American Horror Story (9×02) Mr. Jingles Review

For our review of the last episode of American Horror Story, click here.

Synopsis: Darkness descends upon the camp. Although it’s lights out, evil has no curfew. (IMDb)

The second episode of 1984 entitled, Mr. Jingles, had very little to do with the character, instead choosing to focus on the Camp Redwood staff as Xavier’s past comes back to haunt him, Brooke shares a major turning point in her life, Jingles speaks and Trevor comes within inches of stardom once again (pun intended).

Mr. Jingles followed the staff as they continued to blindly prepare for the kids arriving at camp in the morning (SPOILER: I don’t think they’re coming) as the Chief of Psychiatry of Red Haven Mental Facility, Karen Hopple (Orla Brady), makes a short-lived appearance on the campgrounds in an effort to demand it to be shut down due to Mr. Jingles’ escape from her facility. Of course, Margaret Booth refuses and sends Ms. Hoppel on her merry way only to conveniently run into her former patient who declares he is a monster before proceeding to kill her. At this point, I would kindly disagree as he is doing the audience a favor and removing all side characters to better focus on the core group of teenagers…but I digress.

Meanwhile, the “teenagers” begin to go their separate ways as the night winds down allowing Brooke to share a secret from her life before moving to LA. She reveals that she was previously engaged and on her wedding day failed at trying to convince her jealous fiance, Joey, of her love and commitment to him which resulted in Joey killing his best man, Sam, his father-in-law and finally himself leaving Brooke emotionally scarred at the altar. Elsewhere, the boys are bonding over future hookups while Xavier is corralled by his father agent, Blake (Todd Stashwick), pleading for him to jump back into the gay porn industry in order to become the star he desperately is trying to be. This plea quickly turns into Xavier pushing Blake towards the next great Pete Holmes, Trevor, only to be quickly murdered by Mr. Jingles while peeping on Trevor in the shower. Oh, AHS how I love you. Never change.

The episode takes an interesting turn as Richard Ramirez, aka, The Nightstalker (Zach Villa) conveniently arrives at Camp Redwood in search of Brooke who managed to elude him in the previous episode. As he wanders around camp, he is introduced to Margaret Booth who proceeds to listen to his story and helps steer his path towards an inevitable showdown with Mr. Jingles. It’s clear that Margaret’s main tool is persuasion as she states her main source of power is derived from two pillars; God & Trauma. The Nightstalker reveals that he has experienced a strange occurrence while at camp in having to murder the same affable hippie…twice! Margaret knows the hippie, Jonas (Lou Taylor Pucci), and helps him realize that he’s been dead for 14 years leaving the audience just as clueless as Jonas running around camp.

With an episode title such as Mr. Jingles, it only managed to only feature him in two major scenes which felt to hurt its narrative impact (more Mr. Jingles please). The smaller storylines within the episodes appeared to get more screen time than the over-arching battle between Booth and Jingles. It’s understood that the season still has 8 more hours left to fill in these gaps, however, its decision to spend the majority of the time on both Brooke and Xavier’s respective backgrounds felt misguided and could’ve been sprinkled across several episodes.

With a series such as American Horror Story, there are no truly good people and thus spending time forcing me to hopefully become emotionally attached to them seems pointless. In truth, the easiest character to become attached to has been Mr. Jingles, who this reviewer want to see exact swift and complete justice towards the entire Camp Redwood and Jonas who should be in an Emmy conversation simply for his look of confusion – it’s flawless.

STRAY THOUGHTS:

• Blake’s tombstone: “The last thing he ever saw was an Act of God.”
• Joey’s actions didn’t make me laugh. The thought of him plotting this while getting dressed and hanging with his boys did though.
• Trauma = A stranger grabbing your boob outside Sam Goody. Montana never change.
• NEWSFLASH: Chet did the steroids! Great reaction by the rest of the gang.
• I love every time Xavier gets behind the wheel of a vehicle. He’s magic.
• Jonas didn’t have any ears missing – Jingles didn’t kill him???

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