Well, we can check watching a cheerleader piss herself in terror off of the list of things we haven't seen on network TV. Let's see what's next... oh, a ninja breakdancing on the roof of a double-decker bus! Get on it, Hollywood.
Whatever ambiguity might have been left by the conclusion of last week's Halloween episodes as to whether or not Tate (Evan Peters) was the gunman who mowed down a herd of kids we've taken to referring to as the Zombie Breakfast Club is now gone. It's official, Tate is a dead man, and like every other dead person in this series, he's apparently corporeal enough to get all touchy-feely with.
The opening of the episode showing the brutally tense hunt by Tate for his victims in the school's library is masterfully done. Granted, we already know that none of these kids is going to make it out alive since we've already seen them walking around with air-conditioning vents where most teenagers keep their acne and sneers, but the lingering mystery of whether or not Tate was the murderer kept the mystery going just long enough to lend a razor's edge to a gruesome stalking.
Later, we get to watch Tate's suicide by cop, and even though that scene is also really good, it pisses us off because it means Stephen King's Rage is probably going to remain out of print for another decade.
Background: King, as Richard Bachman, wrote a novel called Rage about a teenage malcontent who murders his math teacher one day and then holds his class hostage while subjecting them to various psychological torments. Eventually, he releases his hostages, except for one traumatized and catatonic big man on campus, and is gunned down when he pretends to reach for his pistol. He does survive, and is later remanded to a mental institution.
The novel has been found in the possession of at least four school shooters, and has since been taken out of print at the request of King himself, who worries about the effect it may have on disturbed minds. We do too, but it is a really good book and we wish the rest of us who aren't disturbed would get a chance to read it again.
