#infantata

Ah yes... the first Halloween episode of AHS, the beginning of a long tradition. 

AS USUAL - spoilers ahead, and I am writing notes as I watch along.

# This first note actually was supposed to be in my Murder House episode look-back, but I forgot to write it. Nora’s reaction to the house already tells us a lot about her character. When she was alive we see her repulsed by the house and treating it hatefully, but as a ghost she is infatuated with it and repulsed by any change or modernization made it to. It already hints at one of her defining traits - Nora is the kind of person that is never satisfied with what she has, and always in love with what she lost. 

Back to the actual episode.

# “Everybody thinks they have style and everybody thinks they’re funny. Most people aren’t”. I will retain myself from pointing out how this sentence can be true for some late AHS seasons X)

# A slight mistake - Samhain originally was not to celebrate the end of the harvest festival. In Celtic culture Samhain was actually the equivalent of New Year, as well as the switching time between the “clear season” and the “dark season”. But yes, the belief that the frontiers between the worlds of the dead and the living is a true fact. It was believed the gates of the Otherworld opened during Samhain - the Otherworld being as much the one of gods and magic as the one of the dead.

# Ah yes, it is when Addie’s true age is revealed. And now Constance treating her as a child becomes much more disturbing when you realize she is in fact in her thirties. 

# You have to admire Larry for actually putting candies inside his pumpkin-bag despite it being just a prop for his blackmail. Another piece of discreet joke and comedy.

# Chad and Patrick, that was their names! I honestly forgot what they were named X)

# Fun fact - in behind-the-scenes content it was explained that Ben’s childhood was supposed to be much more explored. It was another one of the deleted sub-plots, though it is still alluded in the actual season (mentions here and there). All we know is that Ben’s childhood would have explained a lot about who he is today and his decisions - and that persons with red hair played an important role in said childhood, hence why Ben has such connections and reactions to both Moira and the ginger-haired twins. 

# Chad and Patrick trying to throw discord and strife into the Harmon couple is yet another reminder of the looping and repeating history of the house. However here there is a nice nuance - we later know that the forces of the house influence the ghosts and manipulate them, but here we just see that the ghosts are attempting to recreate their own history over and over again. The same way Moira tries to have Ben cheat on Vivien the same way Hugo cheated with her, Chad and Patrick try to break the Harmon couple the same way their couple was broken. And there is this ambiguity -  a defining trait of the ghosts is that they are stuck in the past and unable to move on. How much of the repeated history of the house is because of the ghosts selfish behavior, and how much is because of the house’s influence? Good question.

# Tate invoking Charles spirit with the ouija board makes me wonder how he actually perceives him, or if Charles and Tate are tied somehow? After all, Tate took Nora as a mother figure, so maybe he does see Charles as a father figure somehow? I don’t know, I am theorizing here - and it might be that he and Charles never encountered, because it seems that Nora and Charles purposefully avoid each other in the afterlife (their ghosts are NEVER seen together).

# I quite enjoy how the creators avoided the usual “horror house historian” trope by actually having several characters telling fragments of the house’s history, fragments that fit together in the audience’s mind like a puzzle. Marcy, the Eternal Darkness tour, Tate... 

# It is quite interesting to note that the animal parts Montgomery used in creating the Infantata belong to a sloth. At least I think it is a sloth... I know I talked about it with other people and I saw info about it in one interview. 

# It is also interesting to note that the use of the Dracula music for the Montgomery family is actually a reflection of the creators inspiration for the Infatata - they didn’t want to just create a Frankenstein rip-off, but rather a mix of the Frankenstein Monster and Dracula (hence why the Infantata is bloodthirsty/drink its victims blood, why it has such an elderly look and why his mouth is similar to the one of a leech).

# I wonder which manga Violet is reading.

2 days ago on February 23rd 2015, we lost a great actor name Ben Woolf... to the AHS community we also knew him as 'Meep' or 'Infantata'. He will be missed greatly and forever be remembered.