American Horror Story - Hotel : Checking In

 When I go into each season of American Horror Story, I brace myself for whatever Murphy and Falchuk might throw at me. As it concerns the setting (for the most part) of this particular season of AHC, I anticipated a lot of crazy. Well, a lot of crazy, and very eye catchy set design for the hotel. And "Checking In" really throws a lot of characters out there to the point where my brain was a bit, "Woah, I need my mind to breathe a bit". In regards to the hotel setting itself, I thought immediately of Cecil Hotel, because I had just recently watched Joe Berlinger's doc on Netflix. The opening shot of Hotel Cortez just cried out Cecil Hotel. I found the doc enthralling because I'm fascinated with aging relics, structures built long ago that seem to have resisted total demolition, even if some fanciful renovations spruce up possible interest initially when you arrive. It is deep within the hotel that its violent, creepy secrets seemingly kept inside its walls, behind room doors, can emerge and let you see what lurks.

I was taken aback by the overt sex and violence. Now, Murphy and Falchuk were given plenty of freedom to go where a lot of series never really have. There are some restraints -- even when Gaga and Bomer have "encouraged" a couple to follow them from a park viewing of "Nosferatu" (the FW Murnau masterpiece) to their Hotel Cortez bed in a very expensive suite and engage is kissing and sex, the breasts, vagina, and penis are carefully avoided through certain body and camera placements (and editing) although Murphy is able to get some male ass on screen -- but sharp fingernail (typically on gloves) throat slashing is particularly gruesome. You see deep cuts on throats and lots of spraying and splashy blood. I have to admit that I never would have anticipated in the 90s that a television show would be just as grisly as an early Hellraiser film. Two Swedish beauties arrive in LA and find themselves directed to Hotel Cortez -- I am reminded of a couple from England tricked into booking a stay at the Cecil Hotel, not realizing until they are in their room just how duped they were -- bullied by hotel clerk, Kathy Bates (Iris), into taking a room with some Lovecraftian ghoul crawling out of a bed with a slit sewn shut when the tourists smell "him" in their room.

There is even a big arc regarding Wes Bentley's homicide detective, John Lowe, very collected and in control even when looking at crime scene photos with destroyed bodies, hideously pulverized by a serial killer (or perhaps two killers), outside (for the most part) the Hotel Cortez. Lowe's son was kidnapped from an amusement park when he just momentarily slipped away to look at his phone. At the end of the episode, Lady Gaga's "Countess" (that is the name I found when doing brief research) opens a wall door that is hidden from visitors with a wall of screens as blond kids play video games...one of the kids is Lowe's son. A phone call to Lowe, from a killer that taunts him, leads him to Hotel Cortez (the room 64 gets passed to almost everyone that stays there by Iris) where he awakens from a deep sleep to find who he believes is his son. To keep his wife and daughter safe, Lowe takes a room at the Hotel Cortez and away from them...having seen the killer when he is called to his wife's house, finding two men hanging on pillars, disemboweled. Lowe and his wife, Dr. Alex (Chloe Sevigny), are definitely struggling because of the loss of their son and the long hours of a detective trying to solve very difficult cases.

Gaga's Countess and her "partner", Donovan (Matt Bomer), take up residence -- later we learn that Countess seems to own the Hotel Cortez, selling the property to artist, Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson), engaging his inquisitive son. So why does Countess "collect" kids? 

Sarah Paulson hangs about the hotel, with a cigarette, notable injuries, disheveled coif, and this obvious sadness. When a heroin addict (he reminds me of Milo Yiannopoulos), played by Max Greenfield (of New Girl) is anally mounted by this brute with a head covering, hiding the face, and a spike dildo attachment, Paulson's (ghost, I think) Sally asks him if he loves her. This whole scene was just hard to watch. I mean, it is a brutal rape. Greenfield's ass is exposed after the brute unmounts him, with his eye pupils pooling black. Sally has this tear on her face. Later on Sally enters a room where Iris has prepared a "meal" for her two Swedish tourists, taking them to task for carrying lots of drugs and planning to party hearty in LA. The tourists are held in this blue-neon lighted circular cage that reminded me of a contraption you might see scantily clad gals in clubs encased in. Before Iris could feed her foodstuff to them through a tube connected to her keg, Sally barges in. Iris allows Sally to "tend to them" while she goes back to the register, not realizing one of them would be set free. The Countess, though, wasn't about to let one of those "guests" to get away...especially with what they might have for the police. It is all about keeping her secrets in the Hotel Cortez.

A lot here. Murphy and Falchuk include Denis O'Hare bald, in makeup, long earrings, painted nails, and (I have read) Liz Taylor styled wardrobe. He helps to run the desk of the hotel with Iris. At the end, we see that Donovan is Iris' son. It sort of adds a personal detail between two characters who weren't seen together, with the additional flashback to 1994 where Iris pushes drug pusher, Sally, out a window of the Hotel Cortez after giving her son China White. It would seem the hypodermic drug injected in Donovan kills him, with the Countess there when Iris comes back to the room...it would seem Countess has some secret eternal solution available. This might explain the graphic murder of the couple when Countess and Donovan drink the blood from the spurting, gushing neck wounds. Never has blood drinking and messy kissing been intimately shared with such messy results between two seeming vampires. 2.5/5