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Hotel american horror story episodes12/16/2023 ![]() ![]() From the outside, the Cortez looks like any nondescript Skid Row flophouse. The one thing the hotel doesn’t have, all too conveniently, is any kind of cell service -just imagine the Yelp reviews around that. “I'm going to give this place a very bad review on Yelp.”ĬNT review: “Maids show enthusiasm and thoroughness, but points deducted since most guests prefer to live through the night.” Amenities “The computer said it was close to all the attractions,” one says in subtitles, after finding out the hotel isn’t actually anywhere near Universal Studios. “Welcome to America.” She’s refusing the money to a pastichey pair of Swedish co-eds, who clearly booked their room on a Scandinavian scam site. “No refunds,” Kathy Bates growls, her character Iris sporting a pair of Apfel-style oversized specs. No need to fret at the Cortez, though: Mare Winningham plays the no-nonsense hotel maid, who’s gleefully steaming enormous blood stains out of the sheets standing in the corridor, after what she calls a “terrible accident in room 51- just ghastly.” Housekeeping displays markedly more enthusiasm than the front desk staff here. ![]() My rule of thumb when mussing up a hotel room is “Would I want my mom to clean this up?”-clothes and towels untidily strewn around are fine, but anything ickier is best sorted before service. Let’s get to reviewing Hotel Cortez, the hottest, bloodiest mess since Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel. “Well, maybe this place is special,” coos Lady Gaga. “People aren’t supposed to live in hotels,” says one character soon after arriving at the murderous Cortez. END OF ASIDE.We’re fascinated by hotels, whether in real-life or Ryan Murphy’s imagination, and we couldn’t resist viewing his newest version of the show American Horror Story from a seasoned traveler’s perspective. I don’t think it was? Also, I choose to believe that the show won’t go back to the Murder House until the last scene of Hotel, which will also feature Jessica Lange in a quadruple cameo as every character she ever played on Hotel, and all those characters will be playing poker with Thanos. A dark vision of Detective Lowe’s future, perhaps? ( ASIDE: For a second, I thought the house of the flashback crime scene was the Murder House. The last time he tied one on was right after he saw a grisly crime scene: A man who accidentally murdered his family and then definitively murdered himself. He drank ginger ale he hasn’t had a drink in quite some time. He shared a late-night drink with Sally, listening to her sob stories about writing songs with Patti Smith in the golden days before smack. He’s looking to walk on the wild side, maybe. Here’s a question: What the hell is Detective Lowe doing in this wacky hotel? “Chutes and Ladders” built up the idea that he isn’t just investigating. Demille picture for the benefit of her crazies or Sister Jude, blitzed by electroshock, musical-numbering “The Name Game.” Asylum by comparison was less interested in the dreams of show business people and more interested in the dreams they make: Recall Sister Jude, drunk on Communion wine, playing an old Cecil B. Freak Show pushed that metaphor further, and exploded it: In the fourth iteration of American Horror Story, performance was both the by-product of and the cure for being weird, or unusual, or somehow anti- whatever society wants us all to be. Coven was, in its best moments, a very meta meditation on the plight of actresses, with Jessica Lange playing the wise elder raging against the dying of the light, murdering anyone young enough to remind her what age really is. Madison Montgomery in Coven was the flip side: An actress spoiled rotten into decadence and sociopathy. So many failed actresses found their way from film sets to the Murder House. American Horror Story inevitably points back to Hollywood. ![]()
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