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American Horror Story Recap: Lactose Intolerance

American Horror Story

Spilt Milk
Season 2 Episode 11
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
AMERICAN HORROR STORY Spilt Milk -- Episode 211 (Airs Wednesday, January 9, 10:00 pm e/p) -- Pictured: Evan Peters as Kit Walker.

American Horror Story

Spilt Milk
Season 2 Episode 11
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Photo: Byron Cohen/FX

Hey, guys! Hope everybody had a frosty glass of milk during this deeply people-dairy-focused episode. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m vegan now. I’m a feminist and in awe of woman’s ability to create life and all, but if there’s anything that I’ve learned from American Horror Story, it’s that the human body is disgusting.

When we open, Dylan McDermott is sitting in a chair alone and smoking drugs. I was going to make a joke about how this is probably the way we all watch the show, but then I realized that watching this show on anything stronger than chamomile would probably make you go leaping out of a window like Helen Hunt. I can’t be responsible for that.

He’s soon joined by Pandora, a hooker named after the world’s ugliest bracelet. She’s here to breast-feed him with her “triple Ds,” because Craigslist is boundless and because this show is more obsessed with lactation than Howard Hughes. Look, I don’t know much about hooking, but I do know that there’s no such bra size as a “triple D”; after DD there’s E and F. Disbelief unsuspended.

We can surmise that Pandora is going to meet a rough end based on Johnny’s silly, David Carusovian “I’d killllll for it” and the fact that he’s dressed like Adam Levine, who is probably definitely a serial killer. Later in the episode, he chokes her in flash-forward.

Back in ye 1968, Kit is in solitary when Dr. Thredson pops in, telling him that his baby is doing great and is scheduled for circumcision later, which he is NOT happy about. Between this anti-circumcision rhetoric and all the talk about the importance of breast-feeding, I’m starting to feel a little preached to. What is this, American Horror Story: Park Slope?

“Our Day Will Come” plays, and there’s a walleye lens for some reason. Is this supposed to be baby’s-eye view here? Is this a baby cam? Pepper tries to guard the baby from Thredson and is punished with the hydrotherapy room, which actually sounds nice to me. I wish somebody would punish me with a little jacuzzi time now and then.

“There’s so many questions, I don’t even know where to begin,” says Kit. OH REALLY, KIT.

Grace vaguely recalls when she was whisked away to the spaceship, which is lit like a mascara commercial. She’s selectively nude in flashback, and she kind of, sort of explains how she had a hyperpregnancy in space after being shot? We get that Alma was accidentally killed by the aliens during an experiment, and that’s what happened to her.

He asks Grace to marry him, and I would be a little unnerved by an alien abductee getting betrothed to an axe murderer in a mental hospital, but one time I saw a video where a guy proposed to his girlfriend via flash mob at Disneyworld. The moment is spoilt when the monsignor and a Marcia Gay Harden–esque nun come to take the baby away to an orphanage.

The mother superior comes to rescue Lana and gives her her old clothes and a file. But before she leaves, she thanks Sister Jude, who she swears she won’t let stay in the asylum, doomed to a life of Courtney Love hair.

Then in split screen, Thredson vows to make sure Grace and Kit and baby Thomas stay together as a family while Lana leaves Briarcliff in her old, swinging lady reporter pumps. Thredson says he’ll tell the police that Arden confessed to being Bloody Face before he charbroiled himself to death if Kit will get the tape of his confession from Lana. But too late — she’s made it to the cab and shows him that she’s got the tape while flipping him the bird while the Polyphonic Spree does “Carmina Burana” (pretty sure that’s what that was).

Later that night (again, I think — I’m confused about the timeline here), Lana is waiting for him in his apartment. She’s got a gun and says the police have the tape. He’s relieved and tells her how great he feels that she unburdened him and also that he chopped up her girlfriend after having sex with her dead body. A therapist who has sex with corpses having catharsis? And I thought they canceled Frasier.

But oh no! He’s got a gun, because of course, but just as he’s about to shoot her, she ices him. And the blood actually spatters onto the camera. Lana buries Wendy in the crypt from Phantasm with some lesbian friends, and it’s all very American Horror L Word. And guess what! She’s moving to New York and writing a book. Oh great, more memoirs.

“We are vultures, attracted to the scent of rotting meat,” she says, in which I can only assume is a personal shout-out to this fine website. “Read my book!” she tells reporters gathered outside. Jesus, we get it, Sloane Crosley.

Back in Briarcliff, the monsignor reads the reports of abuse in the asylum and the fact that they maybe didn’t exercise great judgment in employing a Nazi, multiple murderers, and THE ACTUAL DEVIL.

And because every episode of this show is now the musical episode of this show, Jude is dancing upstairs to “Love Potion Number Nine.” She tells the monsignor that the lady who took his virginity was actually the prince of darkness. Happens to the best of us! The first time: It’s never great.

He ships her and her beachy hair off to solitary just as Kit is being sprung. But before he goes, Kit somehow leverages his wrongful imprisonment to get himself sprung, along with Grace and the baby. Grace is actually supposed to be dead, because there was an episode when she died, if you recall.

They cab it back to his place, where he suggests getting a horse. Wait, do you get a horse when you get married? I knew there was a reason why people did that. But OH NO! Alma is there with another baby.

Elsewhere, Lana is going all Vera Drake and getting an abortion from a kindly old lady, when she has a bunch of flashbacks that make her decide to keep her the baby. This abortion looks like a spa procedure, so why not?

Later on, she goes to the police, pregnant and smoking like you do. They make fun of her for carrying Bloody Face’s baby but agree to help her get Jude out. They go to Briarcliff, where the monsignor informs her that Sister Jude is dead, having hanged herself months ago. She’s not! She’s in the basement! JUDY! 

Lana finally has the baby, and though she’s decided to give him up for adoption, she agrees to breast-feed him. She’s as clearly grossed out by it as we are.

And that’s all for this week! Only two episodes left. I’m not sure how I can go on without ZQ, but hopefully he and Chloë Sevigny will come back as ghosts at the end, Les Miz–style, with a chorus of lumpy mutants to spirit the remainder of the cast to their reward. See you next time!

American Horror Story Recap: Lactose Intolerance