‘Scream Queens’ Recap: Invasion of the Green Meanies
Warning: This recap of the “Lovin the D” episode of Scream Queens contains spoilers.
At what point can we safely consider Season 2 of Scream Queens to be an actual prank? Like, clearly Fox knew this time slot would draw dreadful ratings thanks to the World Series and presidential debates, so it simply renewed Scream Queens because why not? And then forgot about it. The thing that’s been airing in this time slot all fall has been absolutely nuts. Not just because it’s been full of ridiculous jokes — see the damn title of this week’s episode — but because it straight-up gave up on making sense or being suspenseful or even giving the concept of murder and death any weight whatsoever. Everyone responsible for this season of Scream Queens has been behaving like their parents are out of town for the weekend. It’s an astonishingly ludicrous season, but at least it’s having a good time.
“Lovin the D” featured a fun appearance by Brooke Shields and also one of the most disgusting surgeries ever featured on TV. Let’s talk about it!
We began with the “end” half of one of those “me at the beginning/end of 2016” memes:
The Green Meanie (well, one of them) was attempting to send a sign to the Chanels: They were gonna die tonight! Finally. Probably.
The ladies handled this threatening omen surprisingly casually. They had, after all, been routinely chased up and down these hallways all season, to the extent that they were now more annoyed than terrified of the killer. Same.
Within seconds, each of them was tailed by a different Green Meanie, and when one of the Meanies went after Chanel No. 3, another Meanie saved her. There was definitely a conflict between the Meanies, and they really needed someone to help them coordinate their attacks. That person was Hester.
Which brings our grand total of slasher-killers and accomplices to four. Well, five including Dr. John Stamos’s evil hand. Actually, six, including Dr. Taylor Lautner’s mom. OK, we can be frank, everyone on this show is a murderer in some way. It’s a real murderers’ row of murderers.
We then met Dr. Brooke Shields, playing a character named Dr. Lovin, star of the hit TV show, Lovin the D. (As in doctor, duh.) The only thing more shameful than the name of her show was how much I laughed every time someone said it. An important lesson was learned this day: I am not above Scream Queens‘ dick jokes.
Apparently, Dr. Brooke Shields had heard about the Chanels’ efforts to disentangle that conjoined twin a few weeks back and wanted them to perform a surgery on live TV. This obviously played into their life goals of becoming TV doctors, but there was one hitch: They weren’t technically medical students. Yes, it took nine episodes, but this season was finally making it important that these characters should not be in a hospital or practicing medicine in any way. In other words, it was time for them to take the MCATS!
After Hester helped the Green Meanies decide who gets to kill whom, Nurse Kirstie Alley was rewarded with the honor of killing Chanel. I guess as an homage to the way Chanel had murdered Mrs. Bean, Nurse Kirstie Alley filled up a hot tub with fry oil and attempted to get Chanel to willingly jump in. It was an airtight plan that somehow didn’t work!
I think most of us could agree that it was nice to see Wes and Dr. Taylor Lautner in jogging pants, but I couldn’t help but get wistful for the days when Scream Queens had shower scenes in almost every episode. (May Chad Radwell forever rest in peace.) Anyway, Wes and Dr. Taylor Lautner agreed to team up and frame all the Green Meanie murders on Nurse Kirstie Alley, so a betrayal was definitely brewing. Ugh, slasher murderers are so untrustworthy sometimes.
Speaking of untrustworthy, it turned out that Dr. John Stamos’ new hand still wanted to murder Chanel. But not because it was haunted, rather because every piece of his body wanted to murder Chanel. She had started getting on his nerves that much. But wanting to murder Chanel constituted a huge turn-on for Hester, so the next thing we knew, these two were mouth-attacking each other. Romance lives!
Zayday was still strapped to that weird mattress-springs-over-swamp-water thing, but despite some taunting from the old lady who’d put her here, it seemed like a relaxing vacation from the hustle and bustle of that hospital. In fact, once Zayday stopped screaming, I think she found a sort of Zen-like quality to her prison. (I may just be projecting, though.)
When Dr. Taylor Lautner finally worked up the courage to introduce Chanel No. 3 to his mother, things did not go well. I appreciated how No. 3 told her the eff off, including pointing out how weird and ridiculous it is to get “revenge” on a hospital where all the people who’d wronged her had already been murdered 30 years ago. To be frank, it’s almost cheating to have Scream Queens poke fun at its own terrible logic like this. It’s like, you are the ones who didn’t think this thing through at all, writers. You don’t get to then make quips about it. Anyway, the old lady commanded Dr. Taylor Lautner to dump his girlfriend and murder her immediately. Will he? (Probably not.)
Then it came time for the Chanels to take their emergency MCATs in order to perform a surgery on live TV. It’s a good thing the proctor didn’t mind that they were each speaking aloud every question and multiple choice option for eight hours straight, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to enlist a few accomplices in helping them cheat!
I loved the joke that only Chanel and No. 3 cheated, while No. 5 got the highest score on her own. But that accomplishment wasn’t played as a victory for her, she just seemed really pissed that she wasn’t allowed to cheat also. See, this show is very good at jokes sometimes, but they get lost in some of the dumbest scenarios. (Emergency MCATs? Live TV surgery? Does anything matter at all?)
Then Wes attempted to poison Chanel by slipping cyanide and Olestra into her coffee (such a rude combination of things!), but obviously Dr. Brooke Shields drank it instead and died. And because this show operates by sub-Itchy & Scratchy logic, the Lovin the D episode continued as planned!
In what was one of the more stomach-churning fake surgeries in primetime history, Dr. John Stamos and the Chanels removed a 20-lb tumor from a man’s head after lifting his face clean up off his skull and — you know what? I’m getting woozy just thinking about it. But credit where credit’s due, it made me laugh out loud to see that Lovin the D chyron floating over the patient’s exposed gristle. This show is so cute sometimes!
The surgery was a success, but even more successful was Chanel, whose on-camera cool made her an immediate heir apparent to Dr. Brooke Shields, whose death was openly celebrated by her own production crew. This extremely plausible turn of events made Chanel very happy. TV fame, here she came!
Nurse Kirstie Alley was not pleased that Wes had attempted to murder Chanel himself, so you better believe she teamed up with her original partner, Dr. Taylor Lautner, to off the guy. To Wes’s credit, he saw the writing on the wall immediately and took it upon himself to dive into that hot peanut oil!
Call it Chekhov’s Hot Tub of Boiling Oil, but it definitely came into play in the end! Poor Wes.
We were meant to believe he had fried himself to death, but something tells me Oliver Hudson didn’t spend hours in a makeup chair having prosthetic makeup applied simply to lie dead on the floor. See you next week, you tender-skinned psycho!
For her part, Dean Munsch spent much of the episode walking around fainting at the sight of corpses, so it was time to break the news to the staff: She had an incurable illness and only had about a month to live. DUN-DUN-DUNNN. I’m not sure anybody cared, but this episode seemed to think that we did, considering this was the cliffhanger. Will Dean Munsch get cured? Next week’s finale should answer that question, in my opinion.
“Lovin the D” was certainly the ninth episode of Scream Queens‘ second season and almost nobody can dispute that. Is this show watchable? Mostly! Is it funny? Often! What is even happening on it anymore? Neither we nor the writers care! Fox is out of town for the weekend and will never actually find out what’s been going on in its rec room. Scream Queens is a rascal and a scamp. Somebody call the cops already.
What did you think of “Lovin the D”?
Scream Queens airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox. Watch clips and full episodes of the show for free on Yahoo View.
