Scream Queens: Black Friday – Stating the Obvious (Review)

Scream Queens has, thus far, been a lot of fun to watch. Black Friday, with the start of the episode featuring Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts) torturing the poor downtrodden American overweight and unwashed who watch helplessly as she scoops all the best bargains is on par with the level of comedy this show has to offer. .The storyline, of the girls deciding to murder Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) with its Rasputin theme was brilliant.

Right up until the writers decided to treat the viewer as though they had the same intelligence levels as the characters in Kappa Kappa Tau, or the single remaining Dickie Dollar Scholar Chad Radwell (Glen Powell). Stating the obvious, Hester (Lea Michele) goes on to state the obvious connection in case, you know, the viewer  missed the whole Rasputin thing. 

The gags still worked, Hester does wait until after the Cryosauna fails to work but once she tells the group about the “mystic monk” and the many attempts to murder the man, along with the fact that the man managed to partially free himself before drowning after being, poisoned, shot, beaten and thrown in the frozen river where his body was later found, the urge to slap the writer became almost unbearable.

Still the remaining bit of the storyline worked until that lame scene between Chanel and Munsch as the deserted pool.  Was it just this viewer who found that to be a yawn to the nth? Perhaps someone found it to be entertaining but is just did not flow…

Standout moments:

Chanel Oberlin being shot with the crossbow and surviving.  Funny and revealing.

Denise Hemphill finally getting a gun and becoming a) A real cop and b) the chief of police and c)failing to shoot the red devil when she has the chance. For the first time since her introduction, Hemphill was actually funny rather than annoying as hell.

*Sidenote* This was, however,  a missed moment.  The red devil lets off the crossbow bolt and misses Denise by a mile killing  another cop instead. 

Chad Radwell attempting to recruit Pete Martinez (Diego Boneta) to the very empty frat house and kudos to actor Glen Powell for being able to say Dickie Dollar Scholars repeatedly without messing up. (Any bets as to how many takes this scene took?) 

ZayDay Williams (KeKe Palmer) tearfully admitting that the roasted head of Gigi Caldwell, aka Jess Meyer, (Is this a reference to Halloween? Michael Meyers?) actually smelled pretty tasty…

Pete and Grace’s dad bonding over researching Gigi’s past and the sex talk between Wes and Grace who then decides that she is ready to bed Pete…

Honorable Mention:

The whole cryosauna bit had to a be an obvious nod and wink to Jason X where the indestructible baddie from the Friday the 13th franchise is cryogenically frozen and then comes back to life in space.  Nice touch.

Thoughts:

Overall the episode was a bit like its title.  Like Black Friday, which is full of desperate people trying to buy things on sale and then feeling let down when they miss the bargain of a century, the episode feels like a  bit of a let down.

Pete appears to be confessing, a least twice, that he is “one of the killers.” (There are more than two remember?) So there is still that person on the other end of the cell phone who must also be a murderer.  Points given for keeping the suspect list high.

The bit where Grace and Chanel both decided to kill the dean and poison her was a nice touch, as was Wes’ zeroing in on Gigi’s (Jess’) liking his playlists.

And finally…Anticlimactic is the best way to describe the pool scene between Chanel #1 and Dean Munsch.  Granted, the series, which has not been approved for another season yet, has only one more two-hour episode left in its first run but that was just blah.

This was the penultimate episode since FOX has combined the final two episodes for a finale. Usually, the slamming together of the season’s last two segments  is a bad sign.  In this case though  it may just be FOX trying to get the series over before Christmas TV begins.

Certainly Ryan Murphy is planning on a “Sleepaway Camp” theme for season two, but whether this transpires or not has not been confirmed by the network. FOX have not  greenlit giving the series another chance to air next year.

Scream Queens is a funny, irreverent look at sorority horror films and the series shows what can be done with a  splendid mix of comedy and slasher horror.  The two hour finale airs on December 8. Tune in and see who makes it to the end, four, or, as Oliver Hudson has hinted, five.