BWW Recap: Thanksgiving on SCREAM QUEENS Is All Stuffing, No Meat

By: Nov. 24, 2015
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

SCREAM QUEENS's forward momentum has come to a halt. After a couple weeks of forward momentum, the show slows down this week. The show is simply fanning the flame in this episode, underlining scenes we've already scene and relaying information that we already know.

SCREAM QUEENS has adopted a bottle episode format in the second half of this season. After the success they saw with the Halloween episode, they've done variations on locking people up in the Kappa house and setting a killer loose. This makes for the show feeling tighter than it was in the beginning. Putting a bunch of sinful young adults and unleashing a murderer on them to pay for their sins is a horror staple, so it's no wonder the show adopts this format.

While that format works for episodes where we find out about Grace's lineage, or who two of the three killers are, tonight it feels simply like a rehash. The major plot tonight where everything happens takes place at Kappa house. Even though school was cancelled. After a pointless aside where Chanel #3 goes home and sees her parents, and sees how awful they are, she returns to Kappa house and finds Dean Munsch making a Thanksgiving dinner.

All the lonely rejects meet up and have their own orphan Thanksgiving at Kappa house. Grace, Zayday, Chanel #3, Dean Munsch, and Wes show up and put the turkey in the oven. They sit around the table, and start to discuss who Red Devil is, everybody putting blame on everybody else. This is where everything major happens in the episode. A lot of it is retreading old ground with some new information that clarifies some scenes.

Dean Munsch first puts the blame on Chanel #3, explaining her lineage as the main reason. Also during the time Red Devil attacked Gigi, Dean Munsch saw Chanel #3 run back up the stairs out of breath, hinting that she was the Red Devil. Chanel #3 makes a claim that she uses the bathroom once a week in private, and that was the reason she was out of breath and sneaking around. They drop this.

Chanel #5 then shows up and joins their orphan Thanksgiving. Zayday comments that Chanel #5 said she was leaving for good, then went back on this statement .Chanel #3 points out that this is Chanel #5's character. Chanel #3 turns the tables on Dean Munsch, and starts to point out the reasons she is Red Devil. We know as an audience that Dean Munsch is not the killer, from when she was attacked by all three at once. Chanel #3 reveals that she saw Dean Munsch eating a bologna sandwich, and Chanel #5 backs this up with the fact that Dean Munsch would've also been allergic to the stuffing she was eating. The girls pin her husband's murder on her, but can't take it to the next step.

Wes then changes the mood to attack Grace. He mentions following Grace around and seeing her talk to Red Devil (it was Pete). Wes also brings up that Grace was there the day back in March when Chanel #4 was killed from acid in the spray tan, so she's been there from the beginning.

Pete comes in with his investigative self and sets the record straight. Or, not. He puts the blame on Wes. The only new information he reveals is that Wes is the father of Boone. Which means Wes is also the father of the other baby in the bathtub, our Red Devil killer. But we know this other baby isn't Grace, because Grace's mom was the president of Kappa in 1995, not the girl in the bathtub.

Most of this part of the episode is pointless, because we as an audience already know that the other Red Devil is Boone's twin. The show is taking its subtle mystery and bringing it up to the surface, having the characters stand in for the audience, bringing up who it could possibly be. The fact that Wes is the father of the killer is astonishing, but it just raises more questions.

The other half of the episode involves Chad taking Chanel to Radwell Thanksgiving. It's a very funny scene, but serves no purpose to the overall arc of the show, and only relates to the other side as a horrible Thanksgiving. Chanel goes to dinner and is ripped apart as inadequate by Chad's mom and dad. Hester shows up and reveals that she's 1. still alive, 2. healed of scoliosis but still wearing a neck brace, and 3. pregnant with Chad's baby. Chad's mom shuts down any idea of Hester marrying Chad, then the family plays charades.

Chanel is pushed into a corner here; she's stuck in a dinner with people who don't like her, and is constantly attacked. During charades, Chanel watches the family verbally abuse Hester with insults. Chanel, ever the stickler for the rules, keeps pointing out the rules violations. Chanel lives by established structures; if these structures are attacked, she tries to hold them up. Pushed in a corner and watching Hester take a beating, Chanel goes to her side and calls her "her sister." They leave and go to Orphan Thanksgiving.

Chanel's change of heart from pushing Hester down the stairs to calling her her sister comes from being threatened. During times of stress, like back when Zayday announced she was running for Kappa President and she reunited with Chanel #3 and Chanel #5, Chanel re-establishes her bonds with people. Unlike everyone else, who start to fight and tear each other down.

Whos' Red Devil?

I'm going to go with Hester because she said the same line "glide through roasted flesh" which Gigi said at the beginning for being murdered.

Scream Quotes

"Gravity killed Hester, I just gave her a little push."

"After she fell down the stairs, did you check her pulse?" "No, Chad. I'm not a registered nurse."

"Just wouldn't be thanksgiving without the whirr of a small motor cutting through flesh"

"Why is it called Italian style Chicken Cacciatore? ALL Chicken Cacciatore is italian style."

"My family came over on the Mayflower." "The Radwells came over on a ship 30 years before the Mayflower. So..."


What did you think of SCREAM QUEENS tonight? Let me know in the comments below, or on Twitter @gunnar_larson. Also, don't forget to follow @BWWTVWorld on Twitter and Like us on Facebook for all of the latest TV news, reviews, and recaps. Tune in next week for the penultimate episode.

Photo Credit: SCREAM QUEENS official Twitter



Comments

To post a comment, you must register and login.
Vote Sponsor


Videos