‘Scream Queens’ recap: Shop till you drop

Prepare yourself for the ultimate Black Friday, pledges. A holiday dedicated to needless shopping and lording wealth over others -- talk about the Chanels’ paradise. However, with a serial killer on the loose, their Black Friday plans take a dark turn.

After being served Gigi’s (Nasim Pedrad) roasted severed head for Thanksgiving dinner, it is an understatement to say that the girls of Kappa are a little shaken up. However, the Chanels are determined not to let Thanksgiving’s tragic ending keep them from getting their Black Friday shopping on. Despite Dean Munsch’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) pleas for them to stay at the house, the girls are dead set on heading to the mall.

Unsurprisingly, disaster strikes the girls’ Black Friday festivities as the Chanels soon find themselves trapped in the deserted mall with none other than the Red Devil. Eventually they spot an escape route; however, once the three other Chanels are safe, Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts) decides as Kappa president to face the killer, whom she is certain is Munsch. After taking a crossbow arrow in the shoulder, Chanel is saved from another to the head when Denise Hemphill (Niecy Nash) — the town’s newly minted chief of police — rushes in to save her. However, her incompetence and chatty nature ultimately let the killer slip away once again.

After their near-death experience — and no, I am not just talking about Black Friday shopping in general — the Kappa girls have a house meeting and decide they are going to take matters into their own hands and kill the Red Devil killer: Munsch. While Zayday (Keke Palmer) is hesitant to murder their dean, Grace (Skyler Samuels) is completely on board and even suggests killing her with poison.

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The Kappas’ evil plan is in motion when Grace and Chanel visit Munsch at her home under the guise of wanting to start the Wallace University Feminist Collective, although they are merely trying to get Munsch to drink the apple cider they heavily poisoned with puffer fish venom — from Hester’s (Lea Michele) puffer fish, of course. The girls are thrown for a loop when not only does Munsch not die instantly but is not even affected by the heavy amount of poison mixed into her cider.

After the failure of their first murder attempt, Grace is still determined to finish the job, but has second thoughts after Pete (Diego Boneta) tells her she is not a murderer. At the Kappas’ next murder planning meeting, Grace voices these concerns and is subsequently kicked out of Kappa Kappa Tau. Not even Zayday follows her this time.

With Grace out of the picture, the Kappas have a new plan to kill Munsch: freeze her to death in a cryogenic sauna — a bit of an oxymoron, right? Once again, though, Munsch escapes, miraculously surviving 27 minutes in a cryogenic chamber set to 200 degrees below zero. Chanel and the Kappas are naturally confused and fuming over the failure of their now-multiple murder attempts.

Deciding to end it once and for all, Chanel invites Munsch to meet her at the university pool so she can drown her. However, the plan once again fails when her sisters are too busy arguing with a store saleswoman to help Chanel at the pool. Munsch — who clearly suspects something — swiftly exits after a thoroughly awkward and frightening conversation with Chanel.

While red flags are being raised over Munsch’s involvement in the serial killings, the biggest bomb of the episode is dropped in the final minutes when Grace heads over to Pete’s room to deal with her rejection from the Kappas. Finally the two have the opportunity to be with each other, but Pete suddenly hesitates. Grace, finding this odd, pushes for the truth which causes Pete to admit, “I don’t want your first time to be with a murderer.” Dun, dun, dun.

So what did you think of the penultimate episode? Is Pete really the other Red Devil? Will Munsch retaliate against the Kappas’ murder attempts? Sound off in the comments and check back for what fresh hell next week’s two-hour finale brings!

Scream count: 4

Red Devil sightings: 4

Best quote: “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to the mall to exercise our patriotic right to join hundreds of thousands of our fellow out-of-breath Americans in sweatpants as they make frenzied, ill-thought-out purchases of cheap, crappy garbage they can’t afford and don’t need.” - Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts)

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