This review contains spoilers.
Scream Queens has been solid most of the season despite being a Ryan Murphy property. During the Gruesome Magazine/Horror News Radio podcast we did this weekend (you should be able to download soon), Doc posed the question whether I thought this would be a continuation series or a new story with a new cast every season. The answer to that is: I’m not sure, but I am leaning towards it changing stories every season after watching this week’s episode which was….
Solid!
The episode comes out of the gates firing on all cylinders. Boone is still being mistaken for Joaquin Phoenix as he professes himself as the master of disguise. He removes his beard due to getting some sort of drink on it and No. 3 happens to show up. He easily convinces her he is the ghost of Boooooooooooone. We then get to one of my favorite scenes which involves Emma Roberts being over the top. She flawlessly plays the role of Chanel Oberlin with sass, finesse and straight up stupidity which is in the forefront of this scene. Chanel is trying to impress the Radwells by dressing as who she assumed to be the Indian that was with the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving (Squanto) but she thinks it’s Sacajawea. No. 6 corrects her saying it’s Squanto, Chanel retorts with she know that Squanto was friends with the Lone Ranger. She brilliantly adds that Squanto was the one that taught people to make cranberries and sing blue corn moon (this would be Pocahontas) and there is no way she dressed as the one that joined Louis and Clark’s gay camping extravaganza. If you guessed Murphy was writing this week, you win the weekly prize. But my wife and I did laugh out loud here.
I found this to actually be one of my favorite episodes of the season and it’s probably a correlation with the amount of the Rad one. We get some swell one liners this week as he tells Chanel she gives his bone a bone and, when Boone “appears” to him to borrow a date shirt made of boyfriend material to take Zayday out, we get some more real gems. Another Chadism: Zayday is a chick, did you forget that you are super gay. Boone convinces Chad that if he has sex with Zayday he will be able to stay alive. How did he convince him, you ask? Well, simply by telling him “have you ever heard that once you go black you don’t go back? That is how it started.”
Another highlight was Chad’s five reasons why he has been ignoring No. 6:
- The last time he porked her, she farted
- She wears a huge flipping neck brace
- Her breath smell like cheeseburgers and he feels like he’s making out with the “Hamburglar”
- She has a Pooh belly
- She’s not rich
Gotta give Chad credit, at least he is honest.
So, we know that Boone is one of the red devils and Gigi is behind it. We get a reveal this week that there were not one but two bathtub babies a boy and a girl. So, we know the other baby is the other red devil. With the season winding down, Boone’s plan to eliminate Gigi backfires as the costumed red devil (his sister who has yet to be revealed) decided to knife Boone and not step mom Gigi. So, we are now left with two killers. But, wait, another killer emerges. Who? None other than Chanel who, out of anger, pushes No. 6 down the steps causing her to break her neck as payback for sleeping with her man. She ends the episode with a warning to the other Chanels telling them “that’s what happens to hog faced bitches that try to steal hotter kappa’s boyfriends.” Dang, I thought Lea Michele was kind of cute.
As I stated before, you can tell the Murphster is back with the number of mentions of vagina as well as the gay and racially themed jokes that he likes to push the envelope with. As we edge closer to the end of the season, the episodes are steadily improving with the exception of the dud we had a few weeks ago. Michael Uppendahl directed and Ryan Murphy penned “Ghost Stories.” My wife popped in before as I was sitting here writing this and I agree with her statement: Scream Queens is getting good. Although I thought most of the season has been just that, darn good and a pleasant surprise.
Scream Queens Season 1 Episode 9 “Ghost Stories” 
(4 / 5) on the Thug Meter
