American Horror Story: Murder House re-watch-E10: Smoldering Children

1428 Elm’s Lorry Kikta is heading into the final stretch of American Horror Story: Murder House with only 3 episodes to go. In “Smoldering Children”, Larry listens to his conscience and Violet finally finds out a horrible secret that Tate’s been trying to hide from her..well one of them, anyway.

Caution: This article contains detailed spoilers. If you wish to not have the episode spoiled, watch it first on Netflix or of FX+.

We start off the 10th episode of American Horror Story: Murder House in 1994. It’s Christmas at the Murder House. Constance carries in a ham, Tate and Addy are seated, and so is Larry Harvey, completely unburned, which..doesn’t quite add up, but don’t worry, it will.

Larry asks who wants to say the blessing when all the food is at the table and Tate volunteers. Larry is overjoyed that Tate has decided to finally become a “part of this family”.

Tate begins, “Dear God, thank you for this salty pig meat we’re about to eat along with all the other indigestible swill. And thank you for our new charade of a family. My father ran away (um..well he died, but anyway) when I was only six. If I would’ve known any better I would’ve joined him,” at this point Constance rolls her eyes and slaps Tate’s hand. Tate doesn’t care what his mother thinks, as we have come to know and he continues. “And also because she’s been trying to get this house back since she lost it, Lord, a big thank you for blinding the a__Hole that’s doing my mother so that he can’t see what everyone knows. She doesn’t really love him.”

“Amen,” Addy says with a wicked grin.

Larry shrugs off Tate’s insults and tells everyone that he is getting the family tickets to the community theater’s production of Brigadoon, of which he will be in the chorus. Addy is excited because she loves the theater.

“No Addy,” Tate screams as he slams his fist down on the table, “You know he killed our brother.”

Constance calmly chimes in, “Tate stop it. Beau died in his slumber of natural causes.” Then she lights a cigarette and starts in on Tate. “You know, Tate, unlike your siblings, you were graced with so many gifts. How is it that you can’t bring yourself to use them? Just a smile or a kind word could open up the gates to heaven.”

“No matter how much you want it, I will never be your perfect son,” Tate responds.

Tate in his room on the day of the school shooting. Courtesy of Fox

We are then transported to the fateful day of the Westfield High shooting. Tate is in his room, snorting some kind of drugs, loading up guns, and getting prepared for what we all know is to be the last day of his life. We discover that before Tate shoots up the school, he visits Larry in the office of his insurance agency job.

Larry is caught completely unaware as to what’s about to happen to him, but out of nowhere Tate douses him in gasoline and sets him on fire. In Tate’s mind, that is what Larry deserved for cheating on his wife with his mother, which caused Larry’s wife to kill herself and their children.

Larry Harvey calmly working before Tate changes his fate, and his face, forever. Image courtesy of FX and Spoiler TV

We are now back in 2011. Vivian is sitting quietly in her hospital room as Ben comes to visit. There is a small amount of silence and then Vivian says, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while I’ve been in here and I think you’re the one who’s crazy.”

Ben then breaks the news to Vivian that the twins have two different fathers and that he’s sorry he believed that Vivian was cheating on him. He finally believes that she was attacked. Vivian has a lot of questions now that she knows for a fact she is right. Where was Ben? How did he get into the house? Where did he get the suit? We all know the answers to this, but it’s not time for the Harmons to know, yet. Ben lets Vivian know that he pulled some strings with the doctor and that she will be able to come home soon. Ben says that they will leave the house and go to her sisters. He is finally on her side.

Charles S. Dutton guest stars as LAPD Detective Granger. He thinks Constance has something to do with Travis’ death. Image courtesy of FX and AHS Wiki.

In the next scene, Constance hears a knock on the door. She’s greeted by two detectives; Detective Granger (played by the amazing actor in such films as Alien 3 and A Time to Kill as well as countless television appearances, Charles S. Dutton) and Detective Barrios (Malaya Rivera Drew; Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri, The L Word). Constance really isn’t sure what they’re there about, but she lets them in anyway.

They begin showing Constance pictures of Travis’ body. Constance honestly didn’t know he was dead, and makes the connection to the news story where they’re referring to Travis as “The Boy Dahlia”. Detective Barrios believes that the body was transferred to South Central from another location. Constance makes a racist remark about how she wouldn’t ever be in South Central (you can watch the episode for her exact wording, because I’m not comfortable using it).

We are then taken back to the Murder House in present day. Ben is at home and the doorbell rings. Honestly, if I was anyone who lived at that house at this point, I would never answer the door ever again, but Ben does. It’s a cop and Ben is nervous, but Officer McCormick (Gregory Sporleder, prolific character actor; The Rock, Twister) ends up being a truant officer. He comes into the house and realizes that the Harmon house has a blowfly infestation. He sees some coming through a crack in the flooring. Ben is pissed that he has yet another problem to deal with related to the house.

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He tells Officer McCormick that he knows Violet has missed some school, and Officer McCormick interrupts him.

“Sixteen days,” he says, “She’s missed 16 consecutive days of school.”

Isn’t it amazing that all this total insanity we’ve been watching for the previous episodes has only happened over the course of 2 weeks? Anyway, I digress.

Ben is amazed that she has missed that much school. The truant officer informs him that if she doesn’t come back to school immediately then Ben and Vivian will be taken to court. Ben goes upstairs and knocks on Vivian’s door. She’s listening to one of my personal favorite songs, “I Hate My Way” by Throwing Muses and writing in a journal. Ben knocks on the door and after a while, she lets Ben in to her room.

Ben confronts her about school and says “Come on Violet, what are you doing? This isn’t like you!”

Violet says that she hates the school, that she can’t go back and Ben says that she has to go back to school tomorrow. He will look for another school for her if she does.

Constance pays Larry a visit at his apartment after she finds out Travis was murdered. Image courtesy of FX and Collider.

Constance is almost 100% sure that Larry is responsible for Travis’ death. So much so that she shows up to Larry’s house with a butcher knife and puts it to his throat.

“I just moved the body, I swear,” Larry exclaims, “He must’ve pissed off somebody in the house. I don’t know which one. It could have even been your son for all I know.”

Constance is almost overjoyed that Travis died in the house. She is on her way to the house. Larry tells Constance that he loves her and he knows that she did at one time as well.

“God, I never loved you!,” Constance yells in disgust, ” I endured you for the sake of my family”

“Are you going to your little boy? Your dead boy,” Larry taunts her angrily.

“Even dead, even a boy, he’s twice the man you are,” She says to Larry as he leaves.

“Well, now he is,” says Larry with an evil chuckle.

Violet is about to leave for her first day back at school but Tate grabs her on her way out the door.

“Don’t be mad”, Tate says, “I love you. Spend the day with me.”

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Violet agrees, but now we are back at Constance’s house. The detectives are back. The “Ko-Reans” (Koreans in Southern) at the store which Constance always has negative things to say about, told Detectives Granger and Barrios that Constance and Travis were always fighting. While Constance is attempting to explain herself, the butcher knife she took to Larry’s falls out of her purse. The detectives tell her that she needs to come to the precinct.

Ben hires an exterminator to get rid of the blowfly situation. The exterminator tells Ben he needs to get in the crawl space under the house to figure out what the source of the infestation is.

We are then quickly transported back to the police precinct where Constance is being questioned by Detectives Barrios and Granger.

Constance says to them “You two bunglers have come to harass the one person in this City of Angels who not only has nothing to do with this crime but is singularly devastated by it. You are interrupting a grieving process which started with the death of my daughter”

“Lots of people dying near you. Your son, Beau, was it? How old was he when he died? Then of course there is Tate, the mass murderer,” Detective Granger says to Constance.

Constance says that Beauregard died of natural causes. Neither detective believes that. Detective Granger continues his line of questioning, “Let’s not talk about the dead. Let’s talk about the missing. Your husband, Hugo, and your maid, Moira, they disappeared in ’83?

Constance (Jessica Lange) is none too pleased to be implicated in the murder of her boyfriend, Travis. Image courtesy of FX and PopSugar.

“I heard rumors of a love nest, somewhere near the equator,” Constance begins. As she is telling this tale to Detectives Granger and Barrios, we see the deaths of Moira and Hugo again but this time, we see what actually happened with their remains. We already knew that Moira was buried in the yard, but what about Hugo?

“But I never pursued them,” Constance continues her lie, “I am never one to stand in the way of true love. But what does the whereabouts of two adulterers have to do with my Travis.”

Detective Granger mentions that the DA almost pressed murder charges on her for Hugo and Moira’s deaths, but couldn’t find enough evidence. Constance was definitely not going to bury Hugo with Moira, so in a shocking turn that pre-dates the television death of (GAME OF THRONES  SPOILER ALERT) Ramsay Bolton, Constance grinds him up in a meat grinder and feeds him to the dogs in her kennel.

“Once I found out he had cheated,” Constance says coolly, “Hugo meant no more to me than dog s__t.”

After that excellent secret pun, Constance’s lawyer bursts into the room and says for her not to say anything else.

Exterminator Phil Critter (W. Earl Brown) almost discovers the cause of the blowfly infestation. Image courtesy of FX and Collider.

Phil Critter (W. Earl Brown of DeadWood and Preacher fame in an excellent brief cameo) is suited up and gets into the crawl space. “The Verminator is here,” Phil says in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. He begins crawling and is talking to himself, “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, if you can’t pay the rent, don’t–” Phil comes upon a place in the crawl space where a lot of blowflies are flying up from and says, “I knew it, when you’re right, you’re right.”

Phil looks down a hole and starts flipping out. We don’t know what he saw at first, but let’s just say, it’s definitely worth freaking out over. We then see Tate next to Phil.

“You’re a murderer,” Tate says to Phil, “You need to stay for all the countless lives you stolen.” Tate then proceeds to kill Phil with his own poison, shooting the spray gun into Phil’s mouth.

This episode, if not before, is a kind of turning point where Tate is becoming less of a positive presence, again. He started off that way, then you think he’s sweet because of his treatment of Violet, but as we progress, it becomes clearer and clearer how disturbed he is in his own mind, without outside negative influences.

Ben is now on the phone with a boarding school he hopes Violet can attend. We only hear his side of the conversation. “She’s a great student. Straight A’s til this semester. Our real concern is this kid she’s been hanging around lately…yeah they’re just not cut from the same cloth”.

Tate overheard this and tells Violet that Ben “wants to separate us”. Violet is mad and says that she thought her dad had her best interest at heart (which he does). “I just assumed I was his little girl,” she says, “What a fantasy. I’m so stupid and naive sometimes.”

Tate says she won’t let Ben send her away. He leaves her and puts on the “Rubber Man” suit.

Larry (Dennis O’Hare) sees his wife, Lorraine (Rebecca Wisocky) for the first time since she died, in the Murder House basement. image courtesy of FX and Father Son Holy Gore.

Larry is in the Murder House basement, removing bricks from a certain section of the wall. It is where he hid the murder weapon and Travis’ clothes. Blowflies fly out the hole in the wall. Travis comes up behind Larry and says “Hey, what are you doing with my stuff, man?”

Travis asks if he made the news and Larry said he was all over it. Travis is psyched, but then becomes concerned (or as concerned as Travis can be, honestly) and asks how Constance is taking the whole thing. Larry says she’s taking it pretty hard. He then asks Larry why Constance hasn’t been there to see him, which Larry responds “too soon”.

It’s interesting because Larry could have lied to Travis, especially since he was Constance’s love interest, but it’s not within Larry’s nature to be like that really. Or is it? Larry is a gray character who is at once awful and forgivable simultaneously.

We then hear some kids yelling for Travis to come play with them. He goes over and it’s Larry’s daughters, still smoldering from the fire they died in, having a tea party. Larry is watching with a glint of a tear in his eye. Lorraine (Rebecca Wisocky; Devious Maids, Hello My Name is Doris), Larry’s wife, appears beside him, also smoldering.

“He’s so good with them,” she says to Larry, “with all of us.”

“Why am I just seeing you now?” Larry asks.

“You’re ready now,” Lorraine mysteriously responds, “You’re on the cusp.”

“Lorraine, I’m so sorry for everything,” Larry apologizes, and I believe it’s in earnest.

“Prove it,” she says.

“I’ll see to it that Constance rots in prison for what she did to our family,” Larry self-righteously exclaims.

“Constance didn’t do anything to our family. She didn’t break any vows, Hm?,” Lorraine responds, “That was you.” She and her daughters then disappear.

Ben gets his own visit from the Rubber Man. Image courtesy of FX and Collider.

Ben steps out of the shower, the Rubber Man is behind him with a rag soaked in chloroform or maybe ether, considering Dr. Montgomery’s stash of weird things. Ben struggles with him throughout the house. When they get into the living room, Ben starts beating the Rubber Man with a lamp and screams “You raped my wife! You raped my wife!” as he hits him with a lamp over and over again. Ben wants to know who it is, he’s screaming “Who are you? Who are you?”

He takes off the mask and discovers it’s Tate. He’s in shock and says “Tate.”

Tate knocks him out and Ben hits the floor.

“The only reason I’m not killing you is for her. You just take a little nap and it’ll all be over.”

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We are then back in Constance’s house. Her doorbell rings. Her attorney has a non-fat sugar free vanilla latte for her and tells her that the LAPD wants them down at the police station immediately. Constance informs the attorney that she is not going willingly.

We go back to the Murder House where Tate and Violet are sitting in her room. Violet is scared and wants to know what Tate did to her dad. Tate promises he didn’t do anything bad, and then says that he thinks that they should have a suicide pact so they can be together forever. Violet is scared but says “Oh yeah sure, can we do it in the bathtub?” Tate doesn’t understand why she wants to do that but says okay.

Violet then runs down the stairs in a panic and yells out “Help, Dad, he’s trying to kill me!”

She runs down the stairs and out the front gate and then immediately ends up back in the kitchen. It’s sort of like Beetlejuice without the sand worms. She runs out the house a few times and always ends up back in the kitchen. She’s standing by the front door and Tate joins her.

Violet doesn’t understand why she keeps reappearing in the kitchen when she’s trying to run away. Tate’s about to tell her. Image courtesy of FX and Pinterest UK

“Please, Tate, please, I don’t want to die,” Violet cries, terrified and confused by what just happened.

“It’s too late for that,” Tate sighs, “I have to show you something and then you’re free to go wherever you want.”

Tate and Violet go to the basement. They go to a specific part where there is a removable wooden plank over a crawl space.

“I feel weird, like I’m losing it.” Violet says as they begin to crawl into the crawl space. They then reach the point right before Phil Critter saw whatever it was that freaked him out before he died. Tate tells Violet to close her eyes and says “Remember, everything’s going to be okay, I love you.”

He then tells Violet to open her eyes. She starts crying and saying no over and over again. The camera pans and we see Violet’s body. This is absolutely the most devastating moment of the entire season in my opinion. I cry every time I see it and it’s been at least five times now. A lot of people claimed they knew that she was dead before this reveal upon watching the show originally, but I didn’t. I was blindsided and felt so drained by the end of the episode.

“I died when I took all those pills,” Violet says through her tears.

“I tried to save you,” Tate says, “I did. I tried to make you throw them up. You threw up some,” Tate then starts crying himself, “You took so many, Violet.”

Both of them are weeping, Tate continues explaining what happened to Violet, in voice-over as we see the scene of her actual death, again, “You died crying. I held you, you were safe. You died loved.”

He explains to Violet that he didn’t want her or her parents to find out she died from the exterminator. That’s why he came up with the suicide pact idea. Tate holds her while they both cry.

Constance’s attorney, Harry Goodman (Derek Richardson) prepares Constance for the worst. Image courtesy of American Horror Story Wiki

Constance and her attorney, Harry Goodman (Derek Richardson; Hostel) informs the detectives she is there of her own volition, which is quite the opposite of what she told Harry at her house, but it doesn’t matter anyway.

Detective Granger walks her into a room. “We have the murder weapon,” he says, to which Constance denies ownership. We then see that Constance and Detective Granger are on the other side of a two-way mirror to an interrogation room where Larry is sitting. Larry said he killed Travis alone, that no one helped him.

“I’m sorry, detective,” Constance says, ” I have no answers. I can only imagine he confessed for one reason; to pacify a guilty conscience.” Which, in a manner of speaking, is 100% correct.

We are back to Tate and Violet, sitting on the couch.

“So, all this time I thought I was protecting you, but you were protecting me,” Violet says.

“That’s all I ever wanted to do since I first saw you,” says Tate.

“Then why did you keep it a secret,” Violet asks.

“Hmm, let’s see. Hi, my name’s Tate, I’m dead, wanna hook up?” They both laugh.

“Do you remember dying?” Violet asks Tate.

“Nope,” Tate responds, “You?”

“No,” she says, “So what’s this going to be like?”

“Like this,” Tate responds, “just the two of us like this forever.”

“Smoldering Children” ends with Constance visiting Larry in prison.

After exchanging greetings, Larry asks Constance “Why did I confess to a crime I didn’t commit?”

“I have long stopped asking why the mad do mad things,” Constance responds, “but if you thought you were protecting me, then you’re a bigger fool than I ever took you for.”

Larry says he needs to pay for his crimes, and he’ll never see Constance again but just wants to hear her say I love you one last time. She looks through the visitation window with a look of disgust, hangs up the phone, and walks away.

Phew, “Smoldering Children” is an emotionally grueling watch. Now that all the cards are out on the table, we have two more episodes to find out what happens with the Harmons, the babies, and Constance. Will anyone make it out alive? I’ll be back with “Birth“, followed by “Afterbirth“. Stay tuned.