I have renewed faith in the future of American Horror Story. The Halloween two-parter reeled me back in from the brink of just saying fuck it and now I’m slowly being sucked in again. That’s not to say there weren’t some problems with “Piggy, Piggy” but they were far outweighed by the good.

I’m not going to lie. The opening minutes of “Piggy Piggy” were hard to watch. Even though it happened 12 years ago Columbine is still difficult for me to get my head around. Plus, part of me really wanted to believe that Tate (Evan Peters) didn’t kill fifteen of his classmates at Westfield High in 1994. The real mystery now is why. They certainly held nothing back here and the scene was probably the most tense and frightening thing I’ve seen on television in a while. It also showed us that Tate was gunned down in the house by the police shortly after the massacre and doesn’t seem to be at all aware he is dead.

This new information doesn’t sit well with poor misunderstood Violet (Taissa Farmiga) who is dangerously close to a psychotic meltdown of her own. One on hand she has a new BFF who has a drug problem and a fetish for Biblical horrors. On the other she has fallen for a guy who is not only dead but gunned down fifteen people for no good reason and now he’s in love with her. No wonder she fantasizes about cutting herself and winds up with a gut full of prescription sleeping pills. Thankfully her tortured boyfriend is always lurking and manages to save her from herself. She doesn’t seem too keen on the idea but can’t resist a good snuggle.

Meanwhile Vivien (Connie Britton) is too focused on her Devil baby to notice the angst party going on upstairs. Heck everyone is focused on the Devil baby lately. Moira (Frances Conroy) refuses to be fired so she can hang around to help and Constance has taken to dropping by with some nastiness called “sweetbreads” which are neither sweet nor bread like. Paula Deen would not approve. These culinary experiments in terror are “for the good of the baby” Constance tells her and Moira immediately serves them up. Vivien chows down on some fried pancreas and then gobbles up some cow brain like its pumpkin pie. Moira also offers her opinion about Ben and his cheating, something she seems to have some experience with.

Constance (Jessica Lange), while fabulous in a scary Tallulah Bankhead sort of way is the kind of neighbor that most people would file restraining orders against. She lets herself in all the time and this week goes so far as to invite her friend Billie (Sarah Paulson) over to help Violet realize her potential as a medium. Granted, she used to live in the house back when Tate was first getting trigger happy but I have to wonder why she ever sold the place if she couldn’t bear to move any further away than next door and spends more time in her old house than her new one. At any rate, Billie with the vulgar nail polish gives Violet some advice about dealing with the dead and even lets Constance chat with the poor departed Adelaide who doesn’t seem at all upset she has passed on. I guess the afterlife is more appealing than more time in her special mirrored closet.

Ben (Dylan McDermott) is back in the house treating patients because somebody has to make some money around here right? His patient this week is Derek (Eric Stonestreet from Modern Family), a man afraid of everything but especially afraid that urban legends are true and he will die because of one. The focus of his paranoia lately involves the Piggy Man who is essentially Bloody Mary in the form of an angry pig farmer from 19th century Chicago. While this new addition to the urban legend catalog was creepy in its own right it really served no purpose in the context of the episode or the copious amounts of mythology being vomited at us every week. Piggy Man would have made a very good episode of Supernatural but didn’t work at all for this. Derek’s story doesn’t end well at all but since it didn’t end in the house (and Eric Stonestreet is a busy guy) I doubt we’ll see him again. It did establish that Ben will be around the house still despite having been thrown out by Viv after his diddling with Hayden was revealed.

American Horror Story still has some kinks to work out but I think I’m sold on it finally. I still think the narrative is too disjointed and I think they need to reel it in a bit and focus, but each week the show seems a little closer to finding their groove. As for the characters, I don’t know how I feel about Tate now. His sexy angst thing is appealing but now I wonder what will happen if Violet ever does reject him. And why did he do what he did? Was it the house?

Check back in with the Harmons next Wednesday with “Open House”.