American Horror Story: Freak Show, Episode 12

Score Technician: T. J. Geise

The penultimate episode is upon us, and the nanobots couldn’t feel more relieved. On with it!

• Pickling an innocent woman’s head as a means to call out a bullshitter’s bullshit. = -6pts
• Re-enacting the climax of Freaks with a marked lack of gooble-gobbles. = +3pts
• Rescinding the ventriloquist’s dummy’s invitation to watch your two-and-a-half way because of its lifeless, yet judgmental, leering. = -4pts
• Reuniting with the man who gave you the power to dance again. = +5pts
• When your imaginary puppet friend, the self-denial dumping ground and anchor to reality that she is, tells you that she didn’t kill your wife and her lover because she’s not real, it’s time to do the right thing for society and have yourself committed to Briarcliff. = -3pts
• Your mom was right: drinking and gambling leads to plotting murder like holding hands and kissing leads to aborting your premarital conception. = -4pts (but +1pt to your mom)
• Having your new boyfriend called a beastly sicko by an even beastlier sicko. = -2pts
• Dot’s disgusted recoiling at Dandy’s blown kiss. = +5pts
• The Axe Man recounts the time that love had him killing Nazis like he was trying to break out of Castle Wolfenstein. = +12pts
• Further tarnishing the character of Dr. Arden (AKA Hans Gruber – err, Hans Gruper) by revealing his enjoyment of both chainsaw snuff and torturing the soul out of a wood-working prosthetist. = -9pts
• Giving a little, “Ta-da” after literally sawing a woman in half. = +6pts
• Neil Patrick Harris’s murder-face. = +7pts
• Getting to hear Kathy Bates’s lopsided accent one last time. = +3pts
• Downing a bottle of hooch so you can smash it into an old-fashioned bar brawl shank. = +2pts
• Going squaresies with your savior/captor by saving her from the Justice League of Freaks. = +4pts
• Tearfully turning yourself in to the authorities for brutally stabbing an inanimate object. = -6pts
• Revenge-selling your freak show to a foppish sociopath. = -15pts
• Meep 2.0: stubbier, freakier, dongier. = +8pts
• Basking in the glory of the canoe paddles that are your new hands. = +4pts

Episode Score: +10pts

Season Score: -21pts

The second-to-last episode of Freak Show says goodbye to pacing as herky-jerky as its stop-motion intro and hello to the terminal velocity of a drop down an elevator shaft. Characters are mangled and un-mangled while the Hefty bags of sideplots get synched up and hurled into an incinerator. With Dandy in charge of the freak show, the final episode is bound to be a slaughter. We’re currently taking bets on how many characters are to be killed before Jimmy finally stops Dandy once and for all - our guess is all of ‘em.