American Horror Story: Murder House re-watch – Episodes 4 and 5

Hayden (Kate Mara) returns! (Photo: FX)

NOW…Let’s talk about Part 2 of “Halloween”

The next episode starts with the final scene of episode 4. Ben is decidedly confused that Hayden is at the door, because he saw her get killed with his own eyes. The mysteries of the house are very slowly starting to reveal themselves to everyone.

Violet goes to her room after her dad tells her not to answer the door. A hand comes out from other the bed, which can’t be Addy’s this time, but she moves her foot before whoever it is can touch her because she hears the sound of taps on her window. It turns out to be Tate throwing pebbles to get her attention. He whispers “basement” to her, so she goes downstairs to meet him. She’s telling him about how crazy everything has been at the house. Tate says that weird stuff happens on Halloween and then gives her a rose that he painted black.

This is the point in the last episode where Ben and Vivian return home. The two parents are scared that she isn’t there, due to the phone call they received from her not too long ago. Vivian can’t find her and Ben demands she call her on her cellphone. This is when the knock on the door happens. Hayden seems to have a big issue staying away from Ben.

Vivian is upstairs when this happens and Violet calls back. Vivian asks where she is and says it’s okay for her to stay out for another hour. She and Tate are on a moonlit beach, with blankets and everything. Vivian goes downstairs and tells Ben that Violet is out with some friends as he is grabbing a knife. She asks Ben what he’s doing with it.

“I’m sick of those kids wrecking our house. They destroyed the pumpkins on the front porch”, he responds.

“So your plan is to kill them?” Vivian asks, which always gives me a good chuckle.

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At this point in the season, Vivian is over Ben’s crap and doesn’t hide that fact at all. Ben says he’s going to go clean the mess out front and Vivian says she’s going to take a bath, and the next day she wants to talk to Ben about moving out. This is a plot turn that sort of annoys me, because those of us who have seen the entire season know that it would’ve worked out much better if Vivian would have moved out. In an earlier episode, her doctor did tell her not to, but still, I wish she would have left.

“I’m not leaving this house and I’m not giving up on this family!” Ben affirms and Vivian rolls her eyes and walks away from him to go start her bath. Ben goes outside with the shovel, to check and see if Hayden is in fact still buried under the gazebo. Larry sneaks up behind him, ranting about his money. Ben proceeds to beat the stuffing out of Larry, because he thinks that Larry played a trick on him because to Ben that’s the only option that makes sense. He’s a psychiatrist who isn’t going to readily believe that the ghost of his ex lover is there to ruin his life, which Larry picks up on, rather astutely.

“You really don’t get it, do you? Your narrow clinical world view won’t let you”, Larry says with a laugh, his face bloodied by Ben’s abuse, “Buddy you are so screwed! You know what the thing about the dead is? They got nothing left to lose.”

Ben wants answers, and Larry is actually giving them to him, but how is he to know that, really? Ben continues to beat the hell out of Larry, asking where Hayden is because he believes that Larry and her are in cahoots. Ben is furious and Larry begs him to kill him. Instead of doing that, he beats him up more and just when we think he’s about to bash his head in with the same shovel that Hayden was killed with, he moves it over to just the side of Larry’s face.

Luke the security guard comes by the house after the incident where Violet left the house when Larry was pounding on the door. We see more of the chemistry between he and Vivian which leads us to wonder what might happen since she is asking Ben to leave the house. Vivian tells him everything is fine, and he heads out.

Violet and Tate are making out on the beach next to a bonfire. Violet indicates to Tate that she wants to lose her virginity to Tate and he has a…failing in that department, which he blames on the medication her father has prescribed to him. She gets embarrassed and wants to leave, but she stays and her and Tate cuddle. He tells her that this where he likes to go to get away from all his problems arising from his high school experience, it’s the only place that makes him feel relaxed.

At this point, a group of five high school students with Halloween blood splatter make up come walking down the beach.

“Nice costumes,” Violet says “What are you, the dead Breakfast Club?”

The kids say they’ve been waiting for Tate to “come out of hiding” for years. Each kid from the group has a different thing to say to them which neither Tate or Violet really understand.

The ringleader of the group says to them “We don’t want her, we want you!” and the group talks about which way they should kill him.

A member of the mysterious “Dead Breakfast Club”. Why are these people after Tate? (Photo: FX)

From there, we’re taken to a close up of the bathroom bathtub faucet. Vivian is lighting candles and adding water to the bubble bath and then her phone rings. I’ll give you one guess as to who it is—-if you answered anything but Hayden, you might not be paying enough attention!

Anyway, Vivian answers the phone and tells Hayden the she thinks the two of them should have a conversation. Vivian tries to commiserate with her, saying she once had an affair with a married man too, and that those things never end well.

Hayden still believes that Ben loves her and insults Vivian about her age and other things.

Vivian, who is still angry as all get out says “You know what I really regret is that when I walked in on you screwing my husband, was that I didn’t just rip your smug little face off.”

“It’s way too late for any of that now, Mrs. Harmon,” Hayden replies, “Ask Ben about Boston.” and she hangs up the phone. Vivian groans in frustrated anger, looks over and sees “ASK HIM” written in condensation on the mirror.

Vivian yells to Ben that Hayden is in the house. Vivian wants to call the police but Ben convinces her that’s not the best idea. He grabs a knife and goes to the basement. Hayden is in a far corner, waiting for Ben.

“I love it when you say my name,” Hayden says desperately, “Say it again.”

Hayden’s character, and also most of the other ghosts in the house, is very attached to a single painful event that is tied to the house that she can’t let go of, which is a theme I will discuss more at the end of the article. Hayden thinks she and Ben belongs together, and most importantly she wants everyone to know that she matters.

Larry joins the two of them in the basement as he hits Ben in the back of the head with a shovel. He apologizes to Hayden, because he knows how mean these ghosts can be. She tells him she’ll deal with him later, and that right now she has to “take care of” Vivian. Larry asks to help. He opens up a zippo and says “I haven’t used this in ages”.

Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare), resident pyro of the Murder House (Photo: FX)

Vivian hears a noise and goes outside to see Chad (Zachary Quinto) beating up more pumpkins with a baseball bat.

“What are you doing?!” Vivian screams at Chad.

“I’m redecorating. I’m sorry, Vivian, I really am, but you ruined my Halloween and now you have to pay. All I wanted was one night with my guy, some Halloween fun, some crafting, in a house that I love and have bled for, and you ruined it, and he left”.

Chad Whitaker also seems to keep reliving his last Halloween and coincidentally, his last day alive. It’s unclear at this point whether or not he really understands that he is dead, but regardless, he is capable of causing a lot of damage to the Harmon’s front yard. He insists that the house is his and keeps yelling at Vivian to get out.

Hayden (Kate Mara) enjoying Vivian’s bath. (Photo: FX)

While Vivian left her bath, Hayden decides to get in it. She starts to cry as she hears Vivian calling for Ben. Vivian hits the button on the security alert device. She then sees her dog, Hallie jumping up and down outside of the other bathroom door. Smoke is coming out from under it. Larry had attempted to start another massive fire in the bathroom, but Vivian gets there in time to put it out.

Violet confronts Tate about what happened at the beach, claiming the kids there knew him. He does not know them, however. He tells Violet that they’re just mean popular kids that had it out for him for no reason. Then Violet looks out the window and the kids had followed them to the Harmon house. Violet grabs a pair of scissors and heads down to meet the kids who seem to be torturing Tate.

What does the “Dead Breakfast Club” want with Tate? (Photo: FX)

Vivian’s cell-phone rings again. She screams “HAYDEN!!!” and then “BEN!!” Vivian has no idea what happened to Ben in the basement and then sees her phone on the bathroom floor. She apologizes for the “ring” she left in the bathtub which is actually a big goopy pile of blood and guts. She then says “come over here, girl”, which was not meant for Vivian. Vivian goes to the kitchen with a golf club, the dog food bowl is knocked over and Vivian hears the microwave, and a second later, in what I find to be possibly the most disturbing scene of the whole season, a bloody explosion happens at the ding, which Vivian believes to have been Hallie dying at the hands of Hayden.

The kids are waiting outside of the murder house for Violet and Tate. Only Violet goes outside. The kids say a lot of things which confuse Violet. Such as what these kids were planning on doing after high school, and in some way, Tate prevented them from doing these things.

“She thinks it’s okay what he did to us!,” says Kyle, the football player out of the dead Breakfast Club.

“What did he do to you?” Violet screams.

This is when the kids realize that Violet doesn’t know whatever atrocity Tate committed.

Kyle says “How have you not heard about Westfield High?”

the kids tell her to pick up a newspaper, because they’re kind of famous.

“So you’re popular and you’re pissed off that I don’t know who you are?” VIolet asks.

Tate comes out and he tells Violet to go inside because he can handle this.

The kids say they have some questions. They talk about how their lives are supposed to be by now, and how because of Tate, they can never do what they intended to do.

Tate then runs away, and they chase him.

Violet tries to call the police, but Constance comes and grabs her.

“Come with me to my house now,” Constance yells to Violet

“Leave me alone, you crazy b____” Violet responds.

“Addy is dead because of you!”

Violet joins Constance.

Tate (Evan Peters) and his sister Addy (Jamie Brewer) (Photo: FX)

Back at Murder House, Hallie comes through Vivian’s bedroom door, much to her surprise and then, of course, Hayden is there waiting for her as well. Vivian wants her to leave but she won’t until Vivian knows about the abortion. When Hayden mentions her pregnancy, Vivian thinks she’s talking about hers and that really pushes Hayden even further over the edge than she already was. She smashes a family photo and heads toward Vivian with a giant shard of broken glass.

Larry is pouring gasoline over the furniture and curtains in the music room, Chad enters and says “What do you think you’re doing to my house,” which makes Larry cower into the corner. We then join Ben hog-tied on the floor of the basement with Nora Montgomery standing over him.

“You’re a disgrace, is that all the fight you have left in you? How can you allow that ghoul to take the only thing that gives your pathetic life any meaning at all?” She unties him and continues “I will not permit another failure in this house. Save the baby”.

Hayden is still screaming about how she matters to Vivian and how it’ll be better for Vivian if Hayden cuts the baby out of her. Ben arrives in the room and both women demand he tell Vivian about Boston, and he admits everything that happened with the abortion, the affair, the phone calls, etc. Luke the security guard shows up just in time and apprehends Hayden, with the intention of taking her to the police station.

Violet and Constance are in Constance’s kitchen. Constance is very much still in grieving and in her mind places the blame for Addy’s death on Violet. There’s then an extremely sad scene of her crying while putting make up on Addy’s face in the morgue, so that she can be a pretty girl for her funeral. She says “when a parent dies, a child feels his own mortality, but when a child dies, it’s immortality that a parent loses”. I remember  the first time I watched this upon its original airing, I cried my eyes out, and it still gets to me a little even now. Jessica Lange is so incredible as Constance Langdon in this show. She’s sometime completely reprehensible, but when it comes to her children, she’ll do anything for them, no matter how misguided.

Violet asks Constance for a cigarette when we get back to the two in the kitchen. She also discovers that Constance was mother to more than just one child. That, in fact, she is Tate’s mother. She begs Violet not to tell Tate about what happened to Addy, because he is too sensitive to handle it.

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Speaking of Tate, he thinks he has outrun the “popular kids” from his school, but no such luck. They circle around him and start pushing him and telling him about an incident that he doesn’t believe to be true. They seem to believe that Tate is responsible for something terrible that happened to them, which I won’t mention until the real truth is believed in the show. Tate is very confused and starts having visions. The scary face paint and the whistling song that are in the visions he discussed with Dr. Harmon in the first episode. What did he do? He has no idea, he doesn’t know who these people are and he is scared. The kids leave him on the beach.

As the sun comes up, the twerp twins, Moira, Nora Montgomery, Chad, Maria, Gladys and Patrick all start filing into the murder house.

“How was your night?,” Chad asks Moira

“My mother’s dead,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” Chad says

“I couldn’t go with her,” Moira responds sadly.

“No, Chad says, and then Patrick walks up to whom he says, “I am not speaking to you.”

“I’m sorry, baby, I can’t help myself,” Patrick apologizes.

“I feel like I’m doomed for all of eternity, to be trapped in an unhappy adulterous relationship, working on this g–damned house, which will never be just the way I want it”. Chad bemoans to Moira.

“You are,” Moira says very matter-of-factly.

The penultimate scene is Luke driving Hayden to the police station, chiding her for ruining Vivian and Ben’s relationship. He has every intention of taking her to jail but when he gets to the police station, she’s no longer in the back of the car. At the end of the episode, Ben is leaving the house. He make a promise to Vivian that he is not giving up on the family, and it doesn’t really spoil anything to say that he really never does, even though it might have been prudent for him to do so.

These two episodes are a turning point for the show. We now understand that people who died in the Murder House never get the opportunity to leave. This explains why Constance tried so hard to get Addy onto the property before she died. It takes a while before anyone who lives in the house believes it is haunted, but we’re getting there, and I’ll be with you every step of the way.

Next time, we will be discussing American Horror Story: Murder House-Episode 6: Piggy Piggy. What did you think about the first set of AHS Halloween episodes? Tell us in the comments below!