'American Horror Story' Season 2, Episode 2 Recap - 'Tricks and Treats'

There are a few good things happening on "American Horror Story" this season. After all, who doesn't love a good old-fashioned exorcism? But outweighing the good are the kinds of things that make you wonder if this isn't "Glee" season two all over again.

The episode began with another brief glimpse at the present day, following up on the plight of Leo and Theresa. Theresa attempts to pull Leo to safety in a cell, but Bloody Face grabs him before she can... and with a pitiful "help me," Adam Levine gets stabbed repeatedly and will probably not be in this show anymore.

And with that, we're done with those two for the whole episode.

Back to 1964, we're shown another victim of Bloody Face: Wendy, Lana's girlfriend, gets stabbed in her home, almost "Psycho"-style. That was more or less Lana's last hope of getting out, so her situation just got a lot worse.

But after that classic slasher horror scene, things shift a bit: when we're in the asylum, things are less like a horror show and more like a prison show. We watch as Lana gets shock therapy and Kit gets caned again, but that stuff isn't scary. Disturbing maybe, or stressful, but not scary.

What's worse, this episode quickly and clumsily becomes one of Ryan Murphy's soapbox moments where the theme of the episode hits you over the head like a well-aimed brick. Never mind the awful bits of dialogue like Lana's unnecessarily dramatic and practically rhetorical "Do you ever dream of escaping?" Far worse are moments like that with Shelley and Arden, where we sit through a rather boring and clunky scene full of exposition, just so that Shelley can yell, "MEN LIKE SEX, NOBODY CALLS THEM WHORES!"

Yes, congratulations. There is a horrible social double standard that has been ingrained in our society for centuries, and you just solved it by smacking us in the face with it on cable television.

For a moment though, the episode has a nice theme to it based on that idea. As it turns out, Sister Jude was also a little promiscuous when she was younger, as revealed through the possessed patient's babbling. Oh, and she ran over a kid with her car by accident, too. So Sister Jude is a murderer.

The good part of the episode came from two new characters, only one of which will be continuing on with the series: there's Dr. Oliver Thredson (returning guest star Zachary Quinto), who attempts to treat Jed, a boy who is brought in after he disembowels and eats the heart of a cow.

Thredson is the man of science to Sister Jude's man (woman) of faith, because apparently we didn't cover that enough with Arden. To be fair, Thredson is morally and ethically good (at least compared to Jude and Arden), so he does seem to serve a purpose.

Thredson believes that Jed can be treated with medication, but Jude knows that an exorcism is what is needed here. The Monsignor and an exorcist attempt to defeat the demon in Jed, but it takes over, reveals horrible truths about everyone in the room, and then eventually kills Jed.

During this event, the demon manages to cut out the power and unlock all of the cell doors, which gives Lana and Grace a chance to escape through the tunnel. Unfortunately, Lana is at best misguided and at most tremendously stupid in giving herself and Grace up in order to keep Kit, whom she still believes is a murder, from escaping.

Meanwhile, the demon that possessed Jed seems to reside in Sister Mary Eunice now. Apparently Arden has a thing for her, as evidenced by the prostitute he hired to act like her. Said prostitute discovers some horrific photos of Arden's experiments and/or sexual perversions, and manages to escape. Later, Arden fumbles around when Eunice is recovering from passing out at the exorcism, and Eunice is revealed to have been showing him some skin on purpose. Uh oh.

So there was good and bad in the episode, but things will have to turn around in order for this season to be as sinfully fun as the first one. For starters, they might want to consider ending with more of a bang than a whimper: each episode seems to end on a quiet not that doesn't act as any kind of cliffhanger for the next.

What do you think? Is this season living up to your expectations thus far? Or is season one way better?