Dollar Bin Horror Review:American Horror Story-"Smoldering Children"

By Eric Polk-

The more I watch this show, the more I feel I should be watching this with chemical enhancements. I mean seriously Reaplings, can this show not get anymore non-linear?  I mean James Wong must have watched the movie The Corpse Grinders and something must have clicked.

1994

After Larry's wife, Lorraine, kills herself and their daughters, Margaret and Angela , Constance, Tate, and Addy move into the house to live with Larry. On Thanksgiving, the atmosphere is tense, with Tate expressing his disgust with Larry for killing Beau and his naïveté with Constance, who strings him along to live in the house. Tate also resents Constance for her part in this. An undetermined time later, Tate, high on cocaine and crystal meth goes to Larry’s office, douses him in gasoline and immolates him, then goes to his school to commit the shooting massacre seen in the episode "Piggy Piggy."

Present
Ben  visits Vivien in the ward, apologizing and telling her he believes her claims that she was raped, and she will be discharged soon. He also tells her that the rapist fathered one of the twins. Detectives tell Constance of Travis murder, and she confronts Larry, believing he killed Travis out of jealousy. Larry states he only moved the body, and that a ghost killed Travis in the house. He continues to seek Constance’s love, but she says she never loved him. A truant officer informs Ben that Violet has skipped school for sixteen days. Ben convinces Violet to try a new school and calls an exterminator to handle a sudden fly infestation. Learning of Constance’s fights with Travis, the detectives take her in for questioning, believing her to be involved in his death. They review her history of familial deaths, noting that the district attorney intended to charge her with the murder of her husband Hugo and Moira, who are considered missing persons, but could not find the bodies. Unknown to them, this is because Constance buried Moira and ground up Hugo's body, feeding it to dogs. A lawyer, Harry Morgan, appears on her behalf, ending the questioning, and tells her that they want to pin Travis’ high-profile murder on her. Tate overhears Ben looking into boarding schools for Violet and tells her that Ben plans to send her away; Violet is devastated. Larry retrieves the murder evidence from the house and sees his daughters and wife. He apologizes to Lorraine and swears to get revenge on Constance, but she tells him that he was the one who broke their vows, not Constance. Tate, wearing the suit, attacks Ben with chloroform.

Ben fights him and pulls off his mask, seeing Tate’s face before passing out. Tate tells Violet that they can be together by committing suicide. Violet flees from him, but finds that no matter where she runs, she winds up back in the house. Tate quietly takes her to the basement, where the fly infestation is revealed to be from Violet’s decaying corpse hidden in the crawl space; Violet did not survive her initial suicide attempt in Episode 6. Tate, who has known that he too was a ghost the entire time, ironically admits that he was trying to protect her from realizing that she was dead. Though shocked, Violet eventually comes to terms with her death. Constance is brought in again by police, only to learn that Larry has confessed to the murder. She denies any connection to him. She visits him in jail, and he explains he confessed to pay for his sins, but will be able to handle his punishment if Constance will just say she loves him. Constance coldly refuses and leaves.

So now we come to an understanding. I guess the dead among the house can be corporeal or non-corporeal at will and remain sentience in the real world. Someone get me a drink please so I can keep watching this and not have to think. Oy!