Reviews
[TV Review] “Salem” Series Finale: ‘Black Sunday’
Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television series close on such a pessimistic scene. Salem has never been one to shy away from graphic depictions of, well, anything, but to have its last scene feature one of its main characters looking into the depths of Hell? That was just brutal. “Black Sunday” was a brutal episode of television in general, and while many of the characters didn’t make it out alive, at least our two protagonists got to ride off into the sunset together.
From here on down there will be ***MASSIVE SPOILERS***. You’ve been warned. If for some reason you’ve never seen Salem but still plan on watching it, know that I’m giving the series finale a 4/5 (the series as a whole would earn that same grade). There, now you know the journey is worth it and you can go start the first season on Netflix right now. Salem is worth watching from the very beginning. Go along for the wacky and incredibly disturbing ride.
As a series finale, “Black Sunday” did its job. It is unclear how long Adam Simon and Brannon Braga had to prepare a fitting end for their sorely under-watched (and under-promoted) series, but they crafted a series finale that, for better or worse, granted all of its characters (and viewers) closure. It did run into a few pacing issues (Anne’s evolution into the big bad of the season came on much too quickly), but Salem didn’t have a lot of time to work with, so that is forgivable. As a whole, “Black Sunday” was a solid way to close out the series.
After all, the only thing viewers want from a series finale is closure, and boy did “Black Sunday” deliver on that front. Let’s take a quick glance at everyone’s fates, shall we?
- Mary Sibley – Living happily ever after with John Alden.
- John Alden – Living happily ever after with Mary Sibley.
- Anne Hale – Ruling over Salem while instigating the Salem Witch Trials.
- Cotton Mather – Trapped in Hell for all eternity.
- Tituba – Trapped in a cage for all eternity. Oh and she has no mouth. And no eyes.
- Mercy Lewis – Dead.
- Isaac Walton – Dead.
- Sebastian Marburg – Dead.
- Countess Marburg – Dead (for real this time).
- Little John/Big John/Dark Lord/The Devil – Dead(ish).
To say Salem cleaned house would be an understatement. Sebastian was the first to go, which was probably for the best. The character never really earned his keep on Salem (it was a little surprising he stayed on for the third season), and while it was fun to have the threat of him and Countess Marburg constantly looming in the background, it never really paid off. That being said, the catharsis earned from seeing Anne murder her mother was incredible.
Little John was aged up in a sublimely graphic dismemberment (see header image) that brought a newly adult Dark Lord to the series. It’s a shame that Salem is over, as Big John could have made for an interesting fourth season villain (I’m very curious to know how the season was originally meant to play out). I’ve complained for most of the season that Little John was never that imposing of a villain, but now it is clear that there was a reason for that: a path was being forged for Anne Hale to emerge as the Big Bad.
It’s understandable that Salem had to bring forward a new Big Bad, but the journey there did feel a little rushed. It’s fascinating to watch this demure little girl from the first season morph into a Grand High Witch, but it happened over the course of two or three episodes. Tamzin Merchant has been great in the role, but she did get a bit cartoonish in her villainy here. Anne’s arc, however implausible, was still great fun to watch and the entire sequence where she simultaneously visited with Isaac, John, Tituba, Mercy and Hathorne was glorious. Salem also gave us its biggest reveal yet. After believing that Salem was an alternative take on the Salem Witch Trials, the finale showed that it was actually a lead-in to the Trials. It was a wonderful reveal that cemented Anne Hale’s status as an evil mastermind. Apparently everyone was playing checkers while she was secretly playing chess.
Isaac, Hathorne, Mercy and Tituba were afterthoughts in the finale, showing up only to be dispatched by Anne. Ashley Madekwe grew into the role of Tituba after a rocky first season (she improved greatly after she abandoned her English accent) and did her best with the little material she was given this season. I confess that I was hoping the character would have a better ending, but she really dug her own grave in the end. Isaac, Hathorne and Mercy have felt like they were on an entirely different show, constantly separated from the main arc of the season. It was no different in the finale, and the series dispatched of them as if they didn’t matter (they didn’t, not even poor Isaac).
If the finale was an exercise in bleakness (more on the bleakest moment in a bit), the light at the end of the tunnel was Mary Sibley. She finally got her happily ever after and was able to escape Salem with John Alden. Montgomery has been a force of nature for three seasons, and “Black Sunday” made up for the actress being given the shaft for much of this season. Her performance as Countess Marburg was spot-on (her reaction to the news of Sebastian’s death was perfection). Salem has always been Mary’s show, so to see her end the series in the arms of her true love, as schmaltzy as it is, is appropriate. This is a woman who has (figuratively) been to Hell and back. She is due some respect, dammit. I only hope that Salem‘s end sends a plethora of job offers to Montgomery. She’s absolutely magnificent.
Last is Cotton. Poor, poor Cotton. He was able to redeem the horrible acts from his past with a self-sacrifice that was noble, but misguided. While the world didn’t end, he merely postponed the inevitable. Now he is stuck in Hell for all eternity. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Cotton was going to get yanked out at the last minute. Maybe saved by a remorseful Anne Hale, perhaps? You would be wrong though. Cotton’s fate is a truly shocking one, and those final images will be burned in my brain forever.
Is this the bleakest final shot in the history of television? I think so.
If Salem has to leave us, then “Black Sunday” was a fantastic way to send it off. The third season had its issues, but everything was wrapped up in a neat and satisfying little bow in the end. I look forward to whatever Brannon Braga and Adam Simon give us next. May it last longer than three seasons.
Random Notes
- Is anyone else just a little miffed we never actually got a Lucy Lawless cameo this season? Her voice doesn’t count!
- “Anne Hale, I warned Mary Sibley about you long ago.” -Preach, girl.
- “I already carry the child you will make your new home. And mine was an immaculate conception, as it should be.” -Anne did have some killer lines this episode, didn’t she?
- “You said you’d be back in a year.” -So happy than Mary got a happy ending. At least someone did.
- Why didn’t the age up Little John at the beginning of the season? I guess they couldn’t have Cotton go to Hell that early in the season, but that would have helped this season a ton.
- How did Big John now detect that Mary was no longer Mary? He’s not stupid. What gives?
- Thank you all for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have, flaws and all. It really was something special, and I hope more horror fans discover it on streaming services in the future (Just get past those first 5 or 6 episodes! Mary gets better! I promise!).
- Seriously though, how disturbing and soul-crushing was that final scene?
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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