Scream Queens Recap: ‘Mommie Dearest’

This week on Scream Queens: Grace learns the truth behind several mysteries (including one about herself), Gigi is in full defense mode and Security Guard Denise commandeers the Kappa House. Oh, and we lost another secondary sorority sister. Who will be next??? Warning: Scream Queens spoilers ahead.

Grace is in a meeting with the Dean, but Munsch won’t live up to last week’s promise to tell Grace about the 1995 Bathtub Baby. She tries to blame the Red Devil murders on Feather, but Grace isn’t buying it. She tells the Dean she can ignore the problem “until it personally sneaks up behind you and stabs you in the heart.” Nice try Grace, but you’re not scary.

Except it would seem that it is gonna stab her in the heart, in the very next scene. The Dean steps into the shower, and just when we think we’re about to be treated to a shot-for-shot Psycho shower scene remake (Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother played the victim in the original! REFERENCE), it turns out that she’s already peeped the incoming Red Devil. “I saw that movie fifty times!” She beats him/her up and unsuccessfully calls the “911 automated system.” Man, this town is poorly-policed. She gives up and goes back to battling the Devil with a fire poker — it’s less campy and more genuinely engaging than most of the fight scenes in the series so far. Then the second Red Devil corners her! But wait — now there’s a THIRD Red Devil on the scene! Oop, wait, it’s actually Supreme Court Justice Scalia.

She fights them off with her hereby untapped Bloodsport fighting skills, because she remains the best and I’m so glad she didn’t die in this scene.

Kappa House. The Chanels are trying to figure out not if Grace and Zayday are the Red Devils, but how to catch them — except they can’t. They’re terrible detectives. Chanel No. 3 walks downstairs and finds Security Guard Denise making fries in the fryer. Barf, Ms. Bean died in there! She says she lives with these “dumb hoes” now, and No. 3 shrugs and offers her the most money Denise can think of to prove Zayday’s the Red Devil. Thus, a $3 million Zayday bounty is set.

Grace is grilling the Dean again about the sorority sister's death in 1995. Dean Munsch admits that maaaybe she was an accessory after the fact and was being cagey, but the Red Devil(s) attack has spooked her into giving Grace the name of Bathtub Baby’s birth mother: Sophia Doyle. The Dean says that’s all she’s got: “cover-ups like this only work if everyone has tiny bits of info.” Grace, who still thinks she is the Bathtub Baby based on nothing (and it’s clearly Boone, right?), is weirdly disappointed.

Jennifer the Candle Fetishist tells Security Guard Denise that Zayday can’t be the killer…but then, Law & Order rando bartender-witness style, she suddenly remembers a story Zayday once told her about vowing to get “real revenge” on the type of popular rich girls that shunned her in high school. Zayday has overheard this whole exchange, and says Denise and Jennifer better leave her alone…and then Candle Girl is slayed by a Red Devil while live-streaming a candle haul, so yeah, she’s gonna leave Zayday alone.

Downstairs, Security Guard Denise tells the Chanels that she simply can’t pin the crime on Zayday without a cash advance. After they bicker, they discover Jennifer...or more accurately, Human Candle Girl, because the Red Devil has rendered her a morbid wax sculpture.

Grace tells Pete that she needs to believe she’s Bathtub Baby, since it’s the closest she’ll get to ever knowing her mom’s identity. Sure? Remembering the “Hag of Shady Lane,” they go back to the insane asylum to ask the lady from last week (who gave them a perfect oil portrait) whether she remembers the Hag from the ol’ asylum days. In about two seconds the lady digs up an equally-perfect portrait of Gigi she just had lying around…and then remembers she has a second portrait, this time with Gigi holding TWO Bathtub Babies! So the Red Devils are a boy and a girl?

The Dean tells the press they're shutting down Wallace University in light of Jennifer’s death, since Feather clearly didn’t escape from her Hannibal Lector-style prison. Chanel has summons Scotland Yard detectives to solve these murders so she can stay popular on campus, aka the center of her world.

Grace confronts Gigi in the kitchen, holding up the painting and saying she knows her resume is a sham. Gigi blithely denies it (knife in hand) and suggests that Grace is just scared, and also jealous of her new engagement to Grace’s dad Wes. Whaaa?

Scotland Yard tells Chanel that Chanel No. 5 is trying to poison Chanel (not news). Unswayed, Chanel demands evidence that Grace and Zayday are the killers instead, and they do give her something: A folder that shows Grace’s mom had a criminal past. “I knew it! Looks like the bitch-apple doesn’t fall far from the bitch-tree!" I think I read that in a fortune cookie once.

Grace confronts her dad Wes (confronting people is Grace’s hobby), and he says that Gigi kind of decided they were engaged herself after he said it was cool for her to buy some stuff for the house. Then Grace realizes that if Gigi knew her mom at Kappa, that means he knew Gigi, and…DUN DUN DUUUUN! Wes gazes into a fragmented mirror, real sinister-style.

Chanel greets Grace back at Kappa House. She tells Grace that her mom was actually the Kappa sister who spearheaded the whole “let’s leave the new mom bleeding in a bathtub so we can go downstairs and dance to TLC’s “Waterfalls”’ idea. She met Grace’s dad at that party, he knocked her up and things went downhill from there: Her mom changed her name, got arrested for drunk driving and meth, shoplifted, and died in a fire-y car crash. Chanel accuses Grace of being a Red Devil and insults her mom, earning a big ol’ face slap.

Self-annointed Kappa House mother Security Guard Denise (dressed in the Chanel No. 5’s clothes) tells Chanel that she’s a terrible person for insulting Grace’s mama, as that’s something people simply don’t do. She says if Chanel refuses to apologize to Grace, “Denise Hemphill WILL take your man.” Take her man again, that is, since she technically took Chad at least a couple times.

Grace is back at her dad’s place, and he’s showing her photos of her mother. He says their house DID burn down like he said, but Wes did it to eradicate evidence of Grace’s terrible mom. “I’ve always tried to protect you!” Grace tells him he’d better stay far away from her if he wants to protect himself. She's still not scary. Gigi comes in as soon as Grace leaves, to tell him his daughter’s falling apart and she clearly needs to be…I dunno, committed or something? He seems to consider this, improbably.

Chanel tells Grace she’s sorry, and that she had no place insulting Grace’s parents because her mom was the actual worst. “Kappa is the mom neither of us ever had!” Grace doesn’t buy this, but she accepts the apology. Chanel does seem genuine by the end, and a Chanel with layers is frankly the only Chanel that interests me.

Meanwhile, at a random gym...it's Boone! We missed you, Nick Jonas. He's hiding out in a "Joaquin Phoenix" fake beard and wig, and tells someone on the phone that Gigi needs to die what with her Justice Scalia getup and all, because that's just off-brand. He's coming back to campus next week. Can't wait.

Order of Suspicion, From Highest to Lowest:
Gigi
Boone
Dean Munsch
Pete
Zayday
Grace’s dad, Wes
Chanel No. 5
Chad
Hester
Grace
Denise
Chanel No. 3
Chanel
Feather McCarthy

Songs:
The Bangles, “Eternal Flame"
TLC, "Waterfalls"

The Stars Come Out for Halloween