[For Scream Queens‘ “Black Friday” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
FOX Summary:
Black Friday The Red Devil has plans to disrupt the holiday the Chanels like the most; Black Friday.
“Black Friday” introduces Chanel’s philosophy of Christmas, namely making all of her friends question their importance in her life because of the cheap ass Black Friday gifts she gets them for Christmas. Truth is, though this whole show is about Chanel and that’s because SHE’S THE KILLER, DUDES. The evidence all clicked into place in this episode for finals and for reals but we here at Fetchland are not too shy to say we told you so long ago. You know we knew it, baby.
The episode then picks up where we left off after the Thanksgiving turkey turned out to be Gigi’s grey dead head last week. Kappa house is yet again a crime scene. The Chanels are prepped to go Black Friday shopping while Dean Munsch and Zayday are more in the mood to figure out who killed Gigi. But the Chanels won’t be stopped from fulfilling their patriotic shopping duty. They sharpen their shopping claws and flee to the mall like a trés chic wolfpack.
Meanwhile at the police station Grace, Pete, and Wes find out Chisolm just got fired and the rest of the police force is either also fired or on retail duty for the night. So no more investigating the Red Devil killer for now. But let’s get real for a minute. They never really were – remember? Too convinced of ghosts and apparitions doing the dastardly deeds to do any actual detective work. It’s no wonder the killer hasn’t been caught. So, the replacement cops are all at the mall along with the shopping Chanels who delight in the glories of retail until the mall’s closing and they’re locked inside. Suddenly their paradise is a dark danger zone with two Red Devils and not a brain cell or survival skill among them. In the scene which inevitably outs Chanel No. 1 as the killer, a Red Devil comes for her with a bright red crossbow and his arrow hits her right in the collar bone. The arrow sticks out clearly between her shoulder and neck. Denise, the new Chief of Police, and now working retail duty at the mall, interrupts and prevents further injury by scaring the killer away. The Red Devil duo escape as they always do.
This next part is where the rubber meets the road, peeps. Laid out before us is a classic Scream Queens scene. It’s representative of the show because people sit around talking and nothing anybody says makes any sense. What they say matters not, in fact. If we paid attention to the last episode or really any of them we likely already learned this lesson. The entire “Thanksgiving” episode was people accusing each other and explaining theories why every character could be the killer. Sure, anybody could. But they aren’t ALL the killer. Those explanations and theories essentially mean nothing – a Red Devil brand circle jerk. In this “Black Friday” episode the distraction factors are two. The first is all the obsessive attempts to kill Dean Munsch because they allegedly think she’s the killer now. It’s ridiculous to the point of absurdity. Primary example – Grace suddenly thinks they should kill Dean Munsch and insists that they do so. Then in a few scenes she does a complete switch and says the opposite. The Kappas even kick her out for this and Zayday, who previously thought Grace was crazy for being so gung ho to kill Munsch, suddenly agrees with the Chanels about this decision to oust Grace from Kappa and kill the Dean. Yeah right. Sure. Then in the final scene Grace flips AGAIN and tells Pete she wants to sleep with him but only if he helps her kill Dean Munsch. This is all classic Scream Queens and may be them doing some sort of parody on how college students are full of it… who knows? But the outcome is that what these characters say is pretty much all nonsense. Ignore it. We’re not going to figure out the killer based on what anybody says ever because they say one thing and then the opposite a few scenes later. The key to the killer is in what we see. The details, baby.
That’s how we know the killer is Chanel. Remember how she was shot in the collarbone area at the mall? She had an arrow sticking out of it for a significant amount of time. BUT the next time we see Chanel she’s got her arm is in a preposterous furry sling. It’s as if we’re supposed to not remember that her arm was completely unharmed. Her collarbone is completely fine, suddenly. Gee whiz. That’s slightly suspicious. Another suspicious event from the Thanksgiving episode was how she stormed out on Chad and then he shows up at her Kappa Thanksgiving meal soon after. This makes it seem like they’re in cahoots. Their connection definitely goes beyond what they pretend, at the very least.
Next we see distarction factor number two – Pete. First we see Pete and Chad engaged in a classic Scream Queens awkward convo as Chad reads aloud Boone’s dead gay will where he just happens to leave everything to Pete. Chad accuses Pete of being Boone’s secret lover but then it turns out Boone was a different kind of deep throat – his informant/insider and thus, a journalistic treasure to Pete. Then Chad invites Pete to join the Dicki Dollar Scholars because any secret gay lover of Boone’s is a friend of his. Pete declines saying frats are elitist crap and then Chad tells him to choose his weapon. Turns out that anyone who turns down a invitation to the frat has to duel the dollar scholar who invited him. Chad then explains that to turn down the duel, which Pete obviously does, then entitles the scholar to flat out kill him. Hey, rules are rules, bro. Chad promises to kill Pete later when he’s least expecting it.
Pete then gets a mysterious call and says that yes he feels guilty…. because it’s not who he is. He opens his closet and gazes at the Red Devil costume hanging there, facing him and ready to wear. Then Grace comes to Pete’s dorm room and she’s feeling frisky but he’s on edge and tells her he’s actually not a great guy. Pete says can’t sleep with her because he doesn’t want her first time to be with a murderer. Cliffhanger alert! But we at Fetchland think that this is merely a diversion – number two to be precise. You can’t trust what anybody says on this show, in fact the more somebody talks the less you should listen. Watch what they do. Look at the clues right in front of you. Words are just words and on Scream Queens the words matter little and mean next to nothing. Chanel is the killer. But this episode is noteworthy for another reason – no characters died. Yes, a cop got an arrow in the chest at the mall but he wasn’t a known Scream Queens Character. Getting soft, Red Devil? We like it better when you live up to your full name, Red Devil Killer.
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