American Horror Story S03e01 720p Torrent
Katerine Aldrige
"Bitchcraft" is the premiere episode of the third season of the anthology television series American Horror Story, which premiered on October 9, 2013, on the cable network FX. The episode title is a portmanteau of the words bitch and witchcraft.
The episode introduces a group of four young witches who are given instruction in how to use their powers at a boarding school in New Orleans run by Cordelia Foxx (Sarah Paulson). Flashbacks tell the story of the cruel Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates), a 19th-century New Orleans socialite who mutilated slaves as a part of her rituals for everlasting life. In the contemporary storyline, the world's most powerful witch and Foxx's mother Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) excavates LaLaurie in order to learn her secrets. Angela Bassett and Gabourey Sidibe guest star as Marie Laveau and Queenie, respectively.
"Bitchcraft" held the highest ratings of any episode of American Horror Story, before it was surpassed a year later by the fourth-season premiere episode "Monsters Among Us". This episode is rated TV-MA (LSV).
Wealthy socialite Madame Delphine LaLaurie holds an extravagant soiree in her mansion. Afterwards Delphine washes her face with human blood harvested from her slaves as a beauty treatment. She discovers her daughter had sex with Bastien, a slave. Delphine has a bull's head put over Bastien's head, resembling the Minotaur.
Zoe Benson has sex with her boyfriend Charlie, which causes Charlie to die from an apparent brain aneurysm. This reveals Zoe is a witch. She is sent to a school for witches in New Orleans called Miss Robichaux's Academy where she meets the headmistress, Cordelia Foxx, who explains that every witch possesses a power of her own, but in each generation there is the Supreme, an all-powerful witch. She also mentions that a witch Misty Day was burned alive after she brought a bird back to life. The other students are Nan, who can read the minds of others, Queenie, who can make injuries she inflicts on her body appear on whomever she chooses without harming herself, calling herself a human Voodoo doll, and Madison, a former teen actress who can move objects with her mind. Madison befriends Zoe, and invites her along to a frat party she will be attending.
At the party Zoe meets frat boy Kyle Spencer, who immediately falls for her and is determined to get to know her. Meanwhile, Madison is drugged by Kyle's frat brother Archie Brener and, along with his other frat brothers, gang-rapes her. Afterwards, she vengefully flips their bus over, with Kyle and the frat brothers on board.
Fiona Goode, the current Supreme and Cordelia's mother, arrives at the school after hearing of Misty. Fiona takes the girls on a field trip to teach them about the history of witches in New Orleans. She tells them of Mary Oneida Toups and her coven at Popp Fountain in City Park. During the field trip, Nan leads them to a tour of LaLaurie's mansion. The tour guide reveals that LaLaurie's body has never been found, but Nan tells Fiona that she can tell where LaLaurie is buried.
Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C+, citing uncertainty about the tone of the program but hope that the rest of the season will be good. Her review ends, "Yes, we know vaguely what the show's approach is going to be, and yes, we can expect that when Lange and Paulson are on screen, things will be pretty good. But we're also left wondering whether that minotaur is meant to be a campy joke or a very real horror and whether anyone involved understands what the divergence point is between those two things."[5]
At The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger characterized the episode as "an eclectic mix" that "ricochets raucously between hilarious camp and blunt brutality." Genzlinger notes that thanks to the cast, such drastic shifts work "particularly well" in this episode.[6] Along similar lines, The Huffington Post writer Maggie Furlong pronounced the episode "delightful," "fun," and "accessible," with a "lighter, more comedic tone" than previous seasons of the show.[7] Rakesh Satyal of Vulture awarded the episode 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "one action-packed, satisfying, yet hurl-worthy episode".[8]
American Horror Stories season 3 debuts with "Bestie," an episode that highlights the horror of harmful online communities that promise a sense of connection, and a toxic friendship that ends in tragedy. It begins with Shelby (Emma Halleen) struggling with the grief of her mother's death and schoolyard bullies, eventually finding companionship with Bestie, a girl she befriends online who can never leave her house due to certain birth defects. Soon the pair talk daily and Shelby starts to come out of her shell thanks to Bestie's encouragement to "face your fears," but as their bond grows more intense, Bestie encourages her to do increasingly dangerous things.
After things go too far and Shelby ends up seriously injuring herself she befriends River, a boy at her school who's also been bullied. As their friendship deepens, Shelby finds she has no further need for Bestie and her toxic friendship, but Bestie won't be deterred and finds a way to get revenge. When River invites Shelby to a creepy abandoned house on a date, she realizes too late that it's where Bestie lives, and when she finally appears, it becomes clear that she's been manipulating River as well, and he murders Shelby to remain"best friends forever" with Bestie in this killer opener for American Horror Stories season 3.
After Shelby realizes that the creepy abandoned house River brings her to is where Bestie lives, she turns around to confront him only to find his pocketknife plunged into her chest. River admitted to Shelby when they first started their friendship that he'd been bullied by the same group of students who picked on her, and this made him feel powerless. For personal reasons, and because of his love of horror, he thought the fact that poisoned them during the school's Macbeth performance was justified and admirable, but he didn't have the courage to do something so graphic, but Bestie made him face that fear when he killed Shelby.
Bestie ensnared River like she did Shelby - by preying on his feelings of loneliness and isolation. Whenever Shelby felt unsure about doing something, Bestie encouraged her by saying, "Face your fear," which, while an emboldening mantra at one point, was perverted into a decree that made Shelby do more and more dangerous things for Bestie's approval. River told Shelby at one point that he'd been watching her the entire school year, which is about as long as she'd been talking to Bestie herself, so assuming Bestie was also manipulating River at the same time, she probably told him to kill Shelby in order to prove his faithfulness.
Bestie got close to her victims by finding things to bond with them over, capitalizing on their insecurities, and focusing on things that isolated them from other people. Bestie bonded with Shelby over the fact that they both had "annoying dads," and despite the fact that Bestie lived alone, she was still able to invent a family life that mirrored Shelby's in enough ways for her to feel closer to Bestie than anyone else in her life. With River, Bestie used the fact that he was bullied at school for being disabled, and their shared physical differences, to manipulate him into a similar toxic friendship that gave her all the control.
Based on the fact that Bestie used subterfuge and lies to get what she wanted from people, it's difficult to distinguish what was actually true in her life. Considering her appearance, it's possible that a lifetime of bullying and living alone turned her into someone who feared abandonment and judgment, so she put herself in a position where that could never happen. Bestie embodied the adage that "hurt people hurt people" and showed the way that cyber bullying could appear in the guise of someone friendly, making it all the more difficult to detect.
Bestie convinced Shelby that she was confined to her room because of her appearance and physical ailments and therefore could never experience some of the simple pleasures of being a typical teenager. Shelby offered to be Bestie's "avatar" and do some of the things she wasn't able to do, including egging a neighborhood house and stealing junk food from the local convenience store. Eventually, these small acts of vandalism turned into more sinister deeds, like poisoning classmates during the Macbeth performance, showing up to school dressed as her music teacher's dead baby, and finally, breaking her own wrist with a hammer.
While it's possible that Bestie was just a lonely girl who wanted the world to pay for being callous and indifferent to her condition, there could also have been more to the fact that she made her victims carry out increasingly horrific deeds. Far from being a young girl, it's possible that she was some sort of ancient eldritch or demonic entity playing a game of strategy with human pawns. Bestie delighted in orchestrating chaos and pain while never having to suffer any of the consequences.
In order to understand Bestie's hold on River it's important to understand what they bonded over. Being disabled and having physical limitations, River felt ostracized and lonely, but the Ana Rehxia community, and specifically Bestie, helped him feel accepted. Being disabled herself, Bestie understood the pain and anxiety that River was going through and could manipulate his mental health to the point where he expressly sought her validation and approval just like Shelby but for slightly different reasons.
In a bit of misdirection, the episode planted a red herring when Bestie explained to Shelby that she was adopted, and though it wasn't specifically stated, it seemed possible that River was connected to Bestie's other family, and was possibly her protective brother. But based on their interactions at the end, it became clear that she was controlling him just like Shelby by making him think that he was helping her live a better life. His physical limitations were passable while hers weren't, and the part of River that wanted to heal himself became protective of Bestie, who victimized herself in order to make him feel altruistic.
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