Wednesday, September 30, 2015

“Scream Queens” Recap: My Grandma Sent Me That Chainsaw

Knives were so last week. Chainsaws are the hot new accessory for fall.
From: NewNextNow
 Last week on Scream Queens, we met a mansion full of garbage people and the one heroic devil trying to murder all of them for us. The Red Devil stabbed its way through three necks and right into the hearts of a nation, even showing the good sense only to pretend to kill Nick Jonas, thereby saving Twitter from having to burn all the streets. It’s a public service, really.


 Since there’s a vicious killer on the loose, Grace and Zayday begin this week by immediately heading to an abandoned convenience store in the middle of the night. Good. There are never any serial killers there.

Oh wait, the opposite of that. The Red Devil is standing exactly two feet away from them right now. They don’t notice because Zayday is too busy having some sense and explaining that even though Pete seems trustworthy because he’s a barista instead of a walking bucket of trash, he’s actually the worst. Correct.

Finally, after several centuries, the two super sleuths deign to notice the enormous, bright red specter looming next to them


 Grace tries to get her Veronica Mars on (she wishes) by tasering him right in the balls, and Zayday helps by accidentally knocking over every display case ever made. MURDER FIXED.

Oops. Never mind. It’s just Eugene. And we know he’s not really the murderer because…he’s not one of the main characters? Murder not fixed? OK.

In other completely normal middle-of-the-night behavior, Chanels #1 and #5 really want to hang out with Ariana Grande’s frozen corpse. Who doesn’t love a nice corpse before bed? But to the surprise of zero people, the body is gone. Chanel is alarmed. Chanel #5 just had a threesome with twins, so “missing corpse” isn’t really on the radar for her.

Speaking of Ariana Grande, Zayday and Grace have decided to start thinking it’s weird that she died three days ago. Can’t slip anything past these two. In her bedroom, they notice a giant blood stain on the carpet, then break into a discussion group about whether it’s blood.


 Thankfully, Officer Niecy bursts in right then with her trusty canister of This Is Blood, You Idiots spray, which confirms that it is indeed blood. Officer Niecy proceeds to muse for a while about why no one seems to realize that Chanel Ariana Grande was murdered, in spite of the fact that she live-tweeted her own murder. Good point. Grace counters with the revelation that Chanel Ariana Grande is still posting to instagram. Inconclusive. A lifeless figure with no detectable brain function posting to instagram? That wouldn’t be news.

Sadly, even though we know that Nick Jonas is alive, the rest of the idiot hookers of Faketown University (or whatever) still believe he’s extremely dead. And now that hot guys are dying, it’s time to start caring. Chad is really sad about it. Who’s going to interrupt conversations to give monologues about his hotness now?

Definitely not Chanel because in spite of her attempts to pretend to be sad and un-break up with Chad, she still cannot accept the fact that he wants to have sex with her corpse and cheat on her with all adjacent flora and fauna. How hard is that to understand? Only a garbage person wouldn’t get that.

Wisely, Chad turns his back on Chanel and instead introduces us to his hot new English friend, Earl Grey. (Because that’s literally the first English thing that came to mind? Now meet his brothers, Royal Family and Calling It Football.) Chad and Earl are joining the rest of the student body to candlelight vigil the crap out of Nick Jonas’s memory while also protesting the idea of murder. Apparently, it’s bad.


 Dean Jamie Lee isn’t really sold on that argument. She assures the students that five murders is a totally normal amount of murders and that serial killing will be solved as long as everyone hugs a tortured gay child tonight (that’s actually true). But just to pretend like she cares, she’s also changing the school mascot. A Red Devil just comes across as a little too stabby. Mostly because it keeps stabbing people.

In a minor faux pas, she neglects to take any of my suggestions for a better mascot (an old wig! The color off-white! The concept of loneliness!). Instead, because of the reasons, she unilaterally declares that the new mascot will be a dancing ice cream cone. A giant ice cream cone named Coney then shimmies out of the nightmare that birthed it to perform a rousing “happy candlelight vigil!” dance extravaganza.


 The students are appropriately horrified by this abomination, and being a true devil of the people, the Red Devil decides to oblige the public by chainsawing Coney’s head off. Thank you, hero.

Fully committed to caring about Ariana Grande suddenly, Grace and Zayday head to her family’s ancestral castle to meet the bowls of sawdust that raised her.


 The Grandes are shocked to learn that they have a daughter. Grace and Zayday are shocked to learn that Chad and Chanel #2 were “porking.” (Chad, we need to address your vocabulary.) Because Grace is supposed to be a nice, moral person, she proceeds to run 700 miles per hour back to Kappa to spill this gossip to the rest of the Chanels immediately. What a saint.

In other news, Grace’s dad Wes continues to be about 11 months older than her, and he’s also her new film studies professor. He doesn’t know anything about film, but he does own a blazer with elbow patches, so that’s good enough. Because of appropriateness, he has decided to show the class Texas Chainsaw Massacre today. That won’t come into play.

Gigi is so head-over-jean-skirt for Wes that she corners him after class to flirt about thematic representations of trauma. (Fun!) Dean Jamie Lee is having exactly none of this. Using her Wes Obsession Sonar, she tracks the duo down in a millisecond and challenges Gigi to an epic match of Overt Hatred Tennis. It’s the best kind.

Because Chanel #3 is my hero and I badly want to be her, she has decided she’s soul mates with Lesbian Pledge starting today, which means she can reveal two important secrets about herself. The main one is that she’s the heir to a B-level frozen dinner fortune. Also, her dad is Charles Manson. But mostly the frozen dinners. Note: If Chanel #3 dies, I might have to break up with Red Devil. It would be unforgivable.

In what is perhaps the worst display of decision-making in this whole episode, Neck Brace has dared to breach Chanel’s lair.


Shockingly, it’s not full of jars of orphan blood. It’s mostly purses. Neck Brace turns immediately to glitter at the sight of it and starts rubbing herself against everything. You know, like a crazy person. Obviously, Chanel is secretly lurking in the corner, laying her egg sac while presiding over this kingdom of hairy dresses that I don’t understand at all.

Chanel explains that the closet is like a second vagina to her. An external, spherical, multistory vagina. And Neck Brace has violated it. To her credit, Chanel refrains from sucking out Neck Brace’s soul on the spot. Instead, she makes the savvy realization that the Chanel population is currently 40% murdered (usual sorority casualty rate) and must be restocked. Chanel needs to be surrounded by a buffer layer of lesser Chanels who don’t run as fast as her. That way, she’s never the most likely to be murdered. And that, my friends, is how Chanel #6 was born.

Cue the requisite “wearing my hair down and getting rid of my personality turned me beautiful” staircase makeover reveal! Hooray! Unacceptably, Chanel #5 does not instantly burst into tears of beauty at the sight of Lea Michele with a slightly different hairstyle. What are you, a stone? Instead, she gets all grumpy about this unauthorized crowning of a new Chanel.

Her hissy fit might have threatened tonight’s game of “Cocaine or Dildo?” (the classic conundrum), but it’s thoroughly ruined by the arrival of Gigi, Dean Jamie Lee, and an epic pair of mom jeans.


 Because everything about both of them is a walking nervous breakdown, they’ve decided to move into the murder house to be closer to murder.

Elsewhere, the boys have gathered at the fraternity, looking like they just went for a swim in an L.L. Bean catalog, to discuss how much Nick Jonas liked boobs (0%) and how they’re going to avenge his death.


 Chad proclaims that they will take matters into their own sweater vests and go after the Red Devil themselves. Have no fear, seven golf enthusiasts are here!

As is customary when hunting a murderer, the Backstreet Boys begin playing and the boys change into their tough-guy outfits. And by tough guy outfits, I mean cricket whites. Because nothing says, “STEP TO THIS” like knowing the rules of cricket. It’s a little confusing that they’re dressed in cricket whites while holding baseball bats, though. People coming back to life to send tweets is one thing, but suspension of disbelief can only be stretched so far.


 The boys soon learn that hitting a fire hydrant with a baseball bat is kind of tiring. Thankfully, two considerate Red Devils save them from any more exhausting fire-hydrant abuse by materializing holding chainsaws. Double Red Devil action! Showing off their awesome intellectual powers, the boys choose to pit their baseball bats against the Red Devils’ chainsaws. The winner is chainsaws. And then one of the boys gets his arms cut off. The winner is chainsaws again.

The only person around here who’s even trying at this point is Officer Niecy. She has settled on a prime suspect, and (TWIST) it’s Zayday. Probably. Maybe. At least, she bought a CD at Best Buy, and that’s extremely weird. When was the last time anyone bought a CD at Best Buy? Among Zayday’s other questionable behavior is tweeting Shonda Rhimes about Annalise Keating needing an accomplice (#cahoots). This is even more suspicious because Annalise Keating has nothing but accomplices. What do you think Frank’s job is? (No, seriously, what is Frank’s job?)


 Most damning of all, Zayday has a chainsaw under her bed, but that can be easily explained. Her grandma gave it to her for protection. Because her grandma is perfect. Maybe Zayday’s grandma should be the one sitting in that car outside Kappa. She wouldn’t let the Red Devil in, that’s for sure.

While Gigi, Wes, and the dean dine on awkwardness and 58 bottles of salad dressing, Grace and Pete have left town to go on a six-hour drive to some garage where a clue about the 1995 baby might be. Don’t you have homework? Do you even go here? Hit the books.

Stuffed full of salad dressing, Gigi and the dean then head off to bed. Just in case we were beginning to doubt Dean Jamie Lee’s legend status, she’s rocking a 19th century homesteader’s nightgown and rolling with a white noise machine that sounds like a pregnant elephant burning a walrus.

Unable to stand the noise, Gigi goes to sleep on the couch. The Red Devil is thrilled by this development, but I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the Red Devil’s performance this time.


It really milked this murder, waving that chainsaw all dramatically and wasting a lot of time dismembering those poor, innocent throw pillows (YOU MONSTER), which allowed Gigi the chance to go full Rockette and unleash an incapacitating face kick. Poor workmanship. This should never have happened.

The Red Devil scampers away like a total tease who didn’t even kill any important characters this week, just as the dean waddles downstairs to ask what all the murder commotion was about. It was about murder. Her awfully convenient timing leads Wes to declare, “You’re the killer! I WIN THE MURDER!”

We’ll see about that. What did you think of this one? Did enough people get murdered? Do you wish Charisma Carpenter had been given something real to do?

No comments:

Post a Comment