Grotesquerie double episode premiere recap: A string of gruesome murders

Ryan Murphy and co. have released their latest horror series just one week after the Netflix debut of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The newest show, Grotesquerie, premiered with two episodes on Wednesday night. It stars Niecy Nash-Betts as a detective who teams up with a nun to find the person behind a series of gruesome crimes plaguing a community.

The beginning of Grotesquerie immediately sets a viscerally dark tone for the series as Detective Lois Tryon (Nash-Betts) is called to a horrific murder scene featuring three dead bodies and a mysterious liquid on the floor. It's not just that this family was murdered, but the culprit leaves them staged around a dinner table with something stuffed into their mouths. Later, we learn that the "something" is... the remains of the family's patriarch, who the killer took the time to season and prepare. Like something right out of Eli Roth's Thanksgiving. Even more sinister, it's heavily implied he boiled the infant in a stew pot. No wonder cops were throwing up at the scene.

That night, we get a solid scene to establish Lois' character along with her daughter, Merritt (Raven Goodwin). Lois tries to decompress from her day by watching Jeopardy! with Merritt and sipping from a bottle of vodka. She's got a pretty open drinking problem. But it's a well-constructed scene that shows us Merritt is quite intelligent (she gets every Jeopardy! question correct).

The Jeopardy! scene segues into another scene later where Lois visits her husband, Marshall (Courtney B. Vance), in the hospital. We learn he's in a coma and seemingly has been for a long time. He's under the care of a Nurse Ratched-like nun named Nurse Redd (Lesley Manville), who Lois is constantly butting heads with over the care of her spouse.

At work the following day, Lois meets Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond), a nun who also happens to be a reporter for a local paper. Weirdly enough, for a nun, she curses regularly and is a total true crime fan. She's deeply invested in Lois' latest case and even makes a correct assumption about the song that was playing when the police arrived at the scene. Her accurate theory makes Lois question if Sister Megan is the killer, but she says she's just good at knowing things sometimes. Lois asks the nun to help her identify the weird liquid left behind at the scene.

As is often the case with these storylines, the murders continue. The next one also features three bloodless bodies—with their torsos pinned to the wall, almost crucifixion-style. Sister Megan arrives on the scene, and Lois invites her to look inside and take notes. It seems she does value Megan's opinion on things. In a follow-up meeting, Megan informs Lois that the liquid is probably meant to symbolize brimstone, like fire and brimstone, because it contains a lot of sulfur dioxide. That means whoever is doing all this is likely motivated by religion, which makes sense, given some of the show's vibes.

Grotesquerie episode 2 recap

Moving into the second episode, we open with a flashback to what life was like before Marshall ended up in his coma. We still don't learn what happened to him, but we get a sense of what family life was like for the Tryons in the past. And it wasn't great. It turns out that Lois and Marshall had a very complicated marriage, to say the least. He cheated on Lois multiple times, and the last thing we hear her say to him is that sometimes she wishes she'd get a phone call saying he died. Marshall replies by telling her he hopes she doesn't regret saying that. Well...

Stuff gets even weirder between Lois and Nurse Redd at the hospital, with Lois accusing the nurse of sexually assaulting her husband in his bed. It's a strange scene, and there's so much hostility between these two women. I wonder if we'll get more context on their relationship at some point.

We pivot back to the main investigation. Lois is trying to figure out what she can at home from various theories and clues. She thinks maybe the killer could be connected to the local university, but her next visit with Sister Megan points her in a new direction. The nun says that her instincts are telling her that the murderer is someone more insidious than that, someone that the victims didn't know at all. She also thinks that the murderer is trying to play God and not some ordinary person.

If you've been watching Monsters on Netflix, you might recognize Nicholas Chavez when he shows up playing the priest Father Chavez. He and Megan have an interesting relationship in that they both obsess over murderers and appear to have some mild flirtation going on. Later, we're privy to a scene of the priest masturbating alone in his room and then self-flagellating with a flogger as punishment. Father Charlie believes the crimes might have a Satanic connection.

When Megan and Lois get to chatting again, Megan brings up the Satanism angle, but Lois isn't so sure. She wants to follow a DNA lead instead, one that leads to a recently released convict named Sullivan Firkus. Following the trail to his home, they find his dead body along with another woman. And Lois sees a calling card left behind by the murderer that reads "grotesquerie." It turns out Firkus has been dead for a long time. His blood being left outside of the family massacre was just a red herring and an intentional misdirect on the part of the killer.

On her way back home, Lois offers a homeless man some money and then gives Merritt the weird box she discovered at the Firkus crime scene to see if her savvy daughter can solve the puzzle. Merritt is at a loss for what it actually is. Things get weird as Lois starts dozing off, and from the audience's perspective, we see a mysterious person walking through the house in the background. Lois pulls out her gun but then puts it down.

Her evening is interrupted again by another phone call. There have been more murders, this time at a church. The killer struck again, this time murdering 12 people and arranging their bodies in such a way as to recreate The Last Supper. The man positioned in the center is the same man Lois offered money just a few scenes prior.

New episodes of Grotesquerie air Wednesday nights on FX at 10 p.m. ET. Episodes are also available to stream on Hulu.