(Contains plot spoilers)
Episode 10 “Smoldering Children” kicks off in 1994 and Larry, Constance, Adelaide and Tate are now living together in the house, now that Larry’s wife and children have gone after Larry’s wife set them on fire! The newly formed family is celebrating Thanksgiving in a very awkward and tense dysfunctional family atmosphere, mostly caused by Tate and his hatred towards Larry for taking his brother Beau’s life and the fact Larry can’t see that Constance is only using him so she can live in the house!! Later, Tate doped up on cocaine and crystal meth, goes to Larry’s work, throws petrol all over him, sets him on fire, then makes his way to the school to carry out the massacre we saw in a previous episode!! The story thickens!!!
Back to the present day and Ben, now realising he’s a total fool for not believing his wife, visits Vivien at the hospital and tells her he believes that she was raped and that he’s working on getting her discharged!!! He then tells her that her twins have two different fathers!!! As you can imagine, Vivien is a little taken aback!!
Meanwhile, the police turn up at Constance’s house to tell her that her boyfriend Travis has been murdered. She pays a visit to dear ole Larry, convinced that he killed Travis due to his incessant jealousy. Larry confesses that he moved Travis’ murdered body but that he was murdered in the house, and nothing to do with him! Later in the episode after finding out about the arguments between Constance and Larry, the police take Constance in for questioning, where a whole bag of worms in unearthed as they account all the deaths of her children, and the mysterious disappearance of her former husband, Hugo, and maid, Moira!! Unbeknown to the police, obviously we know Moira is buried in the back yard of the house and we also find out that Constance put Hugo’s body through a grinder and fed him to dogs!!! Gross!!!! A lawyer suddenly turns up to Constance’s rescue, later informing her that the police are doing everything possible to link Constance to Travis’ murder.
Ben gets a visit from a Truant Officer as Violet hadn’t been to school for 16 days!!! He has a gentle chat with Violet, where Violet says she can’t face school. They agree to look into other schools and gently warns her that otherwise they will have to go to juvenile court!! Bizarre calm reaction if I’m honest!! Tate then overhears Ben on the phone to a boarding school and tells Violet that Ben is planning on sending her away, much to Violet’s anger!
Meanwhile, Larry pays a visit to the house and gets hold of the evidence linked to Travis’ murder. All of a sudden he see’s his two daughters playing with Travis in the basement, still crispy and burning away!!! His wife, Lorraine, then appears, totally freakily crispy looking and also burning away! Larry says that he’s sorry and that he will get revenge on Constance, however Lorraine quickly reminds him that he was the one who disobeyed their marriage vows, not Constance!!
Retaliating against Ben’s decision to send Violet to boarding school, Tate decides to attack Ben with chloroform, wearing the rubber suit, but Ben manages to pull the mask of Tate’s face before he passes out! Busted!!! Tate then tries to convince Violet to commit suicide, that way they can be together forever!! Violet, understandably freaked out, tries to get away from Tate, scared at his proposition!!! Then here comes a wonderful and welcome twist to the story!!!! Violet tries to run away, out of the house, but keeps finding herself returning to the house one way or another, and becomes totally stressed and freaked out! Tate appears and leads her to the basement and into a confined space where Violet’s decaying corpse lies!!!! Yep, Violet is dead!!!! Now I usually regard myself as pretty sharp but I really did not see that one coming and got very excited to find out how she ended up dead! Do you remember when Violet tried to commit suicide in the bath in Episode 6? Well, it turns out that Tate was too late trying to save her, and ever since, he’s been protecting her from the truth!!! (also revealing that he knew he was a ghost all along as well!!!)
Finally, Constance finds out that Larry has strangely confessed to Travis’ murder and visits him in jail! Larry tells Constance that he confessed as he needed to pay for his sins and says that he will be able to deal with the jail sentence if Constance just says that she loves him! Constance in her coldest and bitter form, refuses the gesture and leaves Larry all alone!! Pretty harsh really as all he has ever done is tried to please her!!!
Well, what an episode!!! Apparently Taissa Farmiga, who plays Violet, guessed that her character was dead, just from reading into little hints left in previous episodes but she wasn’t allowed to know her fate!!! She also found the scene of discovering her own body quite emotional as the corpse was made from a mold of Farmiga’s body and her reaction in the episode was mixed with acting, but also seeing the prosthetic corpse for the first time! Must have been pretty freaky!!
As we get closer and closer to the finale, with only two more episodes to go, I’m getting pretty excited now as we move into wrapping up the whole story and finding out the fate of the obviously doomed Harmon family!!!!
By Kirsty Wavish
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