“Mommie Dearest” opens so strong that there’s no way the rest of the episode will stack up. It’s a perfect storm of writing (the three series creators are credited with the script), directing (from Fargo vet Michael Uppendahl) and a focus on Scream Queens’ best character (non-Chad Radwell division): Dean Munsch. The Pyscho reference was a nice fake-out, as was Jamie Lee Curtis’s delivery of “I saw that movie fifty times!” (For those not in the know, Curtis’s mother is Psycho star Janet Leigh.) Watching Curtis kick the shit out of three murderers – two Red Devils, one Antonin Scalia, with the gavel and everything – made for a much more powerful feminist statement than a similar one attempted in “Haunted House” a few weeks ago. From start to finish, “Mommie Dearest”‘s cold open was fantastic television, the kind of show that Scream Queens has always thought it is: funny, tense, and overtly feminist.
Which is why it’s such a shame that the rest of the episode doesn’t live up to the promise of its beginning. That’s not to say that “Mommie Dearest” is bad – it’s probably my favorite episode since “Hell Week” – but it falls neatly in line with Scream Queens‘ tried-and-true formula: Chanel yells some stuff, Denise Hemphill says something weird, we get some exposition, and someone we don’t really care about dies. (Also, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Grace and Pete, for all their investigative reporter trappings, only find things out when people tell them directly.)
The smartest thing that Scream Queens has done is make Gigi such an important character, if for no other reason than it assures more screen time for Nasim Pedrad. Pedrad imbues Gigi with a sense of actual menace, and Uppendahl wrings some real tension out of a simple act like slicing an onion. Going out and buying an engagement ring veers a little too close into “crazy girlfriend territory,” but I think we can give Scream Queens a pass because, well, Gigi actually is crazy (although her taste in lamps is unimpeachable). We learn that Gigi was in the Antonin Scalia mask, and giving orders to Boone. Hi, Boone!
It’s great to have Nick Jonas back (maybe the first time a 27-year-old man has ever said that), especially this fake-bearded incarnation. “All I do is kill people and work out,” he whines to the other (still unknown) Red Devil. The reason it’s good to have Boone back is that it means Scream Queens has at least a tenuous hold on the story it’s trying to tell, and might even have an ending in sight…although this being Ryan Murphy, there’s a 40% chance we’re getting a dance number followed by characters running in and out of doors like in Scooby-Doo.
That’s the good part about “Mommie Dearest.” The bad part, once again, is Chanel. There were some good moments for her in this hour – her creative nicknames for Grace, the Scotland Yard detectives, her and Chad’s Night of 1,000 Compliments – but her dropping her facade, however briefly, was too little too late. The only sense of any humanity we’ve gotten from her thus far is in her love for Chad, but even that turned out to be a joke, as the two of them have been breaking up in nearly every episode (Scream Queens’ worst running joke, by the way). When Chanel apologizes to Grace for her truly heinous reveal of Grace’s true parentage, it’s meant to be a bonding moment, but it falls flat. Chanel is an absolutely abhorrent character, and the only people who don’t realize it yet are the people running the show.
A Few Thoughts
- “Those who pill together, kill together”
- New fall candle scent: Mrs. Claus’s Cinnamon Browneye
- “I’m an American, I don’t have to understand anything!”
- I will say this for Scream Queens: it does a great job of making you think anyone can be the killer. Or it did, until “Mommie Dearest” revealed two of them
- “Chanel, it’s a coup!”
- Another nice feminist moment: Denise Hemphill sticking up for Grace
- “I think that’s Joaquin Phoenix”
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