TV Review: AMERICAN HORROR STORY: Season 11, Episode 7: The Sentinel / Episode 8: Fire Island

American Horror Story: NYC: The Sentinel and Fire Island

FX‘s American Horror Story: NYC: Season 11, Episode 7: The Sentinel and Episode 8: Fire Island TV Show Review.

These two episodes form possibly the weakest link in a series where its narrative, and at times its logic, is already somewhat threadbare, underscored by its nightmarish visual power.

The Sentinel

The Sentinel is Whitely’s Frankenstein-style creation by way of his Mai-Tai Killer persona. We learn this by the failed attempt to capture Whitely in his warehouse ‘laboratory,’ with Patrick and Gino getting abducted themselves. With Patrick cuffed to a table, Whitely shares his motives and goal — to assemble a perfect symbol in the flesh of the gay community from body parts of his previous victims. Whitely selects Patrick to donate his heart to his creation.

Thus in Whitely’s mind, this ‘monster’ embodies gay subcultural pride while confronting society’s indifference to the suffering of its members. Whitely never gets the chance, however, to realize his off-the-rails method to reactivate his chimera. Freed by Gino and Henry, who manage to escape from elsewhere in the warehouse, Patrick shoots Whitely and kills him.

Instead of being hailed as a hero by his fellow cops for dispatching MTK, they censure him by painting his desk pink, to which Patrick responds by turning in his badge. Adam, having viewed the Sentinel for signs of his friend Sully, obstinately refuses to recognize Whitely as the killer. He points instead to Big Daddy, who indeed continues to appear, meting out beatings before vanishing without a trace in the wake of being shot or stabbed. At this point Patrick begins spotting the specter of Barbara stalking him. Gino writes a firebrand of a column for the Native, deriding the concept of gay pride as too passive. Instead he promotes outrage as its clarion call — the true Sentinel of Whitely’s motivation.

Fire Island

A meeting of the minds, both duplicitous and sincere, centers on the gay vacation hotspot, rife with skirmishes, truces, and portents. Gino and Patrick try to find respite from their ordeals in the city on their Fire Island timeshare. Gino invites Adam and Theo for some R&R. Sunbathing on the beach, Gino stalks off after a tiff with Patrick. As Gino strolls afterward, Henry joins him and confesses his unrequited love, which Gino firmly rebuffs as diplomacy allows.

At the neighborhood bar, Sam strikes a truce with Theo over their breakup, then consoles Henry, unwitting and despondent at Gino’s rebuff. Promising Henry a hot hook-up later that night at the ‘meat  rack,’ Sam uses him to exact revenge on Theo. That night Sam hosts a huge bash for which he hires Fran as a party psychic. Later, at Sam’s party, Fran draws the Death card at every reading, which each guy shrugs off despite Fran’s growing concern.

Sam slips away from the party to observe Theo, drugged and tied up at the ‘meat rack’ for Henry’s delectation. But right away Henry notices Big Daddy silently observing the would-be tryst from the shadows and makes a fearful, hasty retreat. Then a brace of young men descend upon Theo, release him, and bear him off into the night. These men sport antlers, symbolizing the infected deer population slaughtered at Dr. Hannah’s direction in the first episode.

Conclusion

An odd mix of sexual politics and obtuse bravado roils under the darkening clouds of an impending epidemic dominates this pair of episodes. The substantial gap between the few knows facts and the wild fancies of those days is a double-edged sword.

The thread of ASH: NYC continues to rest in greater part on symbolism to convey the mystical. On its own, the surreal ambience of Season 11 carries a disquieting subterfuge, particularly regarding the issue of stalking — the feeling described by many gay men at that time, before the actual nature of the HIV retrovirus was realized. Overall, Season 11 is shaping up as more cerebral than visceral adventure, and the characters tend to have a phantom-like quality, like Marley’s Ghost.

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