American Horror Story: Freak Show, Season 4, Episode 10: “Orphans”
Written by James Wong
Directed by Bradley Buecker
Airs Wednesdays at 10pm ET on FX
Over the past few weeks, Freak Show had been finally appearing to move somewhere. Dandy was establishing himself as the season’s definitive antagonist, Jimmy’s love triangle with Maggie and Imma was bizarre but intriguing, and Bette and Dot’s relationship was becoming a suitable emotional core. This week’s episode, “Orphans,” only briefly (and unsatisfactorily) addresses the latter two conflicts, and it entirely ignores the former.
In its place, writer James Wong and director Bradley Buecker give us the story of Pepper. Though she was a character on Asylum, a period of time which the episode moves towards in its final act, she hasn’t been much of a factor this season, and it’s been close to two full seasons since viewers have even had the opportunity to care about her.
But Buecker and Wong appear to expect her to court our sympathies. The teaser showcases Pepper mourning her husband Salty’s death, followed by a shot of the opportunistic Stanley decapitating the corpse to sell. She’s distraught, and the viewer seems invited to share her feelings, but the character hasn’t been developed nearly enough for anyone other than Elsa to be concerned. In anticipation of this problem, Buecker uses stirring, melodramatic music to coax drops from our tear ducts, but the scene is too removed from any further contextualization to have much emotional significance.
Still, Wong appears to be determined to make the viewer sympathize with the insignificant character. Accordingly, the first act mostly consists of a flashback to Pepper’s adoption by Elsa, framed in the context of a conversation between her and Desiree. Though the flashback appears to exist to give context to Pepper’s grief, it contains the same hollow sentimentalism of the teaser, and falls similarly flat. The segment is effective in making Elsa appear even more pathetic, since her description of her relationship with Pepper as her first experience of “unconditional love” comes across as incredibly sad, but it fails to explain why the “freak” matters (the term is used here to emphasize how unimportant she is in the show’s broader context).
Ultimately, Elsa cares about her even less than the viewer does, and she talks Pepper’s childless sister Rita (Mare Winningham) into taking custody of her. Though the forced adoption never seems to show much promise, matters take a turn for the worse when Rita gives birth surprisingly late in life, and Pepper is thrust into the role of caretaker. Rita and her husband soon grow tired of both their adopted child and their natural one, and the couple’s frustration leads Pepper to her Asylum setting. Unfortunately, as was previously emphasized, Freak Show simply hasn’t given Pepper enough to do for the bizarre origin story to have any sort of emotional impact. The scenes come across as a cloying diversion, rather than a genuinely helpful addition to the season.
Pepper isn’t the only subject of “Orphans,” as the pluralism of the title suggests. The other parent-less character, Maggie, gets a brief flashback as well, though hers isn’t much more interesting.
The episode devotes more time to her present day concerns, which aren’t particularly gripping either. Though her victimhood at the hands of the nefarious Stanley makes Maggie sympathetic, her entitled whining in response to Jimmy’s fluctuating desires is less enticing. One feels bad for Maggie, but her punching down to less privileged characters (Imma, Bette and Dot, etc.) only serves to alienate her from the viewer.
Thankfully, the twins arrive to actually tug on our heartstrings, and the scene with them and Maggie provides one of the few bright spots in “Orphans.” As expressed in last week’s review, their decision to cooperate in “Tupperware Party Massacre” made for one of the most moving moments of the season, and their attempt to simultaneously help Maggie and Jimmy is among the only captivating moments in this otherwise frivolous episode.
Still, scenes featuring well-developed characters are greatly outnumbered by moments featuring relatively insignificant ones in “Orphans,” and the outcome is accordingly weak. It’s hard to understand why exactly the writers elected to use the episode to develop such an otherwise unimportant character, particularly this late in the season. The flashback/flash-forward seems like a reward for those who’ve been watching American Horror Story since the Asylum days, but it doesn’t even fulfill that role very well, due to the amount of time that’s passed since the second season. As the end of Freak Show approaches, seeing how Dandy’s story gets resolved is something to look forward to, as well as finding out exactly what happens to Jimmy, but learning more about minor characters is not something that is very interesting.