Scream Queens took a break last week (thanks, baseball), and we hardly missed it. Its return to the airwaves, “Beware of Young Girls,” yielded one huge clue that moved the show’s central mystery forward, a few juicy Jamie Lee Curtis scenes, and a whole lotta hot air. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Spoilers!
Ok, this isn’t a spoiler. Chanel Number Two, played by Ariana Grande, died in the pilot, which in the show’s timeline was apparently yesterday. I mean, look how well-preserved she is! Anyway, the Kappas host her funeral, with open-casket musings by each character in a scene that cheerfully rips off Heathers. Chanel Oberlin delivers the eulogy, referring to her deceased sister as a “dumb dead whore” and a “stupid little trollop.”
Post-funeral, the surviving Chanels contact Number Two via ouija board; Grande herself appears to Queen Bitch Chanel in a dream that involves a lot of breathy ass-kissing and advice to be a better leader. Unfortunately, she also warns her that the other Chanels are planning to kill her, because they believe Number Two’s false accusation (made via ouija board) that she’s the Red Devil. This subplot is the most pointless thing ever, and it’s only here to a) bring back Ariana Grande, and hopefully some of her fans’ eyeballs; b) allow for more “Chanel Number Five’s Vagina Has Teeth” jokes (WTF); and c) provide a flimsy excuse for the backstabbing Chanels to finally band together again.
We also learn more about why Dean Munsch hates Kappa so much. Well, besides having to cover up that bathtub baby business 20 years ago, and the fact that she just hates sororities in general. Seems a few years prior, her husband (the school’s “Beatles 101 professor”), fell for one of his students, Feather (Tavi Gevinson), who was a Kappa sister. When Grace and Pete track down Feather—via a tip from Gigi ... we’ll get to that—she spills all. Yes, she broke up Dean Munsch’s marriage. Yes, she’s still with her much, much older beau. And yes, she’s willing to go on the record about how stalker-y and CRAZY Dean Munsch acted in the wake of her divorce. Grace and Pete are stoked—they think they’ve solved the case! Clearly, Munsch = Red Devil! And Grace apparently said she wouldn’t make out with Pete until the case was solved, so added bonus (for Pete, anyway).
Of course, anytime someone gets ANYWHERE in moving the Red Devil case forward, something happens to ensure Scream Queens will be able to sustain its tissue-thin story through 15 episodes. (We’re only on episode seven.) After Feather says she’ll spill all the gory details about Munsch to Woodward and Bernstein, she goes home to her Beatles Professor BF only to find him theatrically chopped up throughout the house, with a trail of blood literally pointing to the bedroom ... where his head rests in the fish tank.
The cops have one and only suspect, and by the magic of television Dean Munsch is whisked away to a mental hospital without further investigation, a trial, etc. But though asylum life is pretty sweet, she has unfinished business to attend to: enlisting a too-dumb-to-know-better Grace and Pete into “uncovering” her husband’s real killer. Feather! Feather has no motive, but she’s obsessed with bologna (in an extended joke I just don’t have the energy to explain) and a bologna sandwich with her DNA on it was at the crime scene. It’s too perfect, but it’s good enough, and Dean Munsch is free while a sobbing Feather is stuffed in a glass cell.
It’s all a careful, cunning ruse, of course. Dean Munsch takes the opportunity to confess via voice-over to us, the lucky viewers at home, that she did chop up her ex-hubby, and framed Feather for the crime. “With a serial killer on the loose, it was perfect timing,” she gleefully admits, while jamming out to Dory Previn’s aptly-chosen “Beware of Young Girls.”
So that side mission took nearly the whole episode, but it still didn’t distract us from the most important scene. And no, it wasn’t the one with Chad and the goat. It was this:
Prepping for dinner with Grace’s father, Gigi takes a phone call. We don’t know who’s on the other line, but a knife-flailing Gigi—who we’ve seen previously admonishing the Red Devil for not doing his/her/their job right—is very displeased with whoever’s calling. “I told you to get rid of him,” she snarls. “We are not kidnappers. We are murderers hellbent on revenge! That is our brand!” She then makes reference to “you guys” being inefficient, before signing off with “Please go kill some people!” You GUYS, eh?
Ok. So we’ve seen two Red Devils in the same place at the same time, but now it seems that the murderers are actually a trio: whoever’s in the two costumes, plus Gigi calling the shots. Who are the two? Boone? Pete? Dean Munsch again? Chanel Number Six? (Gigi explains the phone call away as “family drama.”)
Also dangling heavily in the air: why did Gigi tip Pete and Grace off about Feather? Is Gigi’s bad-fashion obsession a deliberate distraction from what she’s really up to? (Duh.) And whyyyyy did Dean Munsch tell Grace she’d have to wait a week before she spilled the dirt on what happened to that goddamn bathroom baby? Well, I know the answer to the last one, at least the “why” part. Guess I can’t quit you yet, Scream Queens.