Scream Queens Season 2, Episode 8: Rapunzel, Rapunzel Review

This Scream Queens review contains spoilers.

Scream Queens Season 2, Episode 8

Romance has taken its victims to the grave in classics you read in high school like Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby….and Scream Queens.

Smooth-talking devil doctor Brock (at least most of him sans The Hand) can pretty much be ruled out as a murder suspect, unless you count Cathy Munsch suspecting him to be the jealous boy toy in the Green Meanie costume when her tryst with an eerily familiar patient is interrupted by that slimy Beelzebub-thing wielding a machete. Hearts are the only thing this surgeon is interested in using his scalpel on right now, and his relationship prognosis is looking profoundly negative. 

Not that anyone should blame Brock for staring straight at Chanel and having repeat hallucinations that it’s actually the face of Munsch seducing him—in bed. He must be some sort of masochist to keep dating someone so clueless about his generation that she thinks Blink-182, Smash Mouth, and Chumbawumba belong on the oldies station. I remember how thrilled I was to unwrap Dude Ranch for Christmas in 1997 and play it on repeat for the the something-hundredth time. She’s even making me feel dated. 

With the pink chiffon tornado of Chanel storming into her apartment making an emergency declaration that she needs to figure out some spacebrained way to starve Brock of his Munsch cravings, it almost seems the Chanels have forgotten that hello, there’s a serial killer on campus. Even Hester. It’s apparently a much wiser idea to throw a 1940’s dinner party for Brock to prove his millennial girlfriend understands what she thinks is his generation. How easily your memory can be wiped of any trace of radioactive green slime when no one is sleeping in the morgue.   

While Team Chanel switches from murder investigation mode to party planning mode, Team Zayday is still following the slime trail. She and Chamberlain set the most epic trap ever by running a bath sprinkled with rose petals in the very same water therapy tank Werewolf Girl’s disembodied head was rolling around on a little too recently. With the help of a toilet paper rack and none from the candy striper, she manages to trap the killer long enough to cut out a piece of that reptilian green pleather before whoever is behind the mask can return to consciousness. 

The skin of a Halloween massacre mascot could only come from a nightmarish wonderland of creepy costumes. This is the shady sort of place that would probably tempt even John Wane Gacy to trade in the clown suit for an especially terrifying Easter bunny, though there is no shortage of deranged clowns. You can almost breathe in the smell of musty fabric and cough up dust particles as Zayday follows the even creepier owner down aisles that look like something out of a vintage haunted house. 

Of course the perpetrators paid in cash. Of course he has no receipts. Of course he has no idea what one of them even looks like thanks to the power of mail-order anonymity, but the purchase dates and a vague description are enough to send Zayday bolting out of there like any sane person would.   

Beware of deceptively kindly widows who offer you a cup of tea. Zayday learns this the hard way after she starts seeing quintuple while interviewing Mrs. Hollis (you know, the pregnant woman whose husband’s unconscious body was unceremoniously dumped in the swamp). She’s exponentially more sinister than her flowered house dresses let on.

There is no way someone who suspects too much and probes even more is going to have one shoe allowed out that door, police badge or no police badge. The questioner in question just knows she’s going to end up in a dungeon somewhere when her suddenly starts to look like a Beatles music video from the 60’s. Pro tip for anyone who has managed to keep homicidal secrets buried since 1986: if you run out of roofies, just use Lorazepam.   

So back to that patient Munsch was having one of her many sordid affairs with before something vile and green almost shredded them on the mattress. Déjà vu yet? If you’ve watched Season 1 through every rhinestone, cotton ball and scented candle, it’s going to hit you as suddenly as Hester knocking you down an entire flight of stairs—and he’s feeling stabby.