First Thoughts: Scream Queens Season 2

By Kaitlin Hurtado on September 25, 2016

The second season of Scream Queens launched September 20, and cannot be explained as anything other than a premiere showcasing the essence of Scream Queens in one episode.

**Warning: Spoilers of the premiere and the first season of Scream Queens below.**

A Recap: “Scream Again” 

The second season of Scream Queens opens with a look back to the past on Halloween night of 1985. A pregnant woman, Jane, brings her husband, Bill, to the hospital where the staff is throwing a party. Dr. Mike and Nurse Thomas are quick to show their distaste for abandoning the party in favor of saving the husband, but promise the wife that they would take care of the husband anyway.

As soon as the wife is on her way out, they put him under and wheel his bed out to the swamp — foggy and florescently glowing — to dump his unconscious body into it. To get rid of the evidence, the doctor dumps his costume — Green Meanie, consisting of a green cap and devil mask — on top of the body just as it submerges underwater.

Scream Queens heads back to present 2016 to catch viewers up with the characters’ lives following the finale of the first season. Dean Cathy Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) is now a feminist icon — gracing the cover of TIME and hosting TED talks — and launching CURE (Caregivers United in Restorative Etiology). With the aim to build a healthcare system “where the incurable are cured,” she buys the same hospital in the opening flashback.

Munsch creates a ragtag team of doctors — introducing Dr. Cassidy Cascade (Taylor Lautner) and Dr. Brock Holt (John Stamos). Both reveal personal medical issues that make any previous Scream Queens viewers throw them onto the killer suspects list before the murders have even begun. Cascade is ice cold to the touch and Holt lost his hand in a freak garbage disposal accident. His replacement hand was that of a squash player that murdered his opponents.

Characters of Scream Queens’ past join the ragtag group as well. Zayday Williams (Keke Palmer) comes to the hospital to get through medical school. The Chanels want to improve their public image after their murder scandal by doing good — helping people. The rest of the premiere follows the team as they help their first patient Catherine (Cecily Strong), who has hypertrichosis — dubbed as werewolf syndrome. They successfully cure her and Chanel #5 (Abigail Breslin) makes Catherine join her in taking a heated therapy bath, which is where it all goes downhill.

The bathtubs appear more like death contraptions, and ultimately become some as they both become locked in the tubs with only their heads exposed. Someone in the Green Meanie costume, just like in the flashback, appears in the room while sharpening a machete and oozing green substance as he comes closer to the girls.

Despite all the begging and pointing fingers the girls do, Catherine is decapitated by the now killer and they take aim at Chanel #5 next. There is a final swing as the episode ends, leaving Chanel #5′s status unknown.

Image via FOX.

Thoughts

The premiere had several echoes of the series’ original pilot: beginning with flashbacks to the past and a killer in a costume linking back to said past. Prior to the premiere, I hadn’t bothered with keeping up with the promotions for the new season of Scream Queens other than bits of casting news. I went into the premiere near blind and was confused with the hospital setting until the plot launched its explanation of past characters’ journeys to the present.

Scream Queens definitely isn’t an American Horror Story (you can read my thoughts on AHS here). The two are often tied together as both are produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. If anything, Scream Queens is the very strange lovechild of Glee (also produced by Murphy and Falchuk) and AHS. It’s campy horror — not necessarily scary, but does have its lineup of jump scares and gore.

Scream Queens isn’t a show that is going to keep me hooked during its duration. It was just something my roomie and I put on as we ate dinner and I think it’ll stay that way. As a full-time college student with a job and internship, I definitely want at least one hour to relax and not think about anything too hard, and I think Scream Queens offers just that with its comedic and satirical punchlines (my favorite being the various definitions of “ghosting”) and a not-so-complex plot.

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