It’s official—the Chanels have returned in the season 2 premiere of Scream Queens, “Scream Again.” Zayday and Munsch have also made immediate reappearances. New to the show are Dr. Brock Holt and Dr. Cassidy Cascade, played respectively by John Stamos and Taylor Lautner (I can already tell this season is gonna be good).
In typical Ryan Murphy fashion, the episode kicks off with a haunting flashback. October 31, 1985. Let’s run through this: A hospital by the name of Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering. The hospital staff loves to put Halloween over patient needs. Dr. Mike, dressed as a green swamp thing with horns, dumps a dude in the rancid swamp behind the hospital rather than performing a procedure and missing the Halloween party. Oh so conveniently, there’s the legend of the “Green Swamp Meanie” surrounding that very swamp.
Back—or forward, rather—to 2016. Season one left off with our infamous three Kappa Kappa Tau sisters Chanel, Chanel #3, and Chanel #5 being locked away in a mental hospital. However, Denise Hemphill (who, might I add, moved up from her job as a security officer at Secure Enforcement Solutions all the way to FBI Special Agent) exposed Hester as the real serial killer early on in “Scream Again.” The Chanels’ exoneration was chronicled in a Netflix documentary called Entrap a Kappa Kappa: Murder on Sorority Row (which, by the way, doubled as a very Scream Queens-esque parody of the real Netflix documentary Making a Murderer).
So, the Chanels are free and making the most of their communications-degree-lives… A.K.A., they found that they couldn’t get any communications-related jobs! Instead, Chanel became a certified phlebotomist who works blood drives, Chanel #3 mops up at a local men’s fertility clinic, and Chanel #5 labors as a receptionist at a dentist’s office. Dean—excuse me, now Doctor—Munsch (the University of Pittsburg gave her the honorary doctorate that they stripped from Bill Cosby) recruits the Chanels to enroll as medical students and train at her hospital, the C.U.R.E. Institute Hospital, along with Zayday Williams. The four girls join staff with Dr. Brock Holt, who is the recipient of the world’s first complete hand transplant after a superbowl party accident, and Dr. Cassidy Cascade, who runs ice cold (could it be that even Jacob wants to switch sides now?).
Nurse Hoffel, Head of Administration at C.U.R.E., definitely has it out for the Chanels. She threatens them during their first encounter. Later, Dean Munsch tells Hoffel to “Keep riding on them. Hard.” Hoffel whispers to herself that she has her own plans for the Chanels.
The Chanels are put on academic probation after they insult the hospital’s only patient, Catherine Hobart, who suffers from hypertrichosis A.K.A. ‘werewolf syndrome,’ A.K.A she’s covered in hair from head-to-toe. This scene also reveals that Dr. Holt is a huge egotist and that Dr. Cascade is stuck in a never-ending existential crisis.
Also, the Chanels find out that they aren’t getting paid (duh), which is the most horrifying thing to them. They scream.
Chanel, after calling the other Chanels “stupid dugongs,” becomes determined to reach her new dream of being the next Dr. Phil. In order to be taken off of academic probation, she decides that she has to find a cure for werewolf girl. She sweet-talks “Dr. Ho(l)t” for a whole entire hour (way to take one for the team, Chanel!) to come up with a solution, and together, albeit after some very odd medical flirting, they realize that Catherine needs to change her diet and up her estrogen levels. Catherine’s hair does fall out… all of it, everywhere, to be exact. The Chanels scrub in (LOL) and give Catherine a makeover to appease her adversity to looking like “a really large baby.” They dance. With curling irons.
The Chanels are off probation, Catherine has been cured, and everything is fine and dandy! …That is, until Catherine gets her head chopped off by the Green Meanie. And thus, we have met this season’s mystery serial killer. These poor girls thought they left all this behind when Kappa Kappa Tau was almost literally killed off… they never can seem to catch a break, can they?
We all better scrub in, because this season is gonna be messy.