‘Scream Queens’ Season Finale Recap: Dead End
Warning: This recap of the “Drain the Swamp” episode of Scream Queens contains spoilers.
In comedy there’s a difference between “trust us, we know this is stupid” and “it was late and we were tired.” The former often takes smarts, but the latter is a comedy killer. Scream Queens began as a ludicrous, frenetic exercise in absurdism packed full of references and meta-texts both casual viewers and horror die-hards could appreciate, but it ended up as phoned-in and joyless as a latter-day Adam Sandler movie. Aside from a truly talented cast doing excellent work every week, Scream Queens ended its two-and-done run with a season nobody should be proud of. Not the writers, not Fox, and certainly not Ryan Murphy. But hopefully everyone involved got a new beach house out of it? Congratulations, if so!
“Drain the Swamp” was an occasionally hilarious yet lazy episode that capped off a real letdown of a season. Let’s talk about it anyway!
We began with the Green Meanie trying to kill Chanel with a baseball pitching machine.
This was an unusually complicated and ultimately ineffective way to murder an arch enemy, it turns out!
At this point we had to assume that Nurse Kirstie Alley simply did not want to kill Chanel, since every attempt she’d made had been inefficient at best and useless at worst. Get it together, murderer.
At least Hester was better at scheming. Here she convinced Dr. John Stamos to marry Dean Munsch before Dean Munsch finally succumbed to the terminal illness she’d contracted from eating a diseased human brain. Just think of the inheritance! All he needed to do was put a ring on Munsch’s finger, do tons of death-bed sex, and then he and Hester could retire to Blood Island and murder tourists. The dream was within reach!
Next thing we knew, he was popping the question! This did not make Chanel very happy if we’re being quite honest.
Though Dr. John Stamos assured Chanel the whole thing was a ruse and he’d return to Chanel once his dirty work was done, she wasn’t convinced. So, during a brain surgery meant to confirm Munsch’s illness, Chanel plotted to “accidentally” spill an entire pumpkin spice latte directly onto her exposed brain! Now, credit where credit’s due, the scene where Chanel and the Chanels debated about whether or not this would actually be fatal was one of the funniest scenes in Scream Queens history. It was right up there with Ariana Grande’s speech describing hell last season. So yeah, even in an otherwise uninspired episode, Scream Queens was still capable of hilarity.
During her brain surgery, Dean Munsch sang her favorite Deep Purple song while Chanel waited for her opportunity…
But just when it looked like Chanel had a clear shot at spilling a sickly sweet seasonal beverage onto Dean Munsch’s exposed brain, Nurse Kirstie Alley walked right into the line of fire! Murder plot foiled.
In interesting news, newly minted medical genius Chanel No. 5 discovered that Dean Munsch didn’t have a rare terminal illness after all… She was merely dehydrated from drinking too much whiskey and never water!
Again, I have to hand it to this show for going waaaay stupid with this joke, as the entire SEASON was based around the premise of Munsch buying a hospital (and staffing it with unaccredited medical personnel) so that she could cure her own illness. On Scream Queens few things ever truly matter, but it’s really something when the entire premise itself is thrown out the window. Also it made me laugh to see Dean Munsch rinsing toothpaste from her mouth with booze. So hardcore.
Eventually Nurse Kirstie Alley decided that the only way to truly get revenge on Chanel for murdering her sister (last season) was to trick everybody into walking into a cage (using fake cheese and sparkling cider!) and then blowing them up using explosive swamp water she’d dredged up behind the hospital.
And yes, the bomb itself looked like something from a children’s morning show or, like, an episode of Power Rangers. This season truly did spare every expense!
Fortunately Denise Hemphill arose from her cryochamber at the last minute and defused the bomb using skills she’d picked up from watching Quantico! Leave it to Denise Hemphill (and Niecy Nash) to save the day.
At this point everyone chased Kirstie Alley into the backyard, but she countered by throwing a machete directly into Dr. Taylor Lautner’s heart! Well, she threw it at Chanel No. 3 and he jumped in front of it. I laughed when, as he lay dying, the rest of the characters openly questioned why he did that instead of simply push No. 3 out of the way. They raised a good point. But then he died. Poor Dr. Taylor Lautner!
And if you were expecting some kind of clever takedown of Nurse Kirstie Alley — the ultimate villain of the season — you should know that she simply stepped into quicksand (made of mud) and disappeared. And that was that! The total amount of brainstorming for this episode must have taken minutes.
From there we got a few short epilogues, including the fact that Hester successfully stole all of Dean Munsch’s money, and she and Dr. John Stamos DID end up living on Blood Island murdering tourists à la The Most Dangerous Game. So it all worked out pretty well for them.
Chanel No. 5 and Zayday continued working at the hospital doing, like, good work. But Chanel was the true winner, as she’d inherited Dr. Brooke Shields’ TV show! I’m not sure why it was called Lovin the C when “Lovin” was Shields’s character’s last name, but Scream Queens did not seem to care too much about this. Or anything. Certainly not setting up an interesting tease for a (very hypothetical) third season.
The Red Devil was waiting in Chanel’s car! Can you believe it? Full circle! I guess!
“Drain the Swamp” had its moments, and if I’m being honest, Season 2 had at least a few things going for it. All those Chad Radwell shower scenes. The impressive guest stars. And particularly the full-blast performances from Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd, John Stamos, and obviously Niecy Nash. I’m not sure if it’s due to lack of network supervision or an open acknowledgment that nobody was watching, but the writers and producers simply did not deliver a good season of television here, which was sad especially because of how great the cast was. As an experiment, Scream Queens remains important in that it attempted to do something few shows ever do. Comedy and horror are both hard to make good, but comedy-horror is exponentially harder. Points for trying? I may have been less than impressed with this season, but I’m still gonna miss this weird, black-hearted cartoon of a show. May it continue to scream beautifully as it sinks into the quickmud.
What did YOU think of “Drain the Swamp”?
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