Now Playing: American Horror Story: Asylum
Let us NEVER forget the hottest sex scene with Adam Levine.
American Horror Story: Asylum premiered October 17, 2012 to a slew of hungry fans. At this point, Murder House had acquired a large audience, with over 3.85 million viewers tuning in to the season 2 premiere, running weekly on FX for the duration of that fall. Ah, weekly episodes, do we all remember that? Shocking to think there’s a generation of people who don’t, considering some think Succession’s release model is “really smart:”
Luckily I’m bringing a little #tbt to your inbox today, diving back in to the American Horror Story world with Asylum. To me, and TV Insider, this stands as the best series of the franchise. Even if you don’t consider it to be, the opening scene in Asylum’s pilot has remained permanently engrained in my head for almost ten years.
Let’s get in to it, shall we?
Welcome to Briarcliff Manor, a notorious insane asylum home to a deranged serial killer known as Bloody Face. We get a little sneak peek in to Bloody Face when Adam Levine and his super hot girlfriend who has no name are galavanting around the ruins of what used to be a mental hospital from the 1960’s. Adam Levine is taking photos of his girlfriend like people in high school used to do when they wanted to look alt, posing near some abandoned ruins like they’re the cover of a My Chemical Romance album.
Built in 1908 Briarcliff was the largest tuberculosis ward on the East Coast. Plus, 46,000 people died here so you know this is starting off the same way Murder House did, with a flashback/flash forward sequence. Later, the place became a place for the “criminally insane,” their most famous resident being Bloody Face. Adam Levine straps his girlfriend down and pulls her shirt down exposing a really sexy black bra. Then he licks his hand to lubricate what I can only assume is his massive penis before raw-dogging the shit out of his girlfriend.
Following this, they proceed to check out a little door with a mail slot. Adam Levine gets his arm ripped off by what we can only assume is Bloody Face while getting a blow job from his girlfriend with the perfect eyebrows.
Hell yea.
The intro scene is over and here enters Evan Peters, a gas attendant who I’d love to fix. He looks so soft and sweet. I’ll kick the shit out of Emma Roberts if I ever see her. The lights flicker and a group of rowdy boys show up asking if they can borrow his gun since someone was messing with someone’s little sister? Toxic masculinity at its finest.
This really is 1964.
He comes back to his beautiful wife and kisses her. We figure out no one knows about their marriage because they’re an interracial couple and some guys literally just dropped the N word. They’re keeping it a secret from their family and this trauma gets them real hot and horny, immediately another fucking scene takes place. Little do we know, ALIENS are about to take over and fuck. Evan Peters white milky thighs.
Emma Roberts: it’s on sight.
There’s a ton of white lights and a piercing ringing noise takes place, blowing out their windows the way I wish Peters would blow out my back. Alma, his wife, is gone and the aliens take him up into their little spaceship to probe him. This reminds me of a second date I went on with a girl who insisted she got abducted by aliens. Fuck it, she’s never gonna see this, here’s the photo she sent me of the alien spaceship she got abducted by. Comment your thoughts because I’m curious if you think this looks like an alien spaceship or just a round plane:
(Disclaimer I do, unfortunately, believe in aliens).
Honestly maybe [REDACTED] was right. With the brightness turned up, there is some spooky shit happening here.
We get our first glimpse at Briarcliff and our first glimpse of the best character in the AHS Franchise: Lana Winters, Sarah Paulson’s alter ego. Winter is a journalist and I’m pretty sure a lesbian as well so basically, me. I’m about to hella project on this gay bitch and her beautiful green jumpsuit. She gets a flower from someone on the way in and meets up with Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe), a nun who will be bringing Lana to meet Sister Jude, the person I assume runs this place. As she goes up the stairs aka the “stairway to heaven” Sister Jude is introduced and it’s none other than JESSICA LANGE!!
The almighty goddess herself.
Sister Jude is shaving the head of some blonde girl who can’t stop fucking everyone in the asylum. She then goes on to say the most beautiful quote I’ve ever heard:
Mental illness is the fashionable explanation for sin.
If mental illness is fashion call me Gucci, Prada, and Versace.
There’s some tension between Jude and Lana that I immediately decipher as Gay. They’re talking about some bakery because that’s the story Lana is here for: to figure out how some donuts are made instead of how oh, I don’t know, why the state is abusing the mentally ill instead of actually using resources to help them? Lana starts asking sneaky questions attempting to peel back Sister Jude’s bullshit. She’s hoping to acquire some quotes that might help her take down this place but it’s clear Jessica Lange is a white woman who’s never been told no and now that she has an ounce of power, she’s gone bat shit crazy.
She’s treating everyone like she’s God and they’re a mental patient.
Sister Mary Eunice comes in to tell Sister Jude that Bloody Face is coming in any minute and BOY, is Lana excited to finally get some fucking tea in this podunk town. What kind of stories do you think she usually works on, squirrel caught in tree? House on fire sometimes? Taco Tuesdays? I’d go crazy if I was a journalist in a small town but alas, I’m a not journalist in a big city.
Love seeing that degree get some usage.
Lana bolts up wondering if she can meet Bloody Face, who’s decapitating women. Of course, Sister Jude is not going to let her have a minute with him, the man who allegedly has been killing all these women. Are you ready for a huge fucking spoiler? It’s Evan Peters who comes in to frame, stripped butt naked and watered down as he’s strapped to the bed. This was, and still is, a wildly shocking turn for me. Woah woah woah, hold up, how did they pin all these crimes on him? He spits at Sister Jude, who says some racially insensitive thing about his wife, which makes me wonder if they found her dead?
Moral of the story, it’s clearly not Evan Peters who’s Bloody Face and we’re all going to feel bad for him over the course of the season because he undergoes a LOT of psychiatric shit he does NOT deserve.
He goes to the common lodge and meets this girl with brunette hair and then Hiram Lodge punches him in the face. Why the fuck is Hiram Lodge in this? Am I delusional? I’m pretty sure that’s him but regardless of the fact he started the fight, Evan Peters is the one locked up in a straight jacket suffering delusions seeing his old girlfriend riding the fuck out his dick.
Lizzie Brocheré Grace, the brunette girl he met earlier, comes and brings him some food. When I Googled her name, her character wasn’t listed, so we’re just going to call her by her full name going forward. I’m pretty sure Lizzie Brocheré Grace and Evan Peters fall in love over the course of the season and this scene seems to ensure that is, in fact, the case. She’s smoking outside his cell and gives him a little woosh of that good good. We figure out she’s in here because they think she chopped up her family but she clearly didn’t.
Take that back, her name is Grace. The pretty girl’s name is Grace.
Sister Eunice is crying because some dude named Willie is dead? Sister Jude is mad about this and goes to talk to the mad scientist archetype, some dude talking about all the types of plants he has like he wants to stick his dick in their soil. Let me just take a guess at what this little subplot is, he experiments on the patients here and then gives their bodies to something, despite him saying they’re cremated. Sister Jude is very suspicious though because Dr. Arden picks victims who don’t have family.
She’s always win though against the patriarchal male according to her!!!
We go home with Lana Winters and she’s smoking a cigarette inside AND, WE LEARN, SHE’S A LESBIAN!!!! Her girlfriend has a Pulitzer and they’re so incredibly talented. “This is my shot,” she says and her girlfriend is like yes it is queen! Take some time off. Do you. Get that story out and become Dianne Sawyer. Lana goes to kiss her and her girlfriend gets up to close the blinds, something my girlfriend and I will be doing this weekend because we are staying in a cabin in Indiana. Seriously, can you be gay here? Is it legal? I had one friend from Indiana and dropped him because he said “I’m a white gay I can use the N word because I’m also oppressed.”
IMO? 1964 never left Indiana.
Sister Jude puts on a sexy little red number and some perfume to go flirt with the guy who plays the general from Handmade’s Tale. She definitely is trying to flirt but puts her hand over her glass when she goes to give him wine. She’s pretty pissed off Dr. Arden is there and he doubles down on putting this sadistic asshole in place. He’s talking about God and shit and I just finished Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom so I’m balls deep in God talk so I kind of zone out here. He says “Wherever I go, You Go” and promises her Mother Superior who will oversee a lot of nuns. This is making her really fucking horny because there’s a montage of her taking off her hat and unbuttoning her nun robe. She sits on Father and this is clearly a dream but it’s hot, damn!!!
Maybe she can fuck him in Rome!
Treachery!!! Sister Eunice is talking to Dr. Arden showing that she’s on his side. She goes to bring some animal in the woods human meat and runs in to Lana Winters, who’s hanging around looking for a story. Sister Eunice is like bitch!!!! WTF you doing here! We gotta get inside NOW!!!! Meanwhile, Dr. Arden tells Evan Peters he doesn’t belong there and I get really sad because Evan Peters doesn’t have a family anymore since his wife died making him vulnerable to being experimented on!
FUCK!!!
Meanwhile, in the now present day, Adam Levine is bleeding out and his hot wife is trying to save him. She runs down the stair case only to release there are now chains on the door. What I’m picking up from this is that the animals Sister Eunice were feeding are timeless and now exist in 2012 too? Maybe they’re the people from 1908 who underwent tuberculosis?
Guess we’ll never know!
Lana Winters is trying to blackmail Sister Eunice in to telling her shit by saying she’ll tell Sister Jude about this weird encounter and the secret tunnel they went back to the Asylum in. Boldly, she starts walking around asking questions like she owns the place. Fuck yeah, Lana! Lesbians aren’t afraid of anything.
She walks in to the Men’s ward and people are catcalling her. Someone throws literal come at Sister Eunice and we learn Sister Eunice is kind of a bitch! In the sense of “why is she working here because she seems really sensitive and kind hearted?” She runs into the blonde who likes to fuck everyone and asks where Kit Walker (Evan Peter) is but, unfortunately for her, Sister Jude is perusing the halls shining a light in every cellar. Intense music plays as we wonder whether she’s going to find Lana but she turns around at the last minute, revealing what’s happening in plot B.
Boy ya’ll really aren’t gonna love this one.
Evan Peters is getting his brain tested on and looks like Malcom McDowell from Clockwork Orange. Dr. Arden is asking why he sliced his wife from the feet up as the scene flashes back and forth between Evan Peters experience on the spaceship. Unfortunately, these aren’t the friendly type of aliens like the ones President Eisenhower signed a treaty with to end the Cold War. They’ve got long ass fingers and are slowly moving up Evan Peters legs in a move I can only assume is nonconsensual, given the fact he’s stripped down. At some point, they put a chip in the side of his neck and Dr. Arden has fished it out, frustrated when the chip sports legs and runs away.
This pilot is moving SO much faster than Murder House and NOW you know why it’s the best of the series.
Lana, still looking for Kit, opens a door in solitary and bloody hands come out to attack her, ones I assume are the same that attacked Adam Levine at the beginning of the episode. Welp, Sister Jude is pretty pissed off about this. She yells at Sister Eunice for being so fucking stupid as Sister Eunice cries super hard. Sister Jude says STUpIdDd in the funniest voice I’ve ever heard. I vaguely remember rewinding the scene over and over again in college aggressively laughing at her annunciation. This was quickly followed by being erotically alarmed by the fact Sister Eunice pulls her pants down to be spanked by Sister Jude right after this.
Yes mommy spank your naughty baby!!!!!!
Sister Jude catches Lana sneaking about and *extremely Donald Trump voice* LOCKS! HER! UP! She goes to tell Lana’s partner she caught her trespassing and tells her she can’t see her since she’s not family. I mean, she has no legal standing. They’re not sisters. So what could it be? She’s not dumb, though. She knows they’re lesbians. She traverses around the place being vaguely threatening, implying that her partner would never expose the kids she teaches to a homosexual, right? Essentially, she lays out what this is going to look like. She’s going to out the two lesbians or she’s going to give Lana “care.” She forces her to sign off on Ms. Winters being under Sister Jude’s custody and damn, it really IS hard for a bitch out here. She freaks out and ends up signing the papers. I pause for a minute to ask Ana if she would rather be outed to our entire community or sign me into a mental hospital:
“I would grab you, get in a car, and move somewhere else”
Gold star for my girlfriend!!!!!!!!!!
Lana, seeing her girlfriend has signed off on this, is crying with her head strapped down. Poor Icarus, flying so close to the sun. Would I go this far for a piece? Unfortunately, probably.
Curse my curious mind!!!
Sister Jude opens a door to one of the solitary confinements and finds Dr. Arden cleaning. She realizes “something” has been living in here and what it is? A mystery. Rest assured Sister Jude is going to find out because she’s a #girlboss.
I feel like I was very quick to award American Horror Story Murder House a 9 so I feel wary giving this one a 9. I do think it was better than AHS Murder House in setting up multiple plot lines but it felt like it had TOO much going on. From what I remember, I don’t think the aliens plot line is ever seen to the end.
My rating for this one is going to have to be an 8.5/10. Asylum just had a lot going on and I was never really sure where it was headed. The University of Iowa psych ward, however, I’ll rate a 10/10. Four meals a day and a guy on meth complimenting me all day? Sounds like heaven!
Here I am in 2018: