Grotesquerie episodes 5 and 6 recap: A killer reveal fake out

Grotesquerie returns with yet another two episodes this week and the first starts off with almost half of its runtime consisting of one continuous shot, which is always an impressive filmmaking feat.

We catch up with Detective Lois and Sister Megan right after they've picked up that woman from the road. Her name is Andrea and she directs them to a nearby motel. Once there, all hell breaks loose immediately. Lois notes that the woman at the front desk is sporting bruises, likely delivered by the man they call "Nick" who works there.

Lois and Megan try to check in on Andrea but she leaves a bloody mess and a bloody trail of footsteps out the door. Megan just wants to pray and also find Andrea, but Lois is more interested in taking a breather, at least until Nurse Redd calls making more threats about Marshall. I still don't know where the Nurse Redd storyline is going, it feels like it belongs in another show, but I digress.

Things at the motel go from bad to worse when a car crash happens in the parking lot and then Nick tries to drown the receptionist. By the time Lois and Megan get back outside, another car has pulled up and started shooting before kidnapping Andrea again. Megan runs after her but she gets shot in the process. It's a lot to keep tabs on as everything happens very quickly. All of this is done in one take which is quite cool given how many moving pieces there are.

Megan's injury lands her in the hospital. Father Charles comes to visit her, bringing her fresh flowers and reprimanding Lois for taking Megan out there in the first place, though she rightly points out that half the reason Megan is doing this is for his sensationalist church rag. Charles wants Lois to go out and find the killer since he's stalking her and leave him to take care of Megan.

Outside the hospital room, Lois runs into Detective Hanover. She's been reaching all of Lois' prior arrests to see who might be out and have a vendetta against her. One name sticks out to Lois, a killer named Glorious who is out on parole.

The next day, there's another murder spree. The killer waited until Lois was out of town to attack a maternity house, killing several women inside with c-section retractors and stealing their babies. Given the severity and escalation of these murders, the FBI want to take over, likely meaning Lois will get kicked off the case.

Lois points out that she won't back down. The killer is taunting her specifically. He's left another bloody message on the wall, this one saying "let the dead bury the dead." Soon after this discovery, she's called to nearby house where children were left behind. They share that their pregnant mother left the night before with a strange man.

Following her latest lead, Lois comes across a crashed car filled with bloody towels and napkins. She follows the trail to an orange grove and finds a woman holding a baby and sobbing. Lois promises to help her as the woman says, "He's going to kill me."

Grotesquerie episode 6

Alright slipping right into the follow-up episode, we find out that the woman with the baby is named Maisie, and it's not her baby. The blood wasn't even hers. They get her into a hospital, and Lois tries to convince her to tell her where the child came from, but she refuses to say. However, Maisie (and that's totally a surprise Kathryn Hunter!) does drop one interesting clue. She keeps slipping the word "glorious" into her tangents.

Lois gets in touch with Hanover to connect with Glorious, a former pimp and sex worker who now runs a ministry service out of her trailer home. In jail, she became an informant, that's how she got out early and into witness protection. Glorious seemingly knows who the killer is, saying he's a "false prophet" and that's why she sent Maisie to Lois. It sounds like the murderer might be leading a cult or something.

That night, someone calls Lois and then a stalker snaps a photograph of her outside. She opens the door to find Nurse Redd showing up touting a bottle of vodka. A peace offering. We learn that the reason she's been so fixated on Marshall is because they had an affair. Redd previously took a seminar about terror management that Marshall taught. Two semesters in a row.

At first, it seems like Lois is going to forgive Redd, but then she pulls a gun on her and tells her to get out of the house and never go near her husband again.

Back at the hospital, Lois presses Maisie for more information. She floats the idea that this mysterious person might be an entity, something supernatural. He opened that fire pit in the desert and let things come out of it. Finally, Maisie reveals where the babies are.

Lois and the other police show up at an old milk bottling factory to discover a bunch of women have been forcefully strung up like livestock to milk their breasts and feed the babies being kept there. It's super disturbing. At least the women are alive and so are the kids.

In a back room, Lois discovers a wall papered with dozens of photographs of her. This killer has been stalking her for a long time. Then a man sneaks up behind her and puts a knife to her throat, but Lois disarms and shoots the perpetrator before he can kill her. She rips off the mask, but the credits roll before we get his identity.

My money is on Father Chavez, though I assume it'll be some kind of fake out or misdirection. Maisie previously said that if the killer wanted Lois dead, she'd be dead already. That he has a much larger plan in store for Lois, so it'd be kind of strange for him to suddenly try and slit her throat.

The ending teaser also reveals some snippets of next week's episode, hinting that this killer is working with an accomplice. At the end of the episode, we also get a few quick scenes showing things like Eddie and Merritt together in bed and Megan waking up in the hospital.

Two new episodes of Grotesquerie air weekly on Wednesdays on FX. Episodes are also streaming on Hulu.