Hell hath no fury like a classic scream queen scorned by a rookie. After chopping her ex-husband into pieces and stashing his head in an aquarium, a fish called Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) successfully pins the murder on his young mistress Feather McCarthy’s (Tavi Gevinson) by planting evidence at the crime scene connected to Feather’s niche blog about deli meats. This is the very same blog the Dean sarcastically suggested the former Kappa sister launch years ago in a last-ditch attempt to get that distracting halo of cheerfulness the hell out of her office!
Too many details, I’m sure. What really matters here is that the dean has killed before, but is not necessarily the Red Devil killer. She merely thought the timing would be right since the terrible campus police are so busy not solving those other murders. And instead of boring regular jail, both Dean Munsch and Feather get banished to the asylum from American Horror Story. I really think that was the whole point of the episode, and I’m not mad at it!
In a refreshing twist, “Beware of Young Girls” was crammed with only a few hundred GIF-able one-liners instead of a thousand. It offered a particularly delicious final scene of the mean dean swishing around her luxury apartment with red wine – a legitimately bonkers but undoubtedly wise adult – as Dory Previn’s “Beware of Young Girls” rings out from the turntable. Just drinkin’ and dancin’ at home, you know, livin’ the dream. Minus the fact that she just murdered someone, this might be the closest I’ve ever come to relating to anyone on Scream Queens, with the exception, of course, of two ladies tragically absent this week: 1) Denise Hemphill of Secure Enforcement Solutions (whose excessive rambling could be going nowhere, but then again — because you never know until you ride out the train of thought at the speaker’s own pace — maybe not) and 2) Zayday of Oakland Nachos fame (though I tend go for sweet chili sauce over chocolate, delicately drizzled over Fritos Scoops).
Why should we beware of young girls according to Episode 7?
They screw with you from beyond the grave. Chanel thought she got rid of that backstabbing Chanel No. 2 (Ariana Grande) after blasting her ashes into space. With a Ouija board in the sorority house and three other Chanels with nothing to do? Bitch, please. Clearly still possessed of her high-ponied wiles in hell, No. 2 accuses Chad of cheating on Chanel and Chanel of murdering everyone. It’s only fitting that the princess of colonics (No. 2) should visit as the house’s fearless leader hallucinates on laxatives that night. The two share a fairly upbeat and genuine dead bitch/living bitch dynamic as No. 2 tells No. 1 all about hell, a terrible district where there are zero dinosaurs and Adolf Hitler motorboats your boobs on the reg. According to Carl Sagan, the receptionist from the front desk of heaven (accurate), No. 2 needed to apologize to her frenemy in order to achieve eternal light. Oh and one more thing, an afterthought really: The other Chanels are plotting to murder their No. 1.
They turn your weak murder plot against you. “Not only would I have survived your attempt on my life,” a newly empowered Chanel warned everyone, “It would have also made me skinnier.” Have these manatees no sense? Of course her human gag reflex (paired with the eating habits of a mannequin) would prevent Madame President from ingesting rat poison. Now Chanel has effectively turned her murderous minions against new Red Devil suspects Grace and Zayday. After all, the whole killing spree began when those two walked into the KKT house. Chanel does have a point. Come to think of it, none of any of this utter bullshit would ever have happened had Scream Queens never come on the air. But should we go ahead and blame Scream Queens for the death of pop culture, or has someone else been plotting its steady demise for years? This show is always asking the tough questions.
They pretend to be investigative reporters. Yet all these silly student-journalists ever prompt are more pesky questions! Grace insists on putting this week’s side-murder into a larger context. What happened to the bathtub baby? How is anything the Dean did related to what happened in 1995? Grace may need to peer past the brims of her beret and realize no one really cares about all that. In fact, give me a 1:1 episode ratio on “people Dean Munsch has murdered” vs. “farm animals Chad Radwell must invent new excuses for having slept with” and I’ll be one happy sleuth with a Nancy Drew hat and enormous magnifying (wine) glass.
They carry nine tampons in one purse. Nooooo. I can’t! It’s too much blood! Hester (Lea Michele) must be involved in the killings!
They boss around a network of killers. Frustrated by her totally ‘90s coq au vin prep, Gigi (Nasim Pedrad) references a “years-in-the-making revenge plan” while seething at the Red Devil network’s incompetent lead henchman over the phone.
They will seriously start blogs about anything. In Feather's case: it’s how she gets off on pronouncing “bologna,” exactly how it’s spelled, even though she’s still wrong. The way the nonsense word “capicolaphilisist” (I think?) rolled off Jamie Lee Curtis’ tongue as a theme-appropriate alternative to “psychiatrist” during office hours was worth the price of admission to Scream Queens this week.
What exactly would that be, I wonder? Twelve ounces of wine and a pound of shame? In that case: Bravo, show. You tried to kill me and I came out skinnier. Everybody wins, then dies. The end.