Checking In (American Horror Story)

Plot

Two Swedish girls, Vendela (Kamilla Alnes) and Agnetha (Helena Mattsson), are dropped off at the Hotel Cortez. They are approached at reception by Iris (Kathy Bates), who leads them to their room. While there, one of the girls asks for ice and while walking to the machine, she notices a maid (Mare Winningham) cleaning a sheet covered with blood and two children standing in the hallways. Back at the room, they both complain about a foul stench and quickly realize that it is coming from the mattress. After they cut it open, a bloody humanoid appears and attacks them. While waiting for the police to arrive, Iris assigns them Room 64 where one falls asleep. After hearing strange noises coming from the bathroom, she enters only to find ghostly children drinking her friend's blood.

Homicide detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) is grieving over the disappearance of his son Holden (Lennon Henry), who was abducted on the carousel at an amusement park five years prior, and since then, his relationship with his wife Alex (Chloë Sevigny) is failing. At a crime scene he receives an anonymous phone call pointing him to Room 64 at the Hotel Cortez. Meanwhile, at the hotel, heroin addict Gabriel (Max Greenfield) is put into Room 64 and is grabbed by The Addiction Demon who violently rapes him with a conical drill-bit dildo. When he is on the verge of passing out, Sally (Sarah Paulson) appears and asks him to tell her that he loves her. At the front desk, John is approached by Liz Taylor (Denis O'Hare), a cross dressing bartender who leads him to Room 64, where John falls asleep. Under his bed, a conscious Gabriel wakes up with a gasp. At exactly 2:25 he has a strange vision of a child, who he believes is his long lost son, Holden, who he wakes up and searches for.

Later, Elizabeth (Lady Gaga), the hotel's bloodsucking, fashion obsessed owner and Donovan (Matt Bomer), Iris's son, approach a couple who they bring back to the Cortez and engage in group sex. Afterwards, The Countess and Donovan slit the couple's throats and relish in their blood. The Swedish girls are being held hostage in cages by Iris, who arrives and prepares a foul drink to purify their blood. However, she is interrupted by Sally, who sets one of the girls free for her own entertainment. While the girl runs to the front door, The Countess appears and slits her throat with her fingernail blade and tells Iris it can never happen again.

John returns home to his family. Alex, a paediatrician is disgruntled by his late arrival which has in turn made her late for a slew of house calls. She has prepared dinner, but John and his daughter Scarlett (Shree Crooks) choose instead to go out for sushi once she leaves. Over sushi, John's daughter Scarlett speaks of dreaming of her brother Holden, which makes John uncomfortable. He gets a text message from Alex which leads them back to a dark home. An officer waits for John's arrival outside and John directs him to watch Scarlett as he enters the house. The caller from earlier calls him again, restating that he would kill again. The cop leaves his post to investigate movement in the trees. Scarlett leaves the back seat of the car and wanders into the house, where she finds two men disemboweled and suspended above beds. John, chasing a dark figure, gives up the chase to follow her screams. Later at John's home, Alex is frantic about her safety after her phone was cloned to lure John. She is upset about the most recent events against the backdrop of Holden's disappearance.

Five years earlier, at an amusement park in Santa Monica, John, Alex, and their children Scarlet and Holden are playing. While Holden is riding, John is distracted by his phone and walks off. He notices that his son's horse on the carousel is vacant and shouts around saying his name.

In the present, Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson), the new owner, arrives at the Cortez with his son Lachlan (Lyric Lennon), and they are given a tour by real estate agent Marcy (Christine Estabrook). While viewing the penthouse, they interrupt Donovan who is sleeping and are introduced to Elizabeth, who shares interest with Will. After rummaging through her records, Lachlan is given a tour around a hidden game room where he is introduced to an unaged Holden.

In 1994, Iris watches from her car as she stalks Sally and Donovan who check in to the Hotel Cortez. She enters the hotel to ask Liz Taylor, the previous desk clerk, about Donovan and Sally's location and is drawn to room 64. Inside, Sally pressures Donovan to take heroin and drugs him. When Iris enters she feuds with Sally before trying to help Donovan. Sally leaves and walks through the corridor, disoriented, and stops at the end of the corridor where she gazes out of a high window. Iris appears and angrily shoves Sally out the window to her death. Back at the room, Iris spots Elizabeth admiring Donovan and asks who she is. In the present, Alex and John agree to a separation. He packs his bags and moves into the Hotel Cortez, where he checks into Room 64, once again.

Ratings

"Checking In" gained a 3.0 18–49 ratings share and was watched by 5.81 million viewers, leading the night on cable, about a 5% dip from the American Horror Story: Freak Show premiere. It also topped the social ratings, driving 878,000 tweets seen by over 5.4 million people. The episode averaged a 3.0 rating in the 18–49 years adult demographic, the most sought after by advertisers, and ranked second among all primetime series aired on Wednesday night, only behind Fox’s drama Empire. After factoring in delayed viewing, the episode rose to 9.1 million, with 6.13 million in the 18–49 demographic, while combined linear, non-linear and encore viewing, it drew 12.17 million viewers through October 11.

Critical response

The episode received mixed reviews from critics. Amber Dowling of TheWrap gave a positive review, saying, "It's a visual, visceral romp into what is being set up to be another haphazard foray into the world of horror, as imagined by Murphy and his writing counterpart Brad Falchuk. The show has rarely made sense in terms of story, and this is no exception." Writing for Variety, Brian Lowry praised Gaga's character as "gloriously photographed" and felt her addition to the show was "extraordinarily well-timed". Emily L. Stephens from The A.V. Club and Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly both gave a B− rating. Stephens praised Gaga's first appearance as "slickly exploitative and hellishly effective", while Jensen described her as "the show's most potent symbol for all of its themes about our "Bad Romance" with fame, fortune, sex, sex, and more sex, materialism and consumerism, the denial of death and the corrupt want for cultural immortality."

On the other hand, Dan Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter gave a negative review, writing, "If last year's installment, Freak Show, was too frustratingly literal in terms of plot points and its freaks-as-all-outsiders metaphor for some viewers, Hotel will be a welcome return to oblique storytelling, loopy Freudian psychobabble and addiction undertones". Mike Hale from The New York Times complained that it "suffers from the absence of Jessica Lange". IGN's Matt Fowler gave a rating of 5.9 out of 10, criticizing the episode as "mediocre" and concluding that "all weight and meaning is gone".

Gaga's performance also received mixed reviews from critics. Matt Zoller Sietz of Vulture called Gaga "terrible here in the way that Madonna was terrible in a lot of her '90s films, at once too poised and too blank." David Weigand of the San Francisco Chronicle said Gaga "makes an enormous visual impact, but the minute she opens her mouth to deliver a line, it's obvious that acting just isn't one of her many talents." Ben Travers of IndieWire wrote that he "wouldn't go so far as to say Gaga's talent adds much to the proceedings, but her presence – and the manner in which its captured – certainly does."