American Horror Story: Hotel has finally arrived and the extra long pilot episode, Checking In, did not disappoint. Two lovely Swedish tourists arrive at The Hotel Cortez and meet with the scariest thing you can ever find in a mattress, and I’m not talking bedbugs. Pop goes the Mattress Man and out run our girls! Only problem, once you check-in, there’s no checking out. With a crazy intense introduction to the Hotel, I’m going to keep it capitalized since it’s the title of the season, we jump to a graphic murder scene. Imagine the murderer from the movie Seven liked reading Fifty Shades of Gray in his down time and you’ve got the general idea.

There is definitely a murderer haunting the city and he has a thing for our detective John Lowe, played by Wes Bentley. One phone call brings our detective to the Hotel, which teases us with possible plot connections. We get to see Lady Gaga as The Countess in action with her beautiful beau, Donovan, Matt Bomer. Their scenes together in this episode are just sexy, even the bedtime snack scene. There is so much going on in this pilot, but it’s so engaging and well structured that everything seems to fit together perfectly. We learn that The Countess has secretly put the Hotel up for sale, but only when a certain realtor arrives touting how glorious the building is. You guessed it, we’ve got Marcy from Murder House back. She must love a challenge because she’s back in the murder business, though maybe she’s more evil than I’m giving her credit for.

We got to learn a little bit about Hypodermic Sally and Iris, Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates respectively. I’m really looking forward to seeing more of their pasts. There were some small character introductions in this episode too. Chloe Sevigny is the detective’s wife, Alex Lowe, but the couple is going through an extremely rough patch so I’m not sure how much we will see of her. She is in the title credits so maybe she’ll be in more episodes than I’m anticipating. We also got a quick glimpse of the monster from the promos, I personally want to call him White Rubber Man, but I know he has a real character name that I’m spacing on.

I was shocked when Max Greenfield showed up at the front desk in a massive fur coat. Mostly because I just kept thinking “Why are you here Schmidt?! It’s not safe!” There was also a look at the vampire babies, who looked adorable roaming the halls of the hotel. My adorable gauge might be a bit different than your average person. We also got to see Denis O’Hare as Liz Taylor. I think this is my favorite character of his so far and we only got to see him for a few minutes.

I am ridiculously excited to keep watching this season. It reminds me so much of Murder House, but if it was cranked up to 11. There was never a dull minute in Checking In and I can’t wait to see what’s to come in episode two, Chutes and Ladders. If you haven’t watched this episode yet, go, now, just shove it in your eye holes, you’ll be glad you did.

If you want to share your thoughts on the pilot or your hopes for Hotel let me know in the comments or on Twitter, @kleffnotes, I’d love to hear from you.