AHS: Hotel’s episode Chutes and Ladders was the longest non-two parter episode of any season of American Horror Story EVER. That’s not official, but I think an hour and forty minutes is the longest any episode has been that I’ve watched on television. It was a marathon of information, character reveals, and plot set-ups. It felt like I was cramming for an AHS exam while watching the episode. All the info dumping! I’m not complaining about all the information, but there was just a lot going on in this episode. I kind of wish it had been divided up into two episodes, just so I would have had more time to process everything. Here’s my best possible recap and review of the show, I’m sorry if I miss anything, but there was just so much in there this week that I don’t know if I retained it all.

Okay so the episode started with Sally sewing Schmidt, who I know isn’t named Schmidt in this show, but I’m having enough problems remembering the plot that I can’t retain everything, into a mattress. I think he’s the mattress man who terrified the Swedish girls, but maybe Sally has a thing for sewing men in mattresses. Nothing would surprise me. We then jumped to the last remaining Swedish girl in the light cage contraption being snacked on by a baby vamp. She dies and gets dumped in a random chute, that really should have led to an incinerator because I’m pretty sure that is one way you get ants. The baby vamps were giving blood donations to Iris, who is collecting blood for The Countess. Donovan really wants to Netflix and chill, but The Countess wants to hunt at an art gala. Then we have the detective receiving gifts at work from the Hotel. I think it was a bloody Oscar statue, but I could not figure it out. I even rewound the episode and couldn’t get a good enough look.

There’s a fashion show at the Hotel and we get to meet Naomi Campbell’s character, whose name I didn’t catch, and Finn Wittrock’s character, Tristan Duffy. Wittrock looked ridiculously attractive doing his catwalk strut. That hair was something to behold. They showed him snorting something, meth I think, and he goes on a mad hunt through the Hotel for more. This leads to a fight between Tristan and Donovan, which The Countess breaks up. Tristan wanders off and finds a super gross sandwich and Mr. March, Evan Peters. While all of this is going on the detective’s daughter Scarlet finds her brother Holden sleeping in a glass coffin inside an empty swimming pool. She then does some investigating on her own and sneaks out to talk to her undead baby bro. This sets off a panicked hunt for her because the detective and his wife think she has disappeared like their son, who they think is dead and not playing video games in the Hotel playroom.

The Countess turns Tristan and they go at it like a pair of bunny rabbits in what I think is an infinity pool. Then Donovan shows up and is upset at being replaced by a younger, crazier model and The Countess kicks him out of the Hotel. Let’s see what else happened. Oh, we got the rules for being a vampire, we got some info about the Countess and we got to see her on a horse in a roller disco. Tristan orders in off a dating app, poor lumbersexual dude, and he snacks while The Countess watches. We learned the backstory for the maid, Miss Evers, and Mr. March. In the flashback we learn that he moved from the East Coast to the West and designed the Hotel himself. He also murdered at least three people a week and I think he was married to, or at least sleeping with, The Countess before he died. The detective connects current murders to March’s killings based on their connection to the Ten Commandments.

That might not be in exactly the right order, but it was sooo long. I just couldn’t keep it all straight. I think next week with all the info out of the way it’ll be easier to describe what happened, but I think this was supposed to be an explanation episode so that Murphy could build the story without worrying about trying to add in details randomly. I am definitely getting a Seven vibe from the Mr. March story line being set up, Seven with H.H. Holmes as the big bad. If you haven’t seen Seven you totally should, especially if you are into the Mr. March stuff in this season, and H.H. Holmes was a serial killer who killed people in creepy rooms in a house he fabricated. There’s a documentary about him on Netflix that you could check out. I’m interested to see what happens next week, especially with the Donovan stuff in the preview.

Let me know how you felt about this episode and the season so far in the comments or on Twitter, @thenerdygirlexp or @kleffnotes.