EPISODE: DORKUS
THE APPETIZER: It all ends here. After 12 weeks of cadaver-stacking carnage, the remaining Red Devil Killer of Wallace University shall be unmasked!
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS EPISODE, STOP READING HERE!
THE ENTREE: And then there were none! The rather dim and drawn out two-pronged season 1 finale of Scream Queens, entitled "Dorkus," did a nice job of immediately ratcheting up the intensity established last week between Grace and Pete. The latter fully spills the beans about being Boone's murderous accomplice and having killed Roger with a nail-gun to the dome. He then admits to killing Boone. Yet in a sick and twisted line of logic, Pete tries to convince Grace he did so out of love for her, and that he was doing society a larger favor on the whole by attacking the entire spirit of Kappa House cruelty, which he posits, has claimed many more lives than the Red Devil killers themselves. She ain't buying that noise though, not for a second, and soon as Pete is about to confess who the last remaining Red Devil killer is, the costumed-killer suddenly pops out of the f*cking closet and stabs Pete plum in the back. Dude's burnt toast! But wait, he did offer one last inkling. The killer is one of Grace's sisters…sorority sister that is. That leaves Chanel Oberlin, #3, #5, #6 and, damn near impossibly, Zayday. So who will it be?
Before we unveil the killer at the end of the first hour, a few roundabout courses are taken. Chanel becomes the victim of public scorn after a scathing email she wrote to her miserable minions was put online for everyone to read. She finds solace in Zayday, the unlikeliest of places, who tries to impart that being a bitch all the time can't sustain itself. Meanwhile, as Grace has a heart to heart with her pops, Wes, she convinces him that he must divert Dean Munsch so she and Zayday can scoop a little further in the house, undeterred. Wes obliges and ends up boning Munsch hard in the bedroom to some sappy 90s butt-sex R&B. It gets hot. Then, just as Grace and Zayday tap into Munsch's school records and dig up some dirt on one of the unnamed Chanels, left only a myster to us the audience, someone dressed in the Red Devil uniform soon appears. He takes a kick to the gut from Zayday before being unmasked and identified as a random pizza delivery dude. Turns out the real Red Devil strapped a bundle of dynamite to his person and cold blew the sucker to a gory fountain of smithereens…his head the only thing left intact. Gnarly!
After a red-herring alludes to Melanie Dorkus as the killer – the Kappa sister who miraculously survived getting her faced singed off in episode one – we learn it was Hester all along. Yup, Poo Belly. NeckBrace. Number 6. It was her all along. Worse yet, we come back from the intermission to find #6 jab a stiletto heel into her own eyeball, feigning victimhood, only to blame #5 as the remaining killer. We then get an elaborate back-story about how and why Hester was so motivated in the first place, and how she planned the entire thing under the aegis of Gigi. And then back to the massive ruse. Hester so deeply commits to convincing the others that #5 is the killer, she hires actors to play her own parents and corroborate that she came from a good, caring family. Conversely, she bribes #5's real parents to all but disown her, claiming they adopted her from Gigi fresh out of a mental hospital. All signs now grossly point to #5, but Grace still isn't buying it. She still thinks it's Hester, who now throws #3 under the bus. She produces a fake psychiatric note claiming #3 has split personality disorder. Then it's Chanel's turn, with the killing of Ms. Bean being clear evidence of murderous guilt. Shockingly, the cops buy the story and the three little piggies are whisked away to the hoosegow. Seriously.
So, Hester the Poo Belly as the killer. What do you think? To me it seems way too obvious. Her with those ghastly fixations on death, the overtly sinister mien, the perverted macabre predilections, the hidden in plain sight neck-brace disguise, etc. Way too easy to call, right? Particularly when we only learned a few weeks back that it was indeed a female in cahoots with a twin brother. I myself had a hunch Pete was involved, though was wildly off base in thinking it was he that was born a female inside that bathtub 20 years prior. Way off. Call it half-right, knowing Pete had blood on his hands in some way. Beyond that, I like the idea of Hester getting away with the whole thing, as it somewhat makes up for the fact it was simply her creepily, overly-obvious ass to begin with. And why didn't she ice Chad Radwell? Why didn't she kill anyone else this week? Two deaths in a two-hour season finale? Bollocks! Well, at least Dean Munsch has a sneaking suspicion it's Hester, and even confronts her after recognizing her face as a baby 20 years ago. Hester threatens to tell the cops about Munch murdering her own husband and the two hilariously decide to keep hush and go their own separate ways…no one the wiser. The show concludes with a wistful embrace between Grace and her pops, as well as a sentencing to the mental hospital for the three Chanels. A place the girls actually agree they belong. No argument there. However, one last visit is paid by the Red Devil, who, as the show fades out, appears above Chanel's bunk, knife in hand, just as she readies for slumber. Aptly, one final scream is let out!
KILL OF THE WEEK: I dug the dynamite scene, but damn, the way Pete, mid-confession, was suddenly ended with a knife to the back. The most substantial death by far.
BLOOD & GORE:
FINAL THOUGHTS: All in all, I found Scream Queens Season 1 to function better as a light, genre-loving parodic send-up than it did as an out-and-out slasher whodunit. It was big, broad, at times bold and for the most part, pretty damn barbarous. The consistent level of over the top camp and unabashed kitsch, personified none greater than by Emma Robert's vile performance as Chanel Oberlin, the stuck-up rich-bitch with absolutely zero moral standing, was for a dozen weeks a lot of fun to behold. That said, she was still unlikeable. Downright deplorable. And that to me, aside from the loosely played murder mystery (two killers, then suddenly, conveniently three), was the biggest issue. There weren't too many emotional tethers to keep us invested in most of the characters, Grace in specific. Her whole growing into a strong independent young woman didn't quite land. For me, that's where Scream The Series, one that this show will inevitably be compared to, distinguished itself as slightly superior. Those characters, the main ones in particular (Emma, Noah, Audrey), were far more relatable, far more sympathetic, far more capable of allowing us to feel like the surrounding deaths matter. Scream Queens, while highly entertaining throughout, didn't quite build its suspense around the same kind of emotional nexus it similar counterpart chose to. It favored the quips, pokes and prods instead. With that, I really look forward to what Season 2 of Scream Queens, recently renewed, has in store next year!