American Horror Story: "Smoldering Children" Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow…

Woah, so there were more than a few of us that guessed correctly about what could have been possibly going on with Violet and her "staying in her room and missing weeks of school" deal, but I don't think that took all that much away from the revelation that, yes, she's been dead for the past four episodes. I think that, with a show filled with mysteries like American Horror Story, fans try to guess and predict every single outcome. And so there's a good chance that one of the theories will probably be on the money. Hell, until Ben actually appeared outside of the house last week in "Spooky Little Girl," many thought he was dead too. Because we never actually saw him living in his motel room, or wherever he was banished to, and only saw him in or around the house.

But even though many of us guessed that Violet was a ghost, and that she actually died when she tried to commit suicide back in "Halloween, Part 2," the actual sight of her dead, rotting corpse was pretty horrifying. And it was even more disturbing to watch her see her own dead body. And also to hear Tate tell her that she "died crying." Ugh. There's just such a delicious awfulness to this series. It really doesn't shy away from being brutally ugly. And while the big twist here might have been a tad predictable (even EW.com managed to spoil it a few weeks back), it still didn't come off as overly gimmicky since the only tell-tale sign to springboard off of her was Violet not being seen outside the house. The ghosts are able to act like real people and can physically exist normally within the walls of the Murder House, so Violet, technically, is alive when she's indoors. Also, we had a bit of a precursor pre-twist to warm us up to this revelation in the form of Tate, back when we found out he was really dead.

I was curious to see what would happen if Violet tried to leave the house, from a visual standpoint. I mean we knew Hayden vanished in the back of Luke's car that one time, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to be trapped. And no, you don't bump into an invisible barrier or anything, you just get sucked back inside instantly. What "Smoldering Children" did so well was play out the actual discovery of Violet being dead. Because that's what was going to really sell it. How she found out. And how she took the news. I'm still not sure if she's completely okay with it since the notion of living with Tate forever seemed to put a tiny bit of worry on her face even though she's still in somewhat of a "smitten kitten" phase with him. She likes him, but is also aware that he's totally unbalanced. And that this entire situation might get old really fast.

Tate's plan, to have Violet kill herself as a ghost before she could find out that she was already a ghost, was a bold one, but there was really no way it was going to go off without a hitch. Mostly because he's such a psycho-spaz about everything. At least his clumsy strategy to drug Ben gave us out first ever Ben vs. Gimp fight! It's still strange to think that Ben doesn't even fully know there are ghosts in the house. To him, he was just fighting the rubber rapist. I did like seeing Violet, in a moment of panic, run to find her dad so that he could protect her from Tate. I'd like to think that, despite every horrible thing Ben's done, she still loves him and will run to him when she's in danger. "I know it's important to you to be a good father," Violet tells him, hiding the fact that she's happy that he wants to be a good father.

The institutionalized Vivien, and the Satan spawn story, took the back seat in this episode as Constance resurfaced, only to be a prime suspect in the murder of Travis – dubbed the "Boy Dahlia" in the media. Constance's story with Larry wasn't the best, since it seems overly obvious to everyone except Larry that she never loved him, but the opening scene, from 1994 cleared up a ton of questions and corrected a bunch of assumptions I made a few episodes back when we saw Constance and Larry talking about social services coming in to take her child away. I assumed that entire thing happened after Tate when on a shooting rampage, and that she was somehow now living next door to her old house.

It turns out that she was really only talking about Beau (and not Tate) and that whole story took place before the shootings. I also thought Larry got the burns while trying to save his family from the fire, but now…man, oh man. Tate was a vicious, coked-up motherf***er, wasn't he? So while it's always fun to watch Jessica Lange chew up the scenery a little, this episode really acted as Larry's farewell I suppose – with him coming to terms with his part in his wife and children's death. Even though, you know, a case can certainly be made that Larry's wife might have over-reacted a teensy bit. It's hard to put so much blame on his shoulders when no sane man could have anticipated that his wife would have burned their children alive. But still, Larry accepted his awfulness and took the fall for Travis' death just so Constance wouldn't get wrongfully accused.

A fun game to play on this show is "which extraneous outsider will be murdered this week?" And while the two new police detectives or the truant officer would have made for some good logs for the fire, it looks like the prize went to Phil the "Verminator." Of course, there was a moment when I assumed that the body he saw underneath the house belonged to Hugo, and that Constance was about to land in some deep 30-year-old murder doo-doo. But then we discovered the actual fate of Hugo's remains as it was revealed that Constance ground him up and fed her to some dogs in the basement. Why were there dogs in the basement? To eat some savory Hugo-chuck of course! Matt Fowler is an Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @MattIGN.

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