Scream Queens - Chainsaws, Coneys, & Haunted Houses

We've all been traumatized. And what we do with the hurt from that trauma defines who we are. Do we look inward and heal or do we take that hurt and turn it into anger and take it out on the world?

Admittedly there are parts of the show that are really kind of starting to annoy me a bit. Chad is starting to certainly grind on my nerves. As much as I like Roberts, her primeval bipolar Lead Heather act has become such a cartoon I’m waiting (no, check that, hoping…) for a real person to emerge from behind the mask, pulled away by Fred and the Scooby Gang.

I can see critics watching “Scream Queens” balking about how heightened the performances are (purposely exaggerated) making the characters so fake and unrealistic. Chad, for instance, never talks as a normal human being would. His face, speech, words, and whole idol worship of himself is equal to how Chanel is presented herself. When Chad breaks up with her over and over again she reacts like a spoiled little brat who didn’t get her extravagant Sweet Sixteen birthday party. Chanel bounces up and down on her feet, whimpers, burrs, and gets doe-eyed with a face that weeps and agonizes. The show obviously loves to mock these privileged people. Chad has this line of dialogue where he’s psyching up his frat bros that truly defines the stereotype he represents: I say we do the opposite of Take Back the Night. I say we get 'roided up, find a bunch of baseball bats and roam around the streets, yelling the red devil's name until he comes out and fights us. Because, in the ghetto, if you walk around with baseball bats yelling the red devil's name, they have to come out and fight you. Believe me, there's a whole code. Now let's pop some gym candy!

These Rodeo Drive preppies that snarled their noses at Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (1991) are on the wrong campus in this show. They speak unfiltered and their prejudices and shallow personalities are unyielding. They are the poster child of the elitist pretty snob offered the world. In the episode, Chainsaw, there is a specific scene where Chanel finds Lea Michelle’s Hester Ulrich, having been condemned to a neck harness due to scoliosis, rummaging through her designer closet. Chanel goes on and on about her “uncle” just giving her the finest catalogue to wear. Chanel then transforms Hester into a Heather (Chanel) because she’s in need of “minions” to follow behind her and is desperate for an overhaul of her Kappas “image of cool”. So starting with Hester is what Chanel does. Obviously Abigail Breslin’s “Chanel #5” is pissed off and no in favor of “putting lipstick on pigs”. Chanel calls the designer closet her “second vagina”, precious to her! The dialogue is like that in this show. To say this show isn’t for all tastes is an understatement!

Speaking of Breslin, there’s this bizarre scene in Chainsaw where she is found in the “body disposal” meat locker by Chanel, where Chanel #2 (Ariana Grande) was placed and is now missing. In their conversation Breslin talks about a threesome with twins from Chad’s fraternity and explained that the reason she was in the meat locker because “she was bored” (?!?!). Chanel #3 has a “bonding” scene with “Sam” (Samantha Ronson nickname for the character), played by Jeanna Han in a “secret sharing” so she has an official “alibuddy” (alibi buddy). Chanel #3 (the late Carrie Fisher’s daughter, played by Billie Lourd) tells Sam she is the actual daughter of Charles Manson but her “unofficial” father is a billionaire! Swenson TV dinners not Swanson is her fake daddy’s claim to filthy richdom.

Chainsaw is Murphy and Falchuk just going crazy. Sure the previous two episodes have wild tangents the characters go on, but Chainsaw really goes off the deep end at times. M&F are known to operate at times without restraint and paint with broad strokes. Almost the entire episode of Chainsaw is broad strokes and off-the-wall colors that squirt like ketchup off the screen into your lap. For some it will be that abrasive.

For example, Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) declares to her students at a rally that the mascot will be updated from the red devil to a smiling Ice Cream Cone! The students look at “Coney” with stunned silence. It is so lame they are unable to break from their surprise. Then Coney becomes a momentary celeb around campus…and then Red Devil (and his/her chainsaw) cuts the head off the cone. Also Munsch tells 90s Kappa sister, Gigi (Nasim Pedrad), to leave “her man” (Oliver Hudson) alone, and the decision by the dean to stay at the sorority house leads to a “white noise machine” which plays animal sounds, disaster cries, and even a “slasher theme”.

Grace’s mission to find the killer and a security guard, who doesn’t carry a gun, played by Niecy Nash, have small spots in the episode, but Chainsaw really is an assemblage of subplots. No one real developing story overwhelms the other.

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Haunted House kind of starts with what we all (or most of us, surely to God, I hope) more than likely felt as Chainsaw concluded…that Dean Munsch couldn’t have been the Red Devil with the chainsaw in the Kappa sorority mansion despite what Wes (Oliver Hudson) and 1990s sorority sister-turned-attorney, Gigi (Nasim Pedrad) insist to Johnny Law. Curtis can rattle off dialogue so confidently and assertively that her Dean sets the record straight, with no breath or pause. She runs through exactly why with details putting to bed how ludicrous such accusations sound. Getting past that immediately, Dean is linked to the baby mother death back in ’95 as someone eyeing upgrade in position at the school, encouraging the Kappas to dispose of the body and not worry about the infant. One of those Kappas who was forced to leave the school and escape possible criminal association to the death of the pregnant sister is found and spills the beans to Grace and her investigative partner, Pete (Diego Boneta, who does a mean Matthew McConaughey impression), later to be killed by Red Devil at her trailer park (during a viewing of Leprechaun (1993), no less!).

Haunted House sets up a new rivalry that I’m all for: Chanel now has some competition for her crown in Zayday, encouraged to pursue head of Kappas as the first African-American to do so by a fellow young man of color at Chad Radwell’s “Dollar Scholars” fraternity. Also revealed is that security “cop”, Denise Hemphill (Niecy Nash) was actually a pledge for Kappa back in ’95, leaving college in rejection because of her color, due to prejudice. Zayday has been a peculiar target of Denise’s, with their heated conversation at a reputed haunted house (hence, the title of the episode) setting up their own rivalry. Zayday perceives that her being a potential Kappa president at a time available while Denise was rejected and not so fortunate to have a similar opportunity. So spite and jealousy might be the driving engine for considering Zayday a major suspect in the killings on campus. Nothing in the film at all besides Denise’s suspicions point to Zayday.

Gigi, because of her ties to Kappa in the 90s, is an obvious suspect despite her being so rather ditzy and having the appearance of someone quite harmless. Her ties to an urban legend (later investigated as a real person by Grace and Pete) called “the hag on Shady Lane” add extra incentive to at least look at her as a suspect.

Grace confronts her dad about being the baby and why she has never been told more about her mother. She certainly makes no bones about how she’d feel if those details were actually true.

In previous episodes, Pete has a suspecting light cast upon him, a certain look on his face when seeing the Red Devil costume in his closet. Jonas brother opens his eyes in the morgue and removes a made-up neck wound. Gigi is shown in a robe inside the Shady Lane house surrounded by eerie, old dolls. Chanel is a sociopath with no redeeming qualities except her unflinching disregard for anyone “average” or “mediocre”. Lea Michelle, in or out of neck brace, eyes the crown and promises naughty relations with Chad if he continues to pursue her.

The show goes out of its way to give the audience as many suspects as possible. Why wouldn’t it? To keep us guessing and to offer any number of suspects, there’s plenty of jerking us around due to the cast of characters within the series format. Haunted House failed to diminish the numbers and remove an “a-ha” suspect from the show. It just introduces and bumps off a character of little significance except she’s a quirky device to continue the story going forward.

The Taylor Swift satire regarding "Chanel-O-Ween" has Chanel addressing "the little people", girls who idolize her and get all excited from "care packages" that celebrate the Halloween season (body part novelty items sent to feverishly jovial girls) didn't do anything for me but I reckon these kinds of scenes get the crew giddy to do them just to poke fun. Grounding "Scream Queens" into such a slasher genre box just isn't their bag. Murphy and Falchuk just have to be able to spoof and lampoon from time to time. It is their genre cathartic release...to go on wild tangents if so choosing. Chad, as some woman-bedding stud, goes to graveyards, reads the markers, and finds one in particular that arouses him, beating himself off as a result! Lea Michelle shows up and encourages him, that his behavior excites her, too! So characters speak to each other about depraved subjects that repulse a majority except them. When Chad speaks about Chantel's oral action on him or Michelle speaking about him "cracking" her somewhere dangerous/spooky, that is pure M&F "going there". Fox indulges them, too.

Another genre staple of the slasher making its appearance in Haunted House and the show is the discovery of bodies taken by the killer (killers) throughout the screen time. Then these bodies find their way into a location to surprise the heroes and soon the law enforcement, and Dean Munsch (once again cleaning up the mess of the killers) are in cahoots to keep media/publicity scrutiny away from the school. Nothing quite like seeing Lea Michelle pressing her finger into the dead leg of a victim and yellow puss squirting out. Attempts to keep other students from going to the house and discovering them fall on deaf ears...it just urges them to excitedly flock to the house to "see the dead bodies"!