when there's more!

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Episode 10

• Complaining about a recently-deceased pinhead’s lack of intelligence right in front of his corpse. = -4pts
• Plotting to steal a recently-deceased pinhead’s corpse… right in front of his corpse! = -8pts
• Chopping off the head of a recently-deceased pinhead’s corpse… well, you get the idea. = -12pts
• Getting a sexily husky voice from a botched suicide is a decent consolation prize. = +3pts
• The surprisingly touching story of how Elsa gathered together her motley crew. = +20pts
• Given that Pepper’s hair was already shorn into a top-notcher, it was only a matter of time before she was recruited to the circus. = +3pts
• In an act as glaringly one-sided as the Manhattan purchase, Elsa trades three cases of Dr. Pepper to a maharajah in exchange for The World’s Most Adorable Woman. = +15pts
• Who’s the guy with the missing hands? We’re looking forward to hearing the sordid tale of Ol’ Cap’n Stubbin’. = +6pts
• Salty and Pepper’s wedding had more toothy grins than a pony princess birthday party. = +6pts
• Mesmerizing Theo Huxtable with a triple tassled ta-ta tapdance. = +7pts
• Maggie’s origin story as a newspaper-selling urchin is as genuine as her fortune-telling act. = +4pts
• No one says “bullshit” with more sass than Angela Bassett. = +2pts
• Being so drunk that you can’t remember if you did or didn’t turn a tupperware finger-fuck-a-thon into a veritable deadpool. = -4pts
• Elsa’s final goodbye to Pepper would have been more touching had Pepper not been left with her piped-clog-having lush of a sister. = -3pts
• Did Maggie blow the twins’ money for a lawyer on a trip to the morbidity museum to horrify Desiree with the bodies of her dead friends, or does everyone on this show have endless funds to spend on cross-country jaunts? = -2pts
• The only thing worse than finding The World’s Most Adorable Woman on display in formaldehyde is finding your boyfriend’s Zoidbergs. = -5pts
• Lying to Sister Mary Eunice about everything except for how ugly your baby was. = -7pts
• Framing your microcephalic sister for infanticide to get her committed all so that you can return to throwing back Gibsons in relative peace. = -50pts
• Pepper’s grandma cardigan. = +4pts
• Not showing Sister Jude do a double take upon seeing Elsa on the cover of Time Magazine. = +10 pts

Episode score = -15pts
Season score = -42.5pts

A lot of terrible things have happened over the course of the past four seasons of American Horror Story, but none as terribly heartbreaking as the story of how Pepper went from an adult orphan to a freak show performer, to Briarcliff’s newest patient. Though it was ultimately the best decision given the climax of Season Two, watching it unfurl was almost too much grief-porn for the nanobots. It’s a good thing they’re water-proof.

Score Technician: TJ Geise