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American Horror Story: Asylum Review: “The Origins Of Monstrosity” (Season 2, Episode 6)

American Horror Story: Asylum ​has finally given us a better look at its dark past, making the road ahead even more promising now that we know it's paved with corpses, incest, and a tiny hint of madness.

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After last week’s spectacular episode, it’s impossible to think that American Horror Story: Asylum can recapture that lightning in a bottle. The major reveal at the end (that apparently everybody except me saw coming) was a huge twist that helped tighten the focus for the rest of the season. In case you couldn’t guess from the episode’s title, the latest episode gives a little background to good old Bloody Face, helping to uncover just why he’s so freaking crazy.

Despite the amazing set up it was given from last week, The Origins of Monstrosity doesn’t quite live up to the preceding episode. That’s not to say it’s a bad episode, especially since I’ve yet to see a bad outing from this series. It just serves as a winding down period with a little more spoken exposition than the past few episodes.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Dr. Thredson continues to hold Lana hostage, explaining to her the events in his young life that led to him cracking like the nut he is. He gives her insight into being raised as an unloved orphan, completely devoid of a mother’s love. But after encountering a corpse that looked similar to his mother in medical school…well, things get a bit creepy. Needless to say, he begins to kidnap, torture and skin women that meet his criteria. Lana, looking to survive the ordeal, turns on her maternal instincts and starts mothering Thredson while she looks for a way to escape.

Things aren’t going too smoothly back at Briarcliff either, as a new, young inmate is shaking things up a bit. Accuse of killing her friend and being just a bit “odd,” Jenny (Nikki Hahn) is left by her mother at the asylum, hoping to find her some help. This kid is genuinely creepy and could use an asylum treatment or two, but due to the lack of a children’s ward, she’s booted back out within days. Not before the devil formerly known as Sister Mary gets to her, of course, nurturing her murderous ways and sympathizing with her feelings of being an outsider to the world.

The ending of the episode reveals what happens with Jenny, and here’s to hoping we see more from her, because Hahn does a spectacular job of being superbly chilling. The Monsignor stumbles upon Shelley in a hospital and promptly kills her before anyone can find out about Dr. Arden’s sickening experiments back at the asylum. He confronts the good doctor, but is instead blackmailed into firing Sister Jude rather than Arden. Sister Jude takes one last shot at taking down Arden, but as she goes to visit her Nazi hunter friend, she finds him murdered at the hands of Sister Mary, who is one busy woman lately.

We finally get to jump forwards into the future again, as we hear Dr. Thredson call the police and alert them to the bodies that he left in Briarcliff. Sadly, he’s still got the young woman from the beginning in his captivity, and truth be told, things certainly aren’t looking up for her as of now.

Even though we’re finally starting to figure out more about Bloody Face and the asylum, there just wasn’t that much action tonight. The Origins of Monstrosity was still a fantastic episode, providing a necessary breather after last week’s rollercoaster of insanity, but now that we’ve looked back, it’s time to keep chugging forwards. There’s still no word on whether Alma really is alive or not, and the lack of Kit or Grace from this episode was a bummer.

As expected, the cast is still magnificent, and here’s hoping that Hahn makes a return as creepy little Jenny, because she would fit in perfectly with the psychopaths locked up in Briarcliff. Sister Jude is on her way out, but I’m praying to Based God she’ll find her way back into the walls of insanity. American Horror Story: Asylum has finally given us a better look at its dark past, making the road ahead even more promising now that we know it’s paved with corpses, incest, and a tiny hint of madness.