Episode 2 begins with Ed doing some more farm work, when he pauses, and suddenly, a bunch of prisoners from the camp come running through, and he hurriedly runs back to the home following him to his house and trying to break in. Eventually, it turns out the whole thing was a hallucination, and then we go to these people talking about Ed, and possibly making a movie about Ed, and we see some of Ed’s origin, showing the beginning steps of the descent, and how he learned to filet humans from the Nazi lady, and replicate some things she did. After, we see Ed once again with his pork n’ beans, when he hallucinates his mother, who tells him he’s a mess who can’t make it. Ed responds saying he knows, and that’s why he needs a woman, he’s going to see Adeliene, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Adeleine and Ed then have a couple’s skate, intriguing him by mentioning her interest in crime scene photography. Ed brings Adeliene home to show her the bowl he made with a human skull, and then goes to introduce her to mother, freaking her out and making her leave, angering him, and then he proceeds to go to the bar, after which he kills the bartender. We then see Alfred Hitchcock and the actor for Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins, going to Ed Gein’s home, recreated on the set to see the kinds of horrible things Ed Gein did.
We then see some of the making of the film, and see Anthony talking to a therapist, to talk about his homosexual romances, and she tells him that the sodomy has to stop, for his career, and talks about cures. After this, we see a guy talking to detectives about the bartender Mary and her whereabouts, mentioning how he saw Ed’s truck at the front of the bar, and the detectives investigate the crime scene. We then see the famous shower scene from Psycho (with Ed in a lady outfit stabbing Adeliene), with people in the audience reacting in shock and disgust (mostly) with Alfred listening to the screams from outside the theatre.
It was pretty interesting seeing the show bring up the parallels between Psycho and Ed Gein, since Ed Gein was of course the big inspiration for a lot of horror movie characters (including Norman Bates, and Leatherface). There was a little more going on in terms of flipping from the Ed Gein stuff to the Psycho, but it wasn’t confusing or anything. Maybe another episode will touch on the horror movie inspirations? (Maybe like 1 or 2 more?)
Rating 8/10