Each week Joe (@bstolemyremote) and Terry (@gaylydreadful) have discussed the most recent episode of FX’s American Horror Story, alternating between our respective sites -- queerhorrormovies.com and gaylydreadful.com.

Episode 9.05 “Red Dawn”: As twilight broaches, the survivors brace for a final brawl.

TERRY

Well, Joe. In a lot of ways this episode feels appropriate, as it was an ending of sorts. It was a bitter-sweet moment for me. Sweet because I think it’s the best episode of the season (a dubious honor, I know). But bitter because...well, I think we’ll probably get to it. It's also an episode where 1984 finally feels like it has some forward motion, instead of just spinning its spandex-covered wheels.

We're in the finale of A slasher movie...well, movies, I guess since it seems that all of the non-killers are ending this hellish night as stars in their own narratives. But first, we get some backstory on Not Rita (Angelica Ross). Turns out, her father was a sadistic murderer who kept his urges from Not Rita and her mother. He confesses right before jabbing a knife in his throat. As one does.

Basically, violent confession seems to be the order of the day.

Xavier (Cody Fern), Brooke (Emma Roberts), Chet (Gus Kenworthy) and Montana (Billie Lourd) stare at the burning wreckage of their escape plan but Xavier goes nuts, wanting to burn everything to the ground, yelling, “I have breathed the fire of a thousand white hot suns.” Hyperbolic, much?

Margaret (Leslie Grossman) knocks him out and then mentions that she saw campers across the lake. Poor Chet goes with her and here’s where we have the next confession: There’s no one on the other side, she just wanted to get him alone. After which she hits him with an oar, slices off his ear, ties the anchor around his feet and basically Jason Lives his ass, sending him to the bottom of the lake.

RIP Fuzzy Chest. Your chest, unlike your acting, will be missed.

Meanwhile, Brooke mistakes Montana’s hatchet for protection (“Yeah, keep that close,” she hilariously says) and goes off in search of Ray (DeRon Horton), who she sees outside. The same Ray we know was beheaded just a few episodes ago. And Not Rita runs into Montana and Burned Boy where she makes the stupid mistake of confessing she unleashed Jingles (John Caroll Lynch), which Xavier takes….well, I won’t lie: he doesn’t take it very well.

And we’re not even halfway through the confessions or the episode. But over to you, Joe. There’s a lot of surprises to come and I’m curious how you felt about this episode? Are we on the same row-boat or have we flip-flopped again? What did you think of the multiple climaxes we get? Did they work for you or leave you as unsatisfied as Brooke’s first sexy time with Ghost Ray? And WHY did it take so long to get here?!

JOE

Yes Terry, it is incredibly disappointing that juuuust as AHS seems to get its shit together, we unfortunately have to stop. The blame is 100% on me, as I’ve taken a new gig that demands exclusivity (even for fun side projects like this!), so alas this will be our last back and forth column.

But sad news aside, at least we’re going out on a high because this is, without a doubt, the best episode of the season. Naturally, since I’m the grouch, I’m the first to admit that that’s not saying much, but I *mostly* enjoyed ‘Red Dawn’. Did some of Xavier’s awkwardly shoe horned-in references (Joker, really?!) rub me the wrong way? Sure, but these are small criticisms for me.

My favourite scene is another confession: Brooke’s confession with Ghost Ray pre-coitus. This was one of the first times this season that AHS has simply allowed a scene to breathe (ie: trust their audience) and while the scene isn’t exactly revelatory, Roberts and Horton play it with exactly the right amount of vulnerability and compassion. And thus, Brooke gets a nice moment to breathe and enjoy her first time...right up until she finds her lover’s decapitated head in the fridge (Q: Who put it there?)

Full confession: the end of the episode got a little too Looney Tunes for my taste, as everyone took turns running around, battling and then running some more. Montana and Brooke got in a few good swings on each other, but considering the build-up, the expediency with which they resolved their conflict (ie: Brooke repeatedly stabbing Montana in the chest) felt mildly anticlimactic. Naturally this is all for naught considering Ghost Montana will live on and, presumably, encounter Brooke again in the future, but for now, it didn’t quite satisfy.

Better was Xavier’s battle with Jingles, if only because it felt more believable than Margaret battling a man roughly double her size. I looooove Leslie Grossman, but she’s TINY, so I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that she can take out Chet on the rowboat because she beat his tiny brain with the oar and then punched his wounded shoulder. I was far less inclined to believe that she could be so violently strangled by Jingles, but somehow still have the strength to maybe stab him with enough force to harm him. Xavier’s sudden dramatic reprisal of his 1979 performance on Robin Hood was a nice subversion of what I thought we would get, and the dramatic irony that he’s putting down the person who was actually putting down the real killer isn’t lost on me.

Which brings us to the end of the episode with all of its weird messiness. Montana, Ray and the Hiker (Lou Taylor Pucci) are all permanently stuck in what is described as Purgatory at Camp Redwood. Presumably that means that Xavier, Chet, Bertie (Tara Karsian), Baby Elephant Trunk (Matthew Morrison) and possibly even those Jingles impersonators can/should reappear. Brooke and Margaret are out in the world (the former in shackles; the latter still playing the victim). Not Rita...er...Dee Dee is still alive, but unseen.

And then there’s Ramirez (Zach Villa) and Jingles in their stolen police cruiser, hitting the open road back to LA for presumably another crime spree?

I’m shook, Terry! I don’t know where we go from here, but I imagine you have a guess or two? Thinking about this episode, how did you find the mix of laughs and gore? And which battle did you enjoy the most?

TERRY

Before we get to the end, Joe, I just want to say that even though I'm really sad we won't be continuing these recaps, I'm very excited for your new job opportunity. I know you'll kick ass.

Before this gets too sappy, you asked which matchup was my favorite. Even though, as you mentioned, Brooke and Montana's fight felt a little anticlimactic, I actually loved the protracted sequence where it's implied they've just been tumbling around ineffectually for twenty minutes.

But my favorite part of that moment was the end, with Brooke stabbing Montana just as the yellow school bus pulls up, full of gawking children. The mix of their faces in various states of horror while Brooke stands, bloodied but victorious, had me cackling. It was another moment where we were allowed to just breathe for a bit.

Another comedic moment that mostly worked for me was Ghost Montana shooting the cop. On the bad side was the Ghostbusters quote (which premiered June 8th, 1984...so when is this show set?), but I looooved her deadpan delivery of "You’re doing this purgatory thing all wrong. You guys are fucking boring.” It had me snapping my fingers.

Looking ahead, I have no clue where this story will take us! I loved the last shot of Richard and Jingles joyriding back to LA, like two psychos in love (I've given up trying to be mad that the show is so frivolous in its depiction of a real life serial killer). But I don't know how the show will be structured for the remaining five episodes. The trailer for next episode merely suggests Montana is continuing her murder spree while Xavier's face is back to perfection.

Brooke obviously has unfinished business. But with whom? Will she hunt down Richard in LA? Confront Ghost Montana? Go after Margaret? Will there be a time jump in the real world while Camp Redwood is perpetually stuck in 1984? Is this a subtle joke by the writers that even as the world moves on, our collective consciousness seems trapped in that year/decade?

The rest of the season is wide open, which could either be a good thing or a terrible thing. I hope it continues this forward momentum and doesn't get stuck in one of the many traps littered around the camp. But what about you, Joe? Where do you think the show will go for the back half? What happened to Dee Dee? Any final thoughts? And since this is an end, if you made it to the finale of a slasher, how would you eventually meet your doom?

JOE

Lol - I’ve always joked that if I were in a slasher film, I would be the Drew Barrymore and go out first (my survival instincts are brutally insufficient!). Hopefully it would be something totally extra and garishly over the top because I’d want a death that people talk about forever, though that’s really just the narcissism talking.

But I digress, because we’re still talking about these 1984 bozos! I’ll confess that I’m mildly disappointed that the preview didn’t confirm my Roanoke-like dreams that the first half of the season is actually a fictitious slasher film that a brand new set of characters/campers are watching. If there was ever an opportunity for AHS to pull some kind of retcon or meta-commentary about the slasher subgenre, this would have been the ideal time to whip it out (so to speak). I fear that that opportunity has now passed.

So if we are, in fact, stuck with this set of characters and this is our new reality, one has to assume that something will draw Brooke, Margaret and presumably Dee Dee (and likely Richard and Jingles) back to the camp for some kind of battle royale. That certainly doesn’t seem like five episodes worth of content, though, and toggling back and forth between Los Angeles and Camp Redwood reeks of the misguided narrative split that Glee adopted in its final season (don’t take me back there, Ryan Murphy, I implore you!)

Part of me hopes that Dee Dee will still prove to be some kind of wrench in everything. Her new connection to serial killers revealed in this episode and the suggestion by Ramirez that she has a darkness within her could be an interesting avenue to explore. Or, in true Murphy fashion, that could be all we get. The fact that she and several others are missing from next week’s preview could be telling...or it could mean nothing at all.

It’s AHS, Terry, who knows what comes next?! All I know is that I will miss unpacking all of this ridiculousness with you on a weekly basis. Thanks again for embarking on this (occasionally ill-advised due to iffy content) journey with me. And, with that, I guess that From Pose to AHS: The Terry & Joe Story has officially come to a close.

Next week: American Horror Story hits 100 episodes!