Spot on. I totally agree. Very well said.
Thanks! 
I wonder what role Kathy Bates’ Butcher character will play, miffed as she was. Will her wrath smite Sidney or someone else? And I wonder how they will portray the real Butcher (if there even is one- maybe all the killings are being done by the locals and the ghosts are like, totally framed!)
The more I discuss this, the more I realize how many different angles there are now. Not to mention the levels of acting it takes to pull this off. They had to play a role, then play the role of the actor who played the role. It’s fascinating to watch.
I’ll guess that the one survivor is
Agnes. At least, I think she’ll be absorbed into the cult.
Well that goes back to the format.[spoiler] If she goes into the cult, it is because she is going to take her meat cleaver and pig head mask and go chop everyone up.
Looked at through our legal system, Agnes Mary Winstead will be held responsible- there is no such thing as ghosts, and I am not intending to debate that. But looked at through the plot of the story, it would be the Colonial ghosts enchanted by Gaga’s Scathach who compel Agnes to murder. We’ve seen (reenactment) Scathach take control of Matt’s will a couple of times (and where is Lady Gaga btw, too busy?), so such a thing is at least possible in the AHS universe.
So, looked at through the eyes of Joe Viewer, who is considering the legal view and the supernatural view, to him, what’s the difference? Either Agnes goes insane or is controlled by witches and ghosts. Either way, at the end of the blood moon, Agnes chops everybody up with a meat cleaver. Malicious spirits are as good an explanation for cray cray as anything, since cray cray is beyond the psychological ‘event horizon’ and therefore perhaps does not require a natural explanation.[/spoiler]
The format kind of encourages one to question everything, no?
Wow. Tonight’s episode, damn. I did not expect all of those people to get it so soon! Especially Sidney! I do think it’s funny that the actual live people involved have killed more than the ghosts!
“I just wanted to be on TV!”
[Butcher knife down the middle of the head]
That’s quite a dismount.
Wooooohooooo! What a ride that was! All the re-enactment characters showed up in person!
I wonder if all the actors who are dying will show up as ghosts at the end of the season?
Good ol’ fashioned campy, slasher, ghost hunting horror! LOVED IT!!!
Yeah, we got the surprise of all these different characters turning killer, one by one, and then the introductions of the real ghosts.
It was strange that the gun did not seem to do any good. Agnes got shot, and she just went all Rambo and plucked the slug from her shoulder with a red-hot pair of pliers (though butcher knife blows are also survivable). The Yankee Doodle Dandy ghost got shot in the tunnel, but it only slowed him down. What is up with this ghost, anyway? He posed like he was being a help once, but only to lead his charges to the dismembering locals. And now he is hostile to tunnel visitors, so he’s not exactly Casper.
Speaking of our ‘heroes’ attacking the ghosts- the most effective attack was Shelby v. Scathach, no? She said, “get off him!”, and whacked her with the crowbar. She got off him all right, and ran away! Turns out she just gave Shelby some space to bludgeon Matt to death, but still…
Yah, the story definitely exists in the AHS universe now that the Butcher and the Witch have been revealed as real entities. Arguably though that was true last episode when that woman was killed by a sudden appearance of Pig Man in her back seat as she drove past Priscilla. Or we coulda known that before episode 1 since this is AHS. And I suppose the whole thing could still be a giant put-on by the producers, who reveal the gag in time for Season 3 of this fake reality-show horror story. But I doubt that. The ghosts are going to kill all but one person- I am guessing Cuba Gooding Jr. survives since the Witch needs a new boyfriend- that the live characters don’t kill first.
And then the direction the show goes in is: 
I don’t think it’s a “producer’s gag” because I just read an article with Ryan Murphy stating that Scathach is the first Supreme; tying Roanoke to Coven.
As for the Mott ghost in the tunnel, my guess is that he’s not friendly now because it’s the Blood Moon?
I should’ve mentioned this in my previous post, but dear God, Kathy Bates is phenomenal in this role. Switching back & forth between the Butcher and Agnes while using her own camera/confessional was really something to watch. I hope she gets an Emmy nod for this, and most of the rest of the cast too - all brilliant this season.
agreed re: Kathy Bates - at the beginning of this season I thought she was fully wasted this season - now not so much.
Wes Bentley, on the other hand, has been nothing more than “hey, its a familiar callback standing next to Kathy Bates!”
Impressive episode!
Regarding the Mott ghost…while he was depicted as being helpful during the last Blood Moon, all we’ve really seen is a reenactment. Who knows what actually happened? Matt seemed to be more familiar with his presence, going beyond having just encountered the ghost on the way out of the house one time.
Also: “You’re in North Carolina…if it’s not breaded and fried, it’s not edible.” Yep, pretty much.
Even in the reenactment, he was only helpful up to the point where he abandoned people into the clutches of Mama and her degenerate family. So, not really helpful at all, just dangerous in a different way according to his different agenda. But yah, who knows what really happened, since in the latest episode the spider nurses (aren’t those supposed to be the murder nurses?) come crawling out of the Mott ghost’s cavern. I find those things especially creepy, so bravo AHS.
The sense of humor is kind of crowded into the corners in this one, no?
This latest episode seems to be getting a little bit like House of 1000 Corpses. It is very bloody and dreadful, but it still comes across as very well-written and repeatedly surprising. In HOOTC, we knew who the killers were and everything unfolded along those lines. Here it is still a big surprise (to me anyway) that everyone turns out to be a killer, even though all the seeds of the conflicts were sown in the previous episodes. There is a kind of hierarchy to the characters though, the narrative point of which has not been fully revealed.
I was surprised that Lee and Shelby-actress escaped Mama and her sons. Shelby-actress got a tooth yanked out by Mama and reacted with murder- I thought a tooth for a tooth was supposed to be the limit? Meanwhile, Lee got partly eaten, snorted drugs and behaved whorishly before she got away, but get away she did, saving Shelby-actress’ life in the process. I guess she is the counterpoint to Real Shelby being urged by Cuba Gooding Jr. that, “we gotta stick together, it is the only way we will survive” and Shelby reacting like, “Yeah I don’t think so, I’d rather just croak hasta pronto,” offing herself and leaving him without witness. So, victims are strong, and murderers are weak, is that it? Lee and Shelby-actress are so traumatized that they don’t believe Cuba Gooding Jr. when he tells them the truth about how Matt and Shelby died (is it me or were they looking down on him after all this?), and so they don’t stick together with him and he gets whacked by pig-man outside in the hall.
Ok, I’ve said accurate things about the show, but looked at another way, what I’ve written looks insane, and I have only touched on so many parts of episode 8. I guess part of the tension comes down to exploration of the question: How far can we justifiably take a slasher horror flick into shocking awfulness while justifying it all with good writing? Because I still think it is remarkably well-done, though I also get the feeling that the producers would remove the sheathing from my nerves in order to touch them more directly.
ETA: Though the climax of the episode actually seemed to be a joke: Cuba Gooding Jr. is urging Real Shelby that they need to stick together and there is still hope, and she tells him, “You are a really good actor.” And his response is, “Really? You think so?” Like, say it again, feed my ego. No matter what, that is actually his motive. LOL!
I’m loving this season more and more with every episode.
“We’re about to be murdered by ghosts, but thanks for the compliment!”
I’m wondering if Angela Basset’s character is the one who will survive.
And the ending - that was an actor in a pig mask?!?
So is what we’ve been watching all “reality tv” yet again?
Well, one has to wonder how they got all the cameras in the Poke’s house.
They do have security cameras and like to film stuff, it could be footage assembled from that.
Those were the Chin(?) daughters, the Asian family killed in the house. The two nurses showed up a minute or two later.
That was Wes Bentley (the actor who played the Butcher’s son in the re-enactment.) My thought is that Sidney had set it up so that throughout the stay, other actors would show up dressed as various characters from the story, to try and create drama/suspense/etc for the cameras. The same way he had the kitchen rigged with fake explosives and stuff. That was obviously before they all realized it really *was *real. Wes Bentley’s pig man isn’t the same as the real pig man who killed Cuba Gooding Jr.
Of course, the next thing they should all do is get in the car Wes Bentley must have used to arrive there, and get the hell away, but I am sure something next week will stop them from doing so.
The ghosts play a surprisingly small role in the “real” version of things, but I don’t think so. The Polks wouldn’t carve up Lee as a gag. I don’t see how the spider ghosts could be faked. Maybe the scene with Agnes getting whacked by the Butcher was staged- the show never returns to the scene of the murder to show her body like they do with Matt, and where did the Butcher and her crew go anyway? Why didn’t they come into the house and kill everybody?
Still, between the spider ghosts, the cannibalism and the witch-fucking, I don’t think it is just “reality tv”.
I am really enjoying the mystery and suspense angle of this season. I am surprised by every episode and just do not know what will happen next!