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‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ Season 8 Episode 1 ‘The End’ Recap

Did you bear witness to the apocalypse last night? Are you intrigued or confused? Fear not, as I feel you may not be the only one feeling that way this morning.

Our fall TV season is returning and along with it, my peaceful slumber. I stay up late during new TV seasons for my hardcore shows because I want to witness them live and not be spoiled the next day by every platform of media or the water cooler gossip. Last night started off my television season with American Horror Story: Apocalypse which I had been looking forward to since Ryan Murphy announced the Murder House and Coven crossover season. We are just going to do a quick recap because there are so many good details and interactions, I would hate to spoil it all.

Recap:

The show opens to a salon in Beverly Hills where Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt (Leslie Grossman) who is a billionaire socialite who doesn’t know how to turn a dishwasher on, is receiving a cut and style from her stylist Mr. Gallant (Evan Peters) and later in walks her assistant Mallory (Billie Lourd) who is berated into getting Coco a coffee. Before that happens, you start hearing those annoying emergency alert rings on everyone’s phone in the salon. The close-up on the phones reveals there is an incoming missile that is going to strike Los Angeles within the hour.

Due to the snafu that Hawaii had in January of 2018 with a false missile alert being sent, most people in the salon do not take the alert seriously. It isn’t until Coco’s father, mother and brother face time her from Hong Kong to alert her that the threat is real, as is the one in Hong Kong and they are all going to die. Her father tells her that he booked 4 tickets on a private jet and it is waiting to take her to a safe location and she needs to get to the airport fast. Before Coco really has a chance to process what is going on, her phone screen turns black and it is assumed, her family has perished in a missile attack in Hong Kong.

Coco and Mallory jump into a car that mysteriously pulls up waiting on her while Mr. Gallant heads to his wealthy nana’s house, who in her entitled atmosphere demands to know why the maid is leaving and that even though her grandson keeps calling her, she doesn’t return calls until the next day. At this point, Mr. Gallant takes his nana Evie Gallant (Joan Collins) and has to forcefully walk her out the door so that they can get on the plane with Coco and Mallory knowing that there are still 2 tickets left out of the 4 that Coco’s father purchased. In the commotion of the traffic and at this point, people falling to their death who decided suicide was better than a bomb blast.

Cut to 40 minutes before the missile blast and you see a mother and her two sons getting very excited over the fact the older son has been accepted to UCLA. Now here, I don’t know I got a little confused because, the alarms already sounded once about the approaching attack, maybe they ignored it as a hoax? I don’t know, all I know is their phones go off again very loudly with the same text and then dad comes home and asks why they are so happy and why haven’t they been watching the news. At this point a black car pulls up where two people, literally dressed like the MIB, are informing the family that the oldest son Timothy (Kyle Allen) has been selected by a group only known as The Cooperative due to his DNA make up that was found by way of DNA testing on an ancestor site, oh yeah, that urban legend was used as well. Timothy is then pulled from his family and ushered to a secret underground bunker that provides safety to him during the nuclear blast. Two weeks after the blast, Timothy and a young girl also taken by The Cooperative named Emily, are taken to some type of safe zone that honestly looks more like a haunted hayride.

From here we meet Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates) and Wilhelmina Venable (Sarah Paulson) who seem to be the two in charge of this safety outpost but there is something very “off” about the two of them from the moment they speak. There are some shenanigans that these two “leaders” like to get into at the expense of their guests however, that does seem like it may change with the arrival of a stranger. This stranger lets Wilhelmina know that he is from The Cooperative and is there to take anyone with him that he see’s fit to a more secure area that is stocked to last for the next decade. When this stranger pulls out his identification, long-time American Horror Story fans will notice his name, Michael Langdon. That is right, Michael Langdon the son of Vivian and Tate from season 1, Murder House.

Wrap Up:

After the world ends and we meet these players in what is left of life’s show, there are so many things I need answers to; we have a class system divided by the colors purple and grey, Coco spills the tea on the cost of buying your way to safety at 100 million a ticket (remember, her dad bought 4!), little gelatin cubes for your meal, no sex allowed, I could go on and on but, I won’t.

There are so many unanswered questions and I think I have already decided what team I will be on this season. In order to do that, you need to go and watch it, right now, there will be no excuses. It seems what has happened is that creator Ryan Murphy took, undoubtedly two mediocre seasons and just killed everything off from American Horror Story so that it could be reborn into the freaky, limit-pushing farce that in the end will make so much sense we will hate ourselves. Murphy is very good at storytelling and it seemed that a lot of that aspect of the show was missing the last two seasons.

The season premiere of American Horror Story: Apocalypse brought back that storytelling and it really makes me want to see what happens next. Remember when presenting a story you have to start with a background of where they came from or you can never appreciate where they end up. Give the season a few episodes to introduce us to the environment and the creatures we will watch roam around in it.