AHS 1984 - The Lady in White

Reddit had a lament post about Rabe being missing from American Horror Story, particularly 1984, and so when watching “The Lady in White”, all that changed. Lily Rabe is a single mother left with two sons, losing her beloved youngest to a mishap in the water when a motorboat accidentally cuts its motor into him when those operating it failed to see him. Her oldest, Benji (Mr. Jingles), failed to look after him because he had snuck off into the woods to watch a camp counselor couple making out. Just like Pamela Voorhees, avenging the loss of her son, over and over, Rabe’s enraged mother seeks to get revenge on all those she considered responsible for the death of her little boy. This fresh historical backstory to Camp Redwood further gives us exposition into the blood-soaked history of the accursed place. Benji, returning to square off with Ramirez, tells Montana, Xavier, Chet, and the others in their company (including the three Jingles’ impersonators fated to die in the woods, wanting revenge against him) about his mother, her killing spree, and his self defense killing of her when she tried to attack him. Later Benji confronts her and full of venom, piss and vinegar, she lets him know exactly what she thinks of him and how she gave Margaret a “little nudge” to go on her own murder spree, including the blame he got for the deaths at Camp Redwood. She has kept her eye on him whenever he’s been at Camp Redwood, seeing the murders he wasn’t responsible for and those he was. There is no restraint; her words rake him across the coals, as Rabe’s Lady in White, appearing to him just as she died back so many years ago when he was a kid, eviscerating him with such painful words of hate, regarding how he should have died instead of Bobby…that she wanted to see his whole life burn. It is hard to watch, all of this, and seeing all the trauma her derision has left behind, working itself out right before us, as Benji must endure harsh comment after harsh comment from a mother who never loved him. You can really see how she has waited for this moment to unload on him. And the sting is quite evident in how Benji’s chest vibrates as if the heart wants to pound from his chest. She does offer a solution to his problem with Ramirez, knowing he plans to protect his son by confronting him in a showdown, regarding not dying by Richard’s hand because he has Satan on his side…there is another way, and as Benji’s ghost removes the knife from his dying body’s torso, he assures us that perhaps the odds are evened.

Subplots include a serial killer using a gun to kill his female victims in the hopes of surpassing his peers (he wants to top Bundy and catch up to RR), played by Dylan McDermott with black mop of hair and handlebar mustache, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, all dark and corrosively icky, trying to add Brooke (who recovered from her sickness after the poisons were added to her system, counteracted by an introduced agent that kept her alive) and Donna (she learned about the drug she injected into Brooke while in college) to his growing list of victims & Margaret making preparations for the bands and big concert at Camp Redwood while Trevor sees Montana, going to her. That RR murders a pop band, fated unfortunately to arrive a bit earlier than the rest of the acts, leaving their bloody, knifed bodies in their tour bus (!), perfectly indicates that this whole idea of Margaret’s is a HUGE mistake. 4/5

*Def Leppard blaring in the back of a roller skate rink as Brooke has some actual fun at the urging of a patient Donna, where the two encounter McDermott’s Bruce, sets us right into the 80s again. Nicely realized, complete with the two women fashioned in great detail for that time. Brooke’s recovery is managed by Donna but the episode does enough to tell us that her ordeal was grueling. Her getting the upper hand on Bruce, leaving him bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg with his “hitchhiking fingers” amputated, Brooke isn’t the same victim running in fear constantly as she was presented early on in the show.