American Horror Story: Hotel Season Finale
Last night’s episode wrapped it up for the fifth season of American Horror Story. It has certainly been a strange season, one that didn’t particularly make a whole lot of sense to me, but one that I enjoyed nonetheless. I feel like I have walked away from each season having learned some sort of lesson such as the importance of sisterhood or that we are all freaks in our own way but Hotel didn’t have a message that I was able to grasp easily. I suppose I walk away realizing that a) Lady Gaga actually was Golden Globe worthy and b) she is kind of hot. If we were to have a season completely void of Jessica Lange, Hotel did a decent job of distracting us from it.
Now that everyone except Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) and Iris (Kathy Bates) are dead, the hotel is filled with angry, murderous ghosts. Liz and Iris have sold all of The Countess’ artwork and have liquidated everything of value in the hotel in order to update and restore the hotel to its former glory. If they are able to keep the hotel running, they will all continue to have a place to live; however, if the ghosts keep murdering the guests, the hotel is sure to be torn down leaving their futures unknown. If they could stop killing until the hotel is declared a historical landmark, they will have a place to stay forever. Sally (Sarah Paulson) and Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) are the two they must keep from killing in order to make this future happen.
Quite possibly the smartest moment of the entire season happened tonight when Iris introduced Sally to the world of social media. Sally has spent the entire season desperate to find her soulmate and cure her loneliness and now she will never have to be alone again. Had someone stopped to think of that earlier, a lot of lives would have been saved.
Once again, we have a crossover from an earlier season in the form of Billie Dean Howard (Sarah Paulson). She has been brought in by Iris to help Liz communicate with Tristan (Finn Wittrock) who has been completely absent since his death. As I said last week, it is incredibly confusing that no one is surprised at the obvious similarities between Billie and Sally. I suppose this is a wall you run into when you use the same actors for every season.
In terms of a finale, this episode didn’t really need to happen. “Be Our Guest” really only exists to close the season up nice and neat as they like to do on American Horror Story. Being that this season is the first of its kind, being lead by someone other than Jessica Lange for example, it would have been nice to see the season end differently than the others.  Last week’s episode would have been the perfect ending but, we all know the show must have a happy ending.
If we look at the episode as just another ending in the series, it wasn’t bad. I don’t think anyone will consider it the best of the season or even one of the best in the series but it certainly wasn’t the worst.
Overall, Hotel was a pretty decent season. It had everything I enjoy in my horror: blood, sex, extreme violence and even a little nudity, so there really wasn’t much not to like. I thought Lady Gaga was a smart addition to the cast in a role that really was perfect for her. Everyone was skeptical about her ability to replace our leading lady, but Gaga turned out to be a great choice. Of the few disappointments I had throughout the season, she was never one of them.
We have about ten months until the sixth, and final, season of American Horror Story. Though we have a while to wait until we learn what the theme of this final season is and we are sure to spend that time with our fingers crossed for our favorite ideas to be chosen, the one thing we should really be hoping for is that this final season will take a taste of Hotel‘s darkness with it.
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Ann Hale is the horror editor for Pop-Break.com and a senior contributing writer, reviewing horror movies and television shows. Ann attended East Carolina University, majoring in English Literature. She is a collector of Halloween (the film) memorabilia and is a self-admitted opinionated horror nerd. You can follow her, her collection and her cat, Edward Kittyhands on Twitter and Instagram @Scarletjupiter
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