The normal suspension of disbelief required to view this show has been momentarily suspended for me, because the character of Edward Mordrake is not that well done.

Some background: He was a freak of yore, now a ghost.

He was a Byronic young aristocrat who just happened to have an extra face on the back of his head that was a demon. It commanded him to do gnarly things. Now, in the 1950s Freaks-scape, carnival people know that if they perform on Halloween he will be summoned to do dastardly things. Oops, someone performs. He shows up. He wants to add a freak to his sepulchral afterlife. Which will it be? Stay tuned next week. But the actor they chose is weak, and the demonic appendage is hella stupid looking. For a show with some pretty amazing special effects, the whole thing reads like a bad B movie. His character is probably loosely based on a turn of the century guy named Pasqual Pinon, who had a tremendous growth on his head that some huckster decided to paste a wax face to in order to make some quick bucks in a sideshow. According to some sources, this was a huckster with a heart of gold, because he eventually paid to have the growth removed for Pinon. That would never fly witth Elsa.

[jump] Nevermind that, however, because the rest of the plotting is moving along brilliantly. Two shim-sham artists are on the make. One pulls into town posing as a medium so that she can get in good with the freaks and then her partner can kill one and sell it to a museum. After the tragic loss of Miep I truly cannot take anyone else being brutally plucked from this mortal coil. Meanwhile, the evil clown and his sociopathic preppie sidekick are collecting human playthings. The bearded lady has less than a year to live, the strongman can’t get it up, and Elsa sings a Lana Del Rey tune. Just another day in Freakydeak.