AHS 1984 - Rest in Pieces/Final Girl ***

I couldn’t have expected a more fitting ending to AHS 1984 than what was left us in “Final Girl”, with Mike and the Mechanics telling us to “Say it. Say it loud!” as Bobby, now a young adult man, looking at his father, grandmother, and little uncle, leaving Camp Redwood for good. The family altogether, with no residual hate or lingering rage left to hinder their eternal stay at Redwood. As for Margaret Booth, I guess for most her fitting end was most celebrated even if it probably doesn’t have the same impact it might have if we hadn’t watched our share of woodchipper gore over the years—see Silent Night (2012) for such an example—or dismemberments. The 2019 open was most unexpected, and welcome for sure as it set the stage for the reunion. While “Rest in Pieces”, the penultimate episode of AHS 1984, has Margaret desperate to get the party started, looking to secure the services of Richard and arriving (thumbless) Bruce, who was rescued from certain death by a traveling Mary Kay saleswoman in pink car, in helping to kill all the bands/musicians (and any other happening to unfortunately be there) so she could exploit their ghosts at Camp Redwood! She was quite a lunatic, psychotic vision and all, that Margaret. Not sure how she could get away with that, but I digress…

Richard Ramirez, to the credit of the creative team, continue to butcher him real good. Sledgehammer to the legs, lots of blades to the torso (and head), and a particularly nasty throat slicing with squirting blood. He must always be kept under submission, killed over and over, and never allowed to leave Redwood. His devotion to Satan allowed for him to continue to resurrect and always be able to exit Redwood at any time to commit to killing Bobby. Bobby, despite every reason not to, including nearly dying when confronting Ramirez, must return to Redwood and see his father. Margaret counts on this and tries to capitalize on his desire to see Benji. Eventually she gets him off alone—or so she believes—until Benji puts her knife in the side of her head. She again tries to get to him, but The Lady in White emerges, telling her to back off. So while Ramirez and Margaret are never quite able to upend the other eternal denizens of Camp Redwood’s environs, Bobby gets to reunite with the family he’ll never able to enjoy in his life, but they will know he’s okay.

One of the nice surprises of the final two episodes is Benji’s conversion from the murderous Jingles, who seemed irredeemable and more or less a dark figure of unrelenting doom, to a terrified, worried father who just wants to make sure Ramirez cannot find or kill his son. His confrontations with his victims should be expected, and their anger towards him—they have a lot of torturous ideas consuming them because of where his actions left them—is justly deserved but all he wants is to make sure Bobby is okay. He does have an altercation with Richard interrupted by Bruce—his easy exit from the season finale was surprisingly anticlimactic—in the pink car. And when left to bleed out in a boat, Benji is pulled into the water by his young brother…a fun callback to “Friday the 13^th”. But at the end of “Rest in Pieces”, it does appear Benji’s picnic with his mother and brother—far more heart-warming and gentle than the mother and son confrontation that was anything but civil and harmonious—kept him away from everything else.

Leslie Jordan as the patsy Margaret eventually shoots because he couldn’t stop Trevor from turning away all the musical acts, earlier tasked with a cleanup of the pop group massacre, locating them practicing from behind the bus, rooting on her woodchipper demise cracked me up. It was the least he could enjoy considering how she treated him. He's sort of interjected in the marital and domestic misery of Margaret and Trevor. He's often browbeaten and the product of her rage.