Main cast: Judith Light (Virginia Mallow), Rebecca Dayan (Dr Enid Perle), Britt Lower (Fay Mallow), Todd Waring (Bernie), and Cornelia Guest (Cassie Brooks)
Director: Marcus Stokes

Facelift is all about Virginia Mallow, who will try and do anything to beat off the effects of aging. She also has a crush on a neighbor, the soon-to-be-divorced Bernie, but alas, Bernie is doing it with her college dorm mate Cassie Brooks, who appears decades younger than Virginia.

Well, clearly buying all of Goop’s inventory doesn’t work, so Virginia decides to visit Dr Enid Perle, whom Cassie claims is responsible for her youthful looks.

Dr Perle calls herself neither a doctor nor a healer, but a “worshiper of human forms”. She says that time vandalizes the work of the gods, adding its graffiti on the human form, and she specializes in removing such graffiti. Okay, she says she’d do a proprietary augmentation and skin rejuvenation therapy on Virginia, but she claims to be more special than those hacks out there, so there’s that, I suppose.

Since this is American Horror Stories and not a happy reality show on TLC, our poor dear will soon learn that the price of youthfulness may be steep indeed… and no, we’re not merely talking about Dr Perle’s hefty price tag that Virginia actually can’t afford, as her late husband left her a pile of debts. Ah, there’s more to the price, so much more, ooh.

Judith Light plays Virginia Mallow pretty well as this pathetic, rather repugnant yet at the same time sympathetic creature. Virginia has many chances to turn back, especially when things become increasingly out of whack and make a saner person take a step back and reconsider, but no. She even throws away her relationship with her stepdaughter Fay in pursuit of beauty.

Mind you, Virginia isn’t butt ugly in the first place, so it’s all in her head, that she can’t find any value in herself if she didn’t measure up to her own ideals of beauty.

However, while the leading lady does a great job in her role, I can’t say the same for the script, as it goes beyond punishing Virginia and flies straight into “beautiful people are elitist and cruel to anyone that isn’t one of them” territory. While the latter isn’t always untrue, at the same time having that in this episode contradicts the build up of the episode up to that point.

Of course, one can say that maybe that’s the intention of this episode, to highlight what a cesspit Hollywood is, but come on, this episode is written by Manny Coto, who is also responsible for the numerous truly awful episodes of this show and American Horror Story. I’d just err on the side of caution and say that once again, this fellow pooped, figuratively speaking, on his Word document and called it a screenplay.

So yes, this episode has some good acting, but crappy story. It’s one of the better two-oogie episodes of this show, I’d say, but it’s still a two-oogie episode at the end of the day.