Some time later, Jude and Pepper are actually having a bit of fun, working in the bakery and listening to some Hendrix on the radio. The fun's about to end, though as a cattle call of mental patients is pushed into the ward -- this would be the overflow that the Monsignor spoke of. And who does Judy spot among the gaggle, but our old friend the Angel Conroy. Only not quite. It's Frances Conroy, of course, and she's got the familiar dark hair and pale complexion. But she's no longer dressed for a New Orleans funeral, instead wearing the familiar prison blues and a sad cardigan. Most tellingly is her face. Gone is the expression of kind pity, replaced by the cold, hard pragmatism of a lifer. Does she even look like the Angel Conroy to anyone else but Jude? Is this just a leftover jolt from the ECT playing a delayed joke on her psyche? We never really find out. But from the moment she sets eyes on this new woman, Jude's hard-won crown as the Queen of Candy Land vanishes forever. This is the beginning of the end. So Jude starts freaking out, all "I didn't call for you," and of course the Prisoner Conroy is only responding as a prisoner would, staring at her with dead eyes and telling her cronies to get a load of the Briarcliff queen bee. She advances on Jude and tells her there are two ways this can go: she can either sign on and rule the roost alongside her or just be "another dumb cluck." Frances Conroy is an utterly different person here. It's astounding. The accent work is subtle, the lower register of her voice is terrifying -- it's a complete transformation. It's the stuff that guest-actor Emmys were made of, if the guest-actor Emmy was in any way a meritocracy. Anyway, Jude's too paralyzed with fear of the Angel of Death to respond, even when the Prisoner Conroy puts a cigarette out in her loaf of bread. (Not a euphemism.)













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