You certainly can’t accuse ‘American Horror Story’ of holding anything back. In last week’s episode, the second season continued to charge forward, full-throttle. I don’t know of any other show on the air that so gleefully kills off seemingly major cast members at the drop of a hat.

I doubt that anyone will miss Adam Levine. In the season premiere’s framing story, he got his arm torn off by crazy serial killer Bloody Face. The psycho finishes the job this episode, and traps Levine’s wife (Jenna Dewan-Tatum, real-life wife of Channing Tatum) in the abandoned mental institution.

Flash back to 1964, and ol’ BF also makes messy work of Clea DuVall. Now poor Lana (Sarah Paulson) has no one on the outside who can work to spring her from Briarcliff. Of course, she doesn’t know that yet. She still thinks that her girlfriend betrayed her by committing her to the facility in the first place.

In ‘Tricks and Treats’, Lana tries to make an escape through the tunnels beneath the hospital. Unfortunately, though a complicated string of events, Kit Walker learns of her plan and tries to tag along. Because Lana thinks that Kit is Bloody Face, she can’t risk him getting out into the world again. In a painful decision, she has to scuttle her escape plan by calling the orderlies to capture Kit.

Season 1 supporting player Zachary Quinto returns to the show, now playing psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Thredson. He arrives by order of the court to evaluate Walker’s mental competency, but is appalled by the conditions in the asylum, especially when Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) gives Lana electroshock to “cure” her lesbianism (really to fry her memories so she can’t file a news story). Thredson then gets unwillingly pulled into the matter of a new patient, a teenager who seems to be possessed by a demon. Sister Jude immediately brings in an exorcist, but Thredson of course believes that the boy is just mentally ill.

This being ‘American Horror Story’, of course Jude is right. We’re treated to a bunch of crazy exorcism scenes where the demon speaks in tongues, taunts the priests and doctors, and telekinetically tosses people around the room. Eventually, Monsignor Howard (Joseph Fiennes) drives the demon out of the boy, but apparently straight into Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe).

In other creepy developments, Dr. Arden (James Cromwell) is apparently fixated on the young nun. He hires a whore to dress up as Sister Mary Eunice and have dinner with him. Things get really intense until the girl knees him in the groin and runs away. This begs the obvious question of whether Arden is the real Bloody Face.

As I said in my last recap, the new season of the show hasn’t necessarily made any mistakes or missteps, but it also hasn’t quite grabbed hold of me the way that the first season did so instantly. Is that perhaps just because I know what to expect of it now? I’m not sure how I really feel about the season yet, but I’ll still gladly watch until I can figure it out.