American Horror Story: Murder House re-watch- Episode 6: “Piggy Piggy”

Join 1428 Elm’s Lorry Kikta as she re-watches American Horror Story: Murder House and American Horror Story: Coven before the release of the 8th season of the beloved series. American Horror Story: Apocalypse airs September 12th on FX.

Here Piggy Piggy

Caution: This article contains detailed spoilers. You can view all episodes of AHS: Murder House and AHS: Cult before the crossover of these two seasons, AHS: Apocalypse airs September 12th.

“Piggy, Piggy” is another pivotal episode in the Murder House season of American Horror Story. It begins in 1994, at Westfield High School. It’s the episode where Violet, and we as the audience, find out the truth about Tate. “Piggy, Piggy” is one of the most emotionally jarring episodes of AHS for me personally. I’ve seen it a number of times and yet it still manages to leave me feeling unsettled afterwards.

At the beginning of the episode, we’re back in 1994. A bunch of police are outside Chez Murder and we see Constance Langdon descending the stairs. Tate is in serious trouble. Next thing you know we are in a school library with the group Violet coined “The Dead Breakfast Club” in the last episode looking decidedly more alive.

The pieces are slowly coming together that solve a gruesome puzzle. The kid with the leather jacket from the DBC comes in and says a kid is shooting up the school. A teacher gets shot blocking the door. Someone walks in and starts picking off the kids from the beach, one by one. When we finally get to the cheerleader who (was “supposed to be 34 years old and married with a baby”) gets shot in the chest…by Tate. He’s not wearing the mask as he was in his delusion.

Violet discovers the details of this story in the next scene with a simple internet search. Naturally, Constance is in the house, without permission, smoking a cigarette. She knows that Violet has found out about Tate and tells her she wants her to meet someone. Violet goes with Constance back to her house and there, in the kitchen, we meet Billie Dean Howard, who Violet calls “a Craigslist psychic with a Hollywood agent”. This is the first appearance Sarah Paulson makes on American Horror Story. Violet changes her tune about Billie when she knows what Violet’s grandmother said to her on her deathbed.

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Billie and Constance also explain to Violet that Tate is the type of soul who was so traumatized by his death that he doesn’t even know that he’s dead. Constance is also convinced that the house’s energy is what brought Tate to commit the heinous crime in the first place.

Vivian is asleep while Violet is at Constance’s house and has a terrible dream where she is pregnant, and you can see the baby trying to push itself out of Vivian’s stomach, in the style of a xenomorph.

When she wakes up she pushes the security panic button for no reason. Luke shows up and checks out the house, where there is nothing visibly wrong, and then tells him that her husband isn’t living there anymore since he was cheating on her. Luke tells Vivian his wife cheated on him with another woman, and then Ben enters the house. Luke tells both of them that Hayden escaped from the car and to keep the alarm on at all times.

Vivian makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want to see Ben anymore but they come to an agreement for the sake of money that Ben can work out of the house. Ben’s patient that day is Derek, played by Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family fame.

Derek is terrified of urban legends, such as Bloody Mary, Candyman, etc. His latest obsession is with the Piggy Man, a butcher from Chicago who used to wear a dead pigs face as a mask when he’d go in the pin to slaughter. He murdered several people in the same style of butchering a pig and ended up dying by slipping in pig slop and getting eaten alive by his pigs. Apparently if you say “Here Piggy Pig” in the mirror three times, the piggy man returns. He’s deathly afraid he’s going to say it, so much so that he won’t look in a mirror. Ben tells Derek that he can beat this.

While Ben is in his appointment and Vivian is off somewhere being mad at Ben, Violet is in the bathroom, about to cut herself again. She turns around and sees Tate. He says “Are you scared now?” she runs into her dad and tells him that “the darkness has me”, meaning she thinks that the house is putting her through the same things that Tate went through.

Vivian is in the kitchen with Moira and finds out that the ultrasound technician who passed out when they got the first ultrasound quit the hospital. Moira is in the kitchen with her when this happens and Constance enters. Vivian gives her condolences for Addy’s death. Constance says “I believe life is for the living, don’t you?”

Meanwhile she had brought over some offal, which is basically the parts of the animal that most people don’t usually want to eat. She claims the nutritional benefits are outstanding for “both mother and child” and has Moira cook up the offal. For whatever reason, the parts with the offal in this episode are probably some of the more upsetting or at least stomach-turning for me, but I digress.

Moira tells Vivian while she’s cooking that she believes that Dr. Harmon is horrible and that he would cheat again if given the chance. During the offal eating, Ben is seeing Derek again in the house. He has Derek go into the bathroom to attempt to summon the piggy man. He’s terrified, and he says it once. He says it a second time and opens the shower curtain and is greeted with the ghost of Maria the nurse. He freaks out and starts screaming. He tells Ben someone was in the shower and of course when Ben is there, nothing is behind the shower curtain. Derek feels insane but Ben soothes him.

Violet meets up with Leah (Shelby Young) at the empty pool again, where Leah is still wearing the floppy hat and sunglasses, but now has a bandage on her face where the scratches were. Leah firmly believes that Tate is the devil. Violet confides in Leah that she can’t sleep or eat so Leah gives her some sleeping pills she’s been using to help her.

Violet then decides to go to Westfield High School, where the shooting happened. We discover that the librarian who attempted to block the door to keep Tate from entering is still alive, but in a wheel chair. He’s irritated that Violet is there because apparently a lot of “freaks” come to see the scene of the crime. Violet tries to fish information about Tate from the librarian. He’s not amused. Violet says “A good person doesn’t just have a bad day and go shoot up a school” and the librarian says “Well, maybe he wasn’t a good person.”

Vivian tries to lay Moira off because they don’t have the money to keep paying her. She says that she will work for free because she can’t in good conscience leave an expectant mother on her own to take care of the house. She then gives her a raw brain to eat, which also always makes me squirm when I re-watch this episode.

Meanwhile, Violet comes home and goes to the basement to try to confront Tate. Instead she is met by a cadre of other ghostly residents. The twins, Dr. Montgomery, the wanna-be murderer followers of R. Franklin, and the nurses. She runs upstairs in a panic and sees that Tate has written “I Love You” on the chalkboard in her room. She starts crying and then takes all the pills in the bottle that Leah gives her. Next thing you know, we see Violet being dragged by Tate, while he’s saying “Don’t you die on me, Violet. Don’t you die on me”. He takes her into the bathtub and puts his fingers down her throat. She throws up the pills.

As usual, while this is happening, Violet’s parents are elsewhere. Ben is in the office with Derek and tells him to go home to his own mirror and attempt to summon the pig man again. Meanwhile, Vivian is at a church, where she is meeting the ultrasound technician who quit upon seeing the image of Vivian’s baby. She tells Vivian she saw “the little hooves” and that the child is, in her opinion “the unclean thing, the plague of nations, the beast”..or in layman’s terms, The AntiChrist. Vivian thinks this woman is nuts and leaves the church.

Derek is at home. He says “Here, Piggy Pig” twice. A man screams “I aint no pig” from behind the shower curtain and shoots Derek to death. There were two robbers in Derek’s house and the man who shot him was mad that he was alluding that he might be a cop. This is the second time that one of Ben’s patients has been killed in the way they feared they would be, in a roundabout way.

Violet is in her room reading about birds. Tate appears and says he likes reading about birds too, which Violet found out from the school librarian. He tells Violet that he loves her and they end up curling up in bed together, because they say they’re both tired.

Constance is back at her house with Billie and she’s been attempting to speak to Addy.  She tells Addy that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, among other things, and Billie tells her that Addy wishes Constance would have told her that while she was alive. She also expresses that she is grateful Constance didn’t let her die in the house because she’s scared of Tate now that she knows the truth.

In the final scene of the episode, it’s 1994 again and Tate is confronted by the swat team in his room. He makes a finger gun towards his head and then reaches under his pillow for what appears to be another gun, he gets shot to death by the SWAT team. As he’s dying on the floor, a cop asks him “Why did you do it?” but at that point, he is already dead.

In “Piggy, Piggy“, more wheels are set into motion that will lead us on the chaotic train ride to the finale. Only more heartbreak is on its way and the next six episodes only lead us deeper and deeper into the chaotic madness that is the Murder House.