AHS Hotel Episode 2 "Chutes and Ladders" Breakdown

hello everybody welcome back to another breakdown for American Horror Story Hotel how's it going over there Ryan what's up with Finn he's doing well Greg he is chewing on a toy on the ground right behind me hopefully it doesn't bark but if he does just consider it a spoiler warning for the rest of this episode we are on chutes & ladders right Greg episode 2 it's new it all right this episode kicks off with Sally just looking out the window just you know thinking of how life is as a ghost at the moment she's smoking a cigarette it's a quick cig break because she looks over at Gabrielle who's apparently he's very comfortable let's say extremely comfortable as it looks like he's now the new mattress King yeah Greg I I you know last time we left off he was thinking that he was gonna basically be killed or like pain free but clearly Sally lied to him he had to go through the whole addiction demon hazing ritual and then he gets sewn into the mattress like the mattress king that we met last time so apparently maybe just numerous matches through mattresses throughout this hotel have people sewn into them I'm guessing okay she said it was his own damn fault - he so he's gonna be there for quite some time I'm really digging this kind of love story dynamic between the two that's going on right now or she's just like you know caresses him and kiss on the head before shoving his face in it's cute yeah it's cool and then right here is when we realize that there are other screams coming within the hotel itself right because that one shot of them going into the air ducts and then you hear one of the Swedish ladies the one that's still surviving she is still getting kind of tortured her blood is getting sucked from the little young vampires and she's like on the brink of death eventually she does die because she you know runs out of blood and and they as you do you know as they see is like someone's wrists and then you start sucking blood like she dies but um mm-hmm Sally then comes down and says you know there's so much noise why are you guys screaming be quiet there's a cop here now you know you got to be careful and no one really seems to be bothered by that idea right they're like kind of like no cop isn't really too much to worry about well iris does say that he wasn't there at the moment or so like he was going he was back at the office so all right yeah so Liz and iris wheel the corpse down too it looks like it seems like I'm just gonna drop her down a garbage chute we see Miss Evers again for a moment she's gonna clean the sheets no matter how much Bloods on them doesn't matter she's got you she's apparently she's really really good at this lots of bleach lots and lots of bleach so right before they drop her down the chute Liz gives this line about saying the Swede see how much she admires the sweets for their chocolate and quickly before I just remember looking up going no Swiss and then of course Irish beats me to the punch right before it cha that's the Swiss and at this point you see that a few bodies have stacked up in that kind of that pit that that kind of garbage chute oh yeah well so we see I think the previous mattress King was down there and then obviously her friend the other Swedish Swedish tourist that was hanging out a last episode so they're both dead down there dead it looks like they might have dropped something on the body to kind of cover up mask the smells that were going on there but basically you can you can tell that this is like a tradition of just kind of you know killing people using their body the blood for the host of vampires that are in the hotel itself and then expose you know disposing of the bodies themselves down the chute now speaking of shoot obviously the title of the episode is shoots in ladders we all know the board game chutes and ladders it actually is a very ancient game that came from India I think it was originally called snakes and ladders and even more originally known as moksha patum which basically has been played since like second century AD and it's kind of like you know it's it's a it's a board game that we're familiar with but basically you know the farther you go you come and you come across obstacles that either send you way back down or you know bring you back to the top so it's kind of like a survival of the fittest type game right you try to kind of avoid the obstacles and make sure you don't go down a chute and up a land you want to go up a ladder but multiple meanings on this on this of course but the literal meaning is there are chutes inside this hotel a her cavern a cavernous dungeon where all these bodies are disposed of now we're back with the vampire children for another moment as we see they are on dialysis now as they are already feeding earlier now it's time for the countess's turn and countess and Donovan so iris takes their blood brings it to the countess in a little decanter I like that and then immediately yeah how refreshing Greg after a long day at work Greg you know like you'd like to come home open up a bottle of that young blood and just pour it into your wine glass like you do now relax sit back relax and just enjoy the young young blood of a small child okay all right that's enough anyways Donovan wants to stay home and kick it and just watch house of cards and apparently I guess count the countess knew she could see the future she says now I'm cool man and I'm just gonna head out for the night and go on my hunt without you so she goes of course to the outside of a museum lakum I believe and she just kind of wants to scope out the scene like you know look look for possible targets she's on the hunt it's night time she wants to see oh she's she's in the art world she pretty at least you know is a collector of some sorts of not only art but also collecting people so she goes out by herself and just has a night on the town in nothing really happens from here I was like what did we really need to see this like it nothing this seemed like us anywhere this scene is awesome because it does something else and it's the music it is the just cue Joy Division new order right here and then which is I don't know I don't know how much they went into this how much surface level it was just to pick this track but it is perfect for the countess and the theme and the story and the episode it is the perfect song to choose [Applause] now that song is Joy Division's in a lonely place well via new order Narayan where were the countess and Donovan in the last episode where was the location where we first meet them Greg they were in a cemetery oh yes the cemetery and let's listen to this yes caressing the marble in stone I know surface level here so they could have went with it they are just for the the grave stone but at the same time that song again in 1981 it was a part of the ceremony it was the b-side for ceremony and that was one of the final tracks by Joy Division that really recorded together and they demo that at graveyard studios it's really cool that they're using this gothic rock sound to accompany the countess on her lone hunt is a wonderful example of how one piece of art the music can just enhance another piece of art the film next up we catch up with Alex Lowe who's doing a sort of house call she visiting a young patient who has the measles as it turns out and the anti-vaxxer mom is freaking out that she should have never given the vaccination and Alex is like yeah you should have it kills a lot of people in the world and you're lucky to be a decision you are there are a lot of horrible things out there this whole scene kind of you can you you know it's it's here because it shows basically what Alex has been going through having lost a child and trying to kind of deal with that challenge yeah moving forward in all the horrors that are out there and to not like you know take anything for granted any other you know for for parents out there that are kind of worried about stuff hey fan doesn't like auntie backs Rosie it's all good and has his own opinions it's all good now back at the hotel John's in room 64 and he awakes and guess what at what time is it it is around 225 again and this is where we see miss Evers she pops up asking for you know sheets you know like you do when you're at a hotel you just creep in someone's room we in the dark and in the middle of the night yeah uh-huh and now the hotel of course starts to screw with him he sees the addiction demon in a shots that I I'm pretty sure would scare the hell out of anybody you just look up again again again Greg this is when you and I and in the end of there no one people are person without their would leave the hotel if you woke up and you saw the addiction demon gyrating above your head with that dang I mean I'm out I'm dead or I'm in a yeah I'm running or I'm in a hospital my hair is all gray and I haven't talked for 10 years so yeah it's bad then then he gets up out of the bed right and he's kind of like you know does the whole like you know wash your face get of course here make sure everything's normal as we see in a lot of horror movies and then of course the shower curtain you have to look behind the shower curtain you know every horror movie has this trope he looks back there and he sees two people going at it to be like dead ghosty blown in all right all right cool and then he looked up from his obviously he wakes up from his slumber he had been dreaming that probably not it's all real you're in a haunted hotel you should get out of there bro nope and then he sees one last thing of course his missing child holdin and now he's chasing holdin down the hallway and all of this from the second he wakes up is just feels like something straight out of the shining like they were trying to hit the shining really hard here definitely and I thought it was it was effective I liked it speaking of The Shining Greg or spot-on with that then he goes over John low goes over to the bar you know middle of the night Sally McKenna's there goes Liz Liz is there you know offering drinks and she can just kind of tell Sally can just kind of tell that he has struggled with a sobriety that he has some kind of demons he's working it he's working through so they offer him a ginger ale to kind of sit down and take a seat in and have a little conversation fun fact here a little a little fun nod here Sally calls Liz Cleopatra now of course Elizabeth Taylor the real-life Elizabeth Taylor was in the movie Cleopatra so fun little nods the the correlation between Liz Taylor Elizabeth Taylor the actor the actress and Cleopatra and this whole part serves to kind of get some context and backstory on John himself and kind of what he went through we've seen you know flashes of what he went through in the pit in the past about losing Holden but now we got to get a clearer picture he kind of talks through what he was doing on the day and kind of how his life changed and we realized that he's kind of been he's seen John has seen some stuff he was investigating at what they thought at the moment was a murder-suicide for a wipes out the entire family it turns out it was just a carbon monoxide poisoning then the dad came home and saw that his family had died and he shot himself afterwards so yes that that's going to drive almost anybody out to a few drinks that night he didn't come home for two days came home and then that's when he took the family out to the beach to the boardwalk where they lose Holden so this is where and now we're really caught up to the events happening right now now back to Sally for a second now she gives us a little bit of her backstory with her she wrote for Patti Smith she wrote a few tracks were and then they didn't make the album and John says it wasn't because of your you know your alcoholism or anything like that and this is where we got another nod to that title itself chutes and ladders where she goes into just how it is for life and the ups and downs and I got lost kept trying to climb higher get closer to that light like an endless ladder where all you do is get further and further away alright then we pick up at the police station and John has a special package it is you know he's been getting anonymous phone calls from hotel Cortez from room 64 but now he's literally getting mail Gregg he's getting a package and then he calls the bomb squad and doesn't know what the hell it is and they open it up and he discover that is a like an old Academy Award Oscar right some load on it this all feels like something out of seven like what's in the box yeah or now you're waiting for detective now Gregg back at hotel Cortez the new owner will Drake wants to throw a party fashion show so it's popping it's it's it's it's a scene over here right what we see literally Naomi Campbell playing at Claudia Bankson Claudia Bankson a nod to Claudia Schiffer and Tyra Banks did their Ryan Murphy she's there the whole party the whole party's there and I love how West Bentley John Lowe just kind of completely ignores her just like okay yeah I'm gonna my daughter yeah yeah she doesn't wants nothing to do with her so he's looking for his daughter who like just pops into the hotel like all the tie I don't know she was dropped off by the cop who was like who ever liked the formula the formula of a cop and every show ever right just like the most yeah cop ever if you I was just you know giving her a little Joyride around the town you know that's it it's all good yeah okay all right buddy on top of that you have Liz teaching apparently some people who work at Vogue how to Vogue she even reads Naomi Campbell real quick to skinny jeans are out fringes and Poncho's are forever become notables and now we hear Brian ferries don't stop the dance I'm assuming because we hear it so much slave to love was just to on the news for this so they didn't use it I just felt like they put that on there and thought no this doesn't work [Music] and now we meet Tristan Duffy now how do you introduce a character when you need to you know their edge either they're you know they're different so what's the first thing you see oh there's Norton Koch they're just slamming it there or it's not even cooked I think he's slamming something else we see pills he is yeah I mean Greg that's that's that's the International that's how you prove that he's a bad boy right you got it you got a quickly cut to him backstage doing drugs you know wrecking havoc and then he doesn't really care what he's doing he's kind of you know self-mutilating himself later on with the cut across ik he's kind of at a crossroads himself he's struggling but he comes out and he just like he walks around like he owns the joint and he's like you know making out with people that aren't his girl and then starting fights and literally he becomes he comes within like inches of attacking a man with a broken glass right huh then yep something stops him he notices the countess and and they connect eyes and he gay and they both kind of feel like this this you know this this pole between each other similar to what we saw in the cemetery when she was kind of like you know introducing this couple III you know obviously vampires have that kind of that power to do that as well meanwhile Lachlan leads little Scarlett down to where I guess they helped the swimming pools at the time but now they're being used to house the little vampire children so he knew about this spot he takes her over there and then he says the line up don't worry you can tap on the thing you can do whatever you want they don't wake up and sure enough Holden does this what we literally see this in every horror film or show that we watch you know it's like you know they they promise you that nothing will happen if you do it and then you do it and then it literally happens so that was that was an obvious thing I'm just wondering like how like you know lo has been through such a horrible experience with how did he lose her child that quickly how does he just like how was he so trustworthy with these random strangers and his daughter I don't know I would be a little suspect moving forward for the rest of my life and kind of need to be maybe a little bit overprotective I have that leash I have leash we'd have that leash on them I'm with you on this Greg because you don't just let let them wander around a hotel after you know the hotel has been kind of little bit you know eerie you know the last few nights you've been there I'm putting a tracker on that on that kid I'm putting something's gonna be like black mirror I'm gonna put something device whatever so somehow Tristan makes his way upstairs to the countess's hotel room and he breaks in he's looking for coke and why because he can smell it he can smell it apparently okay Tristan needs to get a job like at the airport looks like a drug sniffing dog like I mean this guy is like incredible how the hell can he smell cocaine from like downstairs out of the room I mean come on ridiculous now Donovan catches him and he's just about to take him out right then and there before the countess stops him of course because at the time she says man just let him go but we know damn well that countess she has other plans in store for Tristan she's just trying to back down Donovan at the moment yeah and you can tell that Donovan is just he's he is completely kind of jealous and afraid that his he's gonna get swapped out yep at this point and this is a threat to his livelihood with the countess right so he he's gonna do anything he can to kind of get rid of this guy because he knows it's more it's probably likely that you know she's kind of just over him she's like sick and tired and like she's here forever and she has the power to do whatever she wants and you know she's bored of him so it's like you know it next went up so he kind of sees that coming ahead of time so he gets in that elevator but unfortunately it doesn't stop on the first floor where is it stop on the seventh floor where he gets out and all hell breaks loose for a minute and this is where we meet James March you look like you need a drink and that accent is something else III dig it it's a little the Northeast he's from the Boston area northeast somewhere and yeah it's a little bit thick Brahmin Acts it works first you're like this is goofy and then keeps going it just grows on you and the character he's going for it yeah yeah he's really going for it the character works though I enjoyed it and he's creepy as hell and what an introduction Greg you meet James March and he's like hey I got a prostitute here for you kill her for me prove yourself here's something I can do here's a guy here's a gun here you go I mean that's quite the introduction right when you first meet somebody but he doesn't want to do it Tristan's like whoa even this is a little bit too bad boy for me but March then shoots shoots the woman in her face right next to him and he's like whoa what is going on in this hotel also notice that scar that giant scar on March's neck when he takes off a scarf for a brief moment we'll come back to that a little bit later obviously this tells us he's also one of the ghosts haunting this hotel now when all is said and done the countess she shows Donovan the door sadly in the most melodramatic scene I think I've seen in a long time on this show it's just the music everything yeah the way that she delivers the news here you know she's been around for over 100 years a heartbreak to her isn't what you and I would consider something big right she's this is something that used to tease down numerous it's just a Tuesday for yes it's exactly I say if nothing is actually she kind of counts the years based on the heartbreaks and she's kind of gone through you know a cycle of this you know having outlived all these people in her life and kind of you know it's always seeking for the next person to kind of fill that void for her so for her this is nothing he needs to get over it and get the hell out now the roller coaster that Tristan is on is not over just yet as again we get the countess she returns stops him in the elevator and turns him so now he is one of them he is also a vampire and this is where we've learned the rules of the vampires at least in AHS Stena making a straight-up sex montage learn you know the rules event of the vampires in the AHS universe at least in this season you know the countess and Tristan she explains everything went to him you know uh-huh they don't age they're invulnerable they live forever but you also got to be careful and you can't like fall in love you can't be reckless you can still die you know and still you still down you can still die a stake to the heart silver bullets all that stuff works you can go outside but you really shouldn't because it takes away some of your vitality right yes um so he's kind of like wow thank you for this gift I mean I welcome to the party like I this is now I have a new have a whole newfound you know love for for this kind of new life that I'm gonna lead he was totally into it um it's the key here also you gotta think about is that like she's very picky on who she chooses to turn right like some people are just victims for her to just drink their blood but others she decides that she actually wants to turn so clearly Tristan has some significance or value to her more so than just someone else that she picks up at the cemetery say or anyone else like she she finds value in him in an in a physical if not something else attraction to him his penis um that his penis yes girl now back to the kids for a moment here I'm sorry about that segue whatever we got it we got to get back to John Lowe's child she's returned she's left the house she snuck out she got on the bus she returned to the hotel no ones are apparently so she can now now she's she makes her way up to go see Holden she she doesn't know if it's really Holden she shows him a family photo he recognizes the family she sees that he didn't age she's trying to figure out what's going on here so she tries to take a photo of him he quickly like goes in for like a kiss or like I don't know he's gonna bite her neck or or what but she immediately fell her yeah he wanted to smell his older sister okay all right that's too close too close and so she gets the hell out of there immediately but of course we do learn even more rules about vampires in this sequence as well right we learned that they once you chain turn them they don't age from past that date so they can stay young or whatever state they were in when they returned just stay out of signs but but you had to stay out of the Sun but to also they do acknowledge or remember their life before it right they don't get like wipe they don't get like wiped clean they know exactly where they came from and and who they are but there's no there's no emotional attachment to like the people in their past life like he's happy with just like you know candies candy and video games and he's like I don't care about mom and dad like yeah you know it's he's completely like non-existent to him and the countess meanwhile she her favorite timeline happens to be what the 70s during the disco era Lady Godiva I love it now after Scarlett takes that creepy photo of her younger brother she runs out the room just like completely scared and runs into an even scarier site which is Sally McKenna grinding her teeth Greg this was disgusting and grinding her teeth they're crumbling bloods going everywhere and she's just doing it kind of to horrify the young girl or she sees the young girl as maybe a victim in the future she takes a liking to her she literally says the one of the funniest lines of the episode here came to the best I got a heavy Michael Keaton Beetlejuice vibe here I'm sorry I love it now scarlett makes her way home she sees the cops and I have a feeling she realizes that this is probably for me as Jon and Alex are there and they are freaking out she reveals herself and they have a little bit of a heart-to-heart moment where she tells him straight up you lied to me Holden is alive and this just freaks out one John and Alex doesn't know where to take it and she even brings up the fact that she apparently there's still some blame for what happened to hold in apparently and takes it out on Jon yeah obviously it's difficult for the family to to overcome what they went through right yeah so at one point at one thing on one side you're thinking oh you need to kind of help the young child cope with the loss of a sibling but what we know and what we've seen is that Jon himself has actually come in contact with Holden in the hotel so he's kind of like on on on the fence of like what's real is is she telling the truth if she also saw him at the hotel right so maybe there is some truth to this to this idea that he is still alive and that he's in the hotel itself as crazy as that might sound so it kind of threw his whole his reality kind of through a hole for a whirlwind because he doesn't know what to believe at this point so he looks at that blurry photo and he decides it's time to head back to the hotel and get some answers where he talks to Iris and she tells him everything well she kind of really just reveals the hotel and that it's haunted and there are ghosts here and it was built by James March and this is where we get marches origin story now the hotel is just a large trap created by March in the 1920s brings in victims one by one and we learned that one he was killing them and a clip of like three a week apparently he would seal people in brick walls even including one scene where someone screaming for help so he muzzles her time now for another not so fun fact Greg the actual Builder that he mentions the architect that James March mentions here is Julia Morgan for his was his first choice for designing the hotel but it falls through because she wanted to pay her workers you know a reasonable wage he didn't want to do that but Julia Morgan is actually best known for her long collaboration with the William Randolph Hearst building the Hearst Castle in San Simeon California Julia Morgan is also known for some buildings in the San Francisco area following the 1906 earthquake one of which the Fairmont is still up and around today so a fun little like history fact well not so fun but you know it's rooted in some sort of real-life history but you know James March didn't use her he went another way he even went so far as to kill the man that was in charge of construction we see it kind of a flashback where the guy kind of called him out on hit the design of the place and hey this this isn't like a normal hotel what's going on and then he kills the guy because he kind of got a little bit too close to the you know what was actually going on so James March complete psychopath serial killer and we kind of see the you know the chutes and ladders literally come manifested in the actual building of this this hotel now another history lesson here is that this hotel or at least this theme and everything going on James March is possibly heavily heavily inspired by HH Holmes and his murder Castle he had during the Great World's Fair and this is just a friendly reminder to please read Eric Larson's devil in the White City if you haven't done that yet it's one of my favorite I still need to read it Craig please don't read this book and there is a movie or TV series or I don't know what the hell it's gonna be now from Leonardo DiCaprio Caprio and Scorsese have been working on this for quite some time I have no I don't think it's ever gonna happen but apparently it's with Hulu now so we'll see hopefully it happens I cannot wait now one of the main motivators for James March we learn is that his complete disdain for religion probably pushed down his throat when it was young I think he just kind of completely hated all the teachings that he was kind of told when he was little wanted to get rid of all the Bibles in the hotel and anyone who kind of prayed to God he literally would just murder you and say I'm going to now my life's work is going to be to kill God to do so much harm to so many people out there that they Luth lose faith in God and that's kind of like his marching orders James March wants to do for the rest of the season that we see and this links back up to John Lowe and his investigation of these murders that are going on in the city and then the last one where he finally gets the Oscar statue and he's starting to put things together here he's starting to notice that these killings are matching up with the Ten Commandments honor thy father and mother the ten commandments you're saying someone's picked up where this this March guy left off maybe and of course like to do at the beginning of a series the main character doesn't believe any of this he's not buying it one bit we're only two episodes in so of course he's not into this or anything that has to do with ghosts whatever it's all bull so he's gonna go back to the hotel yeah I risk to make a better you know TV writer than an actual like you know the story is completely made up he thinks it doesn't make any sense but I think sooner than later he's going to realize that Wow a lot of it is true and it's in it's it's he's gonna be thrust into the middle of it and for the final scene here we ended with another bloodbath when it comes to the vampires now that Tristan's a vampire he's got to be on the hunt too what does he use uses Griner to find a victim this time poor dude poor guy he just he just wanted to hook up and get out of there he didn't expect this and Lady Gaga comes in he's not cool with this too bad stab game over yeah it's kind of a moment where Lady Gaga's not only like very turned on by what she's seeing but also you know the person that she turned his first kill is a vampire yay let's celebrate by murdering this innocent guy what a fun moment Greg it looks like Tristan will have no problem being a vampire he's already getting the hang of it and we'll be back next week for yet again another breakdown of American Horror Story hotel episode 3 in the meantime guys everyone take care hope you guys are binge watching AHS with us at home stay safe and we will see you soon bye love ya

Channel: GameSpot Universe

Views: 30,637

Rating: 4.9630055 out of 5

Keywords: Hotel, Chutes and Ladders, AHS, AHS Hotel recap, Lady Gaga, American Horror Story recap, Countess, The Countess, Gaga, AHS breakdown, American Horror Story break, Denis O'Hare, John Lowe, Liz Taylor, Sally McKenna, vampire, American Horror Story Hotel, AHS Hotel, American Horror Story, ahs s5e2, s5e2, ahs season 5, Hotel episode 2, Hotel Cortez, Hotel Cecil, Cortez, Room 64, 64, Holden, Addiction Demon, Donovan

Id: -_WxB2oK414

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020