Travis Kelce made is highly anticipated debut in Ryan Murphy’s horror series Grotesquerie in Episode 3. Up until then, even though he’d been briefly featured in the trailer, details about his character had been kept completely under wraps.
Turns out, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end is playing Ed “Eddie” Laclan, a nurse at the hospital where Lois Tyron’s (Niecy Nash-Betts) comatose husband Marshall (Courtney B. Vance) is being cared for.
Grotesquerie follows Nash-Betts’ Detective Tryon as she investigates a series of heinous crimes in her small community, which she quickly begins to feel are eerily personal, as if the killer is taunting her. She finds a few unlikely allies along the way, including Kelce’s Eddie as well as a journalist nun named Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond).
Read on for more details about Eddie’s arc in Grotesquerie. Check back for more as the series progresses.
Episode 3
Lois meets Ed toward the end of the third episode, after she arrives at the hospital to find Nurse Redd (Lesley Manville) treating a bedsore on her husband. Lois has been spiraling lately, and as a result, her battle with alcoholism has been getting worse.
Nurse Redd tries to encourage Lois to give her power of attorney over Marshall, insisting that Lois isn’t in a position to make decisions about her husband’s care. Lois refuses, but the interaction leaves her shaken up, and she retreats to the hospital’s outdoor atrium with her flask and a cigarette to recalibrate.
She’s digging for a lighter when, all of a sudden, someone lights it for her. It’s Eddie.
He encourages her not to drive, knowing she’s been drinking, which Lois ignores. But, the two do strike up a flirtatious banter. He calls her “Miss Sassypants,” and she returns the quip by referring to him as “Fast Eddie.”
The interaction is brief, but hints that there may be more to come. Their next encounter comes faster than expected, because Lois crashes her car upon leaving the hospital, finding herself back within those white walls — this time, as a patient. As she’s speaking with a co-worker about the fact that she’s being charged with a DUI, Eddie walks in the room with a tray of food.
Lois asks Eddie to unlock her handcuffs, seeing as she’s chained to the hospital bed. He pushes back at first, but with a little insistence, Lois gets what she wants. Not only that, but he helps her break out of the hospital, too. They sneak out together and ride off into the night.
Episode 4
Lois runs into Eddie again as she’s leaving the hospital, after visiting her husband. For the time being, it seems the charges against her have been dropped, though Nurse Redd is still determined to get that power of attorney. He’s not dressed as a nurse this time, though, which raises a few questions — but Lois doesn’t ask any.
She apologizes for her shortcomings, and Eddie brushes her off, saying she’s only human. As thanks, Lois offers to bake him a cake, to which Eddie suggests they spend some time together. “You mean like a date?” Lois asks. Eddie replies: “Sure, we can call it that.”
The two depart the hospital. Next thing Lois knows, Eddie has brought her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Afterward, they get dinner…and Lois sips on a dirty martini. Eddie encourages her to slow down her drinking, explaining that his own journey toward sobriety started after he tore his ligaments in a skiing accident. From there, he went to Juneau, Alaska, where he was a sex worker. Eventually, he ended up on the streets.
“Long story short, I was just missing my dignity. You know?” he says, which certainly gets Lois thinking. “I had to find stuff to live for. You? You haven’t lost your dignity. So don’t.”
He then drops Lois at home.
Next time audiences see Eddie, he’s doing yoga in his home when he gets a call from Lois, asking for a favor. She wants him to come by her house to chat. Lois’ daughter Merritt (Raven Goodwin) is highly suspicious of Eddie, who Lois has asked to stay with her daughter for a few days while she’s away, since she and Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond) are going to follow a new lead in the murder case.
Episode 7
Eddie is mostly absent from Episodes 5 and 6, other than a quick glimpse at he and Merritt laughing while watching a video in her bedroom. It’s the first, and only, indication that Merritt is warming up to him, so it comes as a bit of a shock when, in the beginning of Episode 7, Merritt and Eddie sit across from Lois at dinner and tell her that they are dating and they want to move in together.
Merritt says she wants Eddie’s support now that she’s been cast on that reality show, “Half-Ton Trauma,” but Lois is not having it. She gets quite drunk at dinner and says a lot of awful things to the two of them, insinuating that she and Eddie were having an affair (which didn’t happen).
About halfway through Episode 5, it’s revealed that everything audiences thought was true, isn’t. Lois is the one in the coma, not her husband Marshall. All of this has been happening in her head, and these characters are visual representations of the way she views these people in her life, not who they actually are. More on that here.
In real life, Eddie is already married to Merritt, at least for now. Except, that dinner actually happened with Marshall, and it was so Merritt could tell her dad that she and Eddie were getting a divorce after Eddie did cheat on her with Lois. Also, Eddie isn’t a nurse at the hospital. Merritt says he works at the Cinnabon stand in the mall.
When Marshall tries to take Lois off life support at the end of the episode, Eddie wants to be there, causing tensions. But, Merritt agrees to let him stick around for the end of Lois’ life. Only, Lois doesn’t die. In the final moments of the episode, she fights her way back to reality and awakens, setting up for further drama between her and Eddie on the horizon.
