Sister Jude launches an attack against Sister Mary Eunice while a Braircliff patient is influenced by the Christmas spirit.
**CONTENT WARNING: Descriptions of violence, mentions of genocide and rape**
Synopsis
In 1962, Leigh (Ian McShane) murders a Salvation Army Santa and steals his suit. So dressed, he invades home, then torments and murders a family.
In 1963, Leigh is in Briarcliff, having been caught after murdering four other families that night. Sister Jude wants him to be front and center for a newspaper holiday photo, but just as the photographer arrives, Leigh attacks an orderly and bites off half his face. Sister Jude forbids Christmas from then on and locks Leigh away for good.
Back to 1964, Sister Mary Eunice is running the place and lets Leigh join the holiday festivities dressed as Santa. Meanwhile, Frank, the security guard who shot Grace, feels remorse over what happened and wants to go to the police. Dr. Arden warns Sister Mary Eunice about him, and she tricks Frank into climbing the ladder to place the star on the tree. Leigh knocks the ladder down, injuring Frank but not fatally. He locks Leigh up again, but as he leaves, Sister Mary Eunice slits his throat.
Sister Jude pays Sister Mary Eunice a visit, stating that the only reason the devil can interact with Catholic symbols unscathed is because he is hiding behind Sister Mary Eunice’s purity. Sister Jude threatens to kill Sister Mary Eunice, but they are interrupted by Dr. Arden, who has security escort Sister Jude out. Dr. Arden gives Sister Mary Eunice a gift, glamorous ruby earrings he confiscated from a Jewish woman at one of his concentration camps. Every day she hid the earrings by swallowing them and then fishing them out of her poop at the end of the day. She ultimately died of internal bleeding as a result. Sister Mary Eunice is unfazed by the gruesome story and happily dons the earrings. Dr. Arden turns out to have been testing her to see if any of the real Sister Mary Eunice’s shyness remains.
Convinced now that Sister Mary Eunice is no longer herself, Dr. Arden goes to Sister Jude, the only person he can think of to help him get the real Sister Mary Eunice back. They hatch a plan for Dr. Arden to lure Sister Mary Eunice into the head office and lock her in with Sister Jude. When the time comes, Dr. Arden double crosses Sister Jude to prove his loyalty to Sister Mary Eunice, telling her of the plan. Sister Mary Eunice instead sends Leigh into the room and they lock him in with Sister Jude. Leigh beats and attempts to rape Sister Jude, but she stabs him in the neck.
Dr. Arden carts off Grace’s body to feed to the creatures, but as he’s leaving the tunnel, her body is taken away by the aliens.
Lana is worried sick that Sister Mary Eunice didn’t tell the police anything. She’s confined to a room, but upon exploring it finds Kit drugged up. She wakes him from a dream of spending Christmas with Alma and Grace, and tells him the truth about Thredson. He tells her Grace was killed, and they hatch a plan to call the police. Lana manages to sneak away and get to Thredson’s old office, but when she goes for the phone, Thredson shows up, having found her because she was mentioned in the news after the car accident. He says he destroyed every speck of evidence of Bloody Face, so they can’t prove it was him, but he has a personal grudge against Lana now and wants to start a new Bloody Face suit with her skin. As he drags her away, Kit hits him from behind and knocks him out. Lana wants to kill him, but with the evidence gone, they need him alive to clear Kit’s name. Together, Kit and Lana tie him up and stash him in an unused room while they figure out what to do now.
The Staff
Dr. Arden used to admire Sister Mary Eunice because of her purity, but now that he’s fully convinced she’s the devil, he’s helping her anyway. They almost got me, though. With his opinion of Sister Mary Eunice and regret that she failed his test, I thought for a minute that he was turning to Sister Jude for real. But then I realized it was too convenient for him to come up with a plan to get Sister Jude right where he wants her, so I was pretty sure it was a trap before it was sprung. It was still well done, in any case.
Oh the irony! For the past fifteen years, Sister Jude has spent every waking minute regretting the murder she believed she had committed. Now, just one day after learning that she never killed anyone, she immediately is forced into a position where she has to kill someone in self-defense. Something tells me she’ll have significantly less guilt this time around, though.
Frank should have known better than to tell Dr. Arden, of all people, about his plan to go to the police. Just go. Don’t let them stop you. Now he’s paid with his life.
The Patients
Grace may be dead, but it seems her story is indeed not over, just as I hoped. The aliens have reclaimed her. Please, can we find out more about the aliens soon? They’ve been around since one of the first scenes of the whole season, and yet we still know next to nothing about them, what they want or why they keep abducting people. What are they doing with Grace?
I’m so glad Lana and Kit have reconciled. I know Lana was trying to do the right thing when she prevented him from escaping, but now she knows first hand that he is just a victim of Bloody Face. Now that they’re working together, and have Bloody Face incapacitated, maybe they can do something about it.
Leigh is an interesting one. A serial killer who gets extra murderous at Christmas time and dresses up like Santa. The red of his suit goes really well with the blood splatters. It’s a neat visual for sure.
Conclusion
At this point I’m just dying for them to get more into the alien subplot – and for something to be done about Sister Mary Eunice and Bloody Face before they continue to cause destruction. But considering there are still five episodes left, there probably is some time before they resolve all of this.
Score: 7/10