Once again, the AHS credits are the scariest thing going. Madness and body parts and religious iconography and nuns straddling bound patients, and someone crawling up a flight of stairs backwards and upside down, and then the ivory statue of the Virgin Mary SMILES AAAAHHHHH!

After the opening credits, we're placed in the year 1964, where one assumes the bulk of our story will take place. We're introduced to a gas station attendant named Kit (played by Evan Peters) who was, of course, our beloved ghostly teen Tate last season. Tate went and got himself a flippy little hairdo and a bit of a Boston accent for Season 2 and given how eagerly this show cribs from other sources, I'm kind of hoping the inspiration for Kit was arrived at after someone watched the Footloose remake. After dealing with a rather rude little family of customers, Kit closes up shop for the night and starts singing alone to "There Goes My Baby" in a way that suggests he has a baby he's going home to. The familiar ding that heralds a new customer rings and Kit calls out that they're closed. In horror-movie parlance, this is a huge sign of danger, but in this case it's just a fake-out. Not that Kit's d-bag friends are much better, as the spring on Kit with beers in hand. They swipe the gun Kit keeps next to the cash box, saying they need it to go scare some n-word who messed with the little sister of one of them. Kit says absolutely not and is clearly not down with the n-wording of the featured friend, who looks like if Giovanni Ribisi weren't mentally disturbed. Sane Giovanni sees he's struck a nerve and starts needling Kit about how he's heard rumors that Kit has hired a maid, and then grab Kit's Hershey bar and starts making suggestive mention about the "chocolate." So he either wants to do Kit in the bum or he's heard that Kit's seeing a black girl. Either is possible. Both maybe!