So instead of accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior, or using this corona-inspired sabbatical to finally get my life together, instead I finally caught up on all the American Horror Stories.
Or, mostly. I still have two episodes of 1984 left. But any AHS “fan” knows how it goes. You usually lose all entire interest by that point and start watching something else to try and regain some of your spirit the show stole from you as an offering to their God/s. You’ll watch anything. You’ll be on some crazy shit like “Maybe I should finally give This Is Us a try”. It always gets pretty bleak and exhausting towards the end. Know you are not alone.
I want to give my limp little commentary on all the seasons even though I still have those two episodes left. I think I pretty much get the gist of 1984 based on all the other episodes I previously watched. Once roughly twelve hundred characters have died and been resurrected, it really no longer calls for you to take anything seriously, or even care in general.
So here we go!
Murder House:
I hesitate to say it’s good. It’s fun. Jessica Lange’s introduction scene alone is worth the price of admission. I see the camp and the foolishness and the daring and I’m like sign me the fuck up forever. Like everyone else who watched Murder House. The acting is pretty good even though the characters have to say and do so much stupid shit. The ending is weak and ridiculous. But this is American Horror Story, so that goes without saying. I wish I knew when I first watched this season, that this would basically be as good as it gets, and I did not necessarily need to continue. There would be no Fargo Season 2 or Better Call Saul-like superior next step within the lore to elevate the series/world building. Instead there is just Asylum.
Asylum:
The first time I watched this season when it originally aired, I did not like it. I have to say that I believe that mostly had to do with waiting week-to-week for each new episode. My recent binge through the entire series was far more enjoyable. It’s like taking disgusting medicine sip by sip every hour versus just all down at once. That’s like the worst analogy ever, but also very apt and exactly the experience.
I was surprised to find I actually mostly liked Asylum this time around. Out of all the seasons, I feel like this one has the best story. Now, I mean that relative to the AHS world, and not in like a general sense. It is not an overall good story, but compared to the other seasons’ so-called plots, Asylum’s was...not as bad. I genuinely was into the connection between Bloodyface and Lana. I thought Sarah and Zach Quinto had really good chemistry. And their scenes were absurd, so that’s a testament to both the actors’ talent that they could pull off such ridiculous material.
The nazi stuff was weird. James Cromwell was pretty creepy so it mostly worked, and there’s never enough Franka Potente even if she is inappropriately playing maybe Anne Frank.
I saw someone I think on YouTube bring up how they just do nothing with the alien subplot. So true and why even have it. The most they could come up with is have Evan’s kids become cool when they’re older or something? Um, okay.
Coven:
My first go-round this was my fave season. Rewatching it wasn’t as enjoyable but it still pretty much holds up. Again, like all other seasons, it just gets kind of tiring and you’re over it well before they get to wrapping everything up. This season introduces a number of actors who would go on to become AHS regulars who were much-welcomed by me like Angela and Kathy and much less so like Emma. This season is the one where I start to notice how no one ever actually dies. There’s zero stakes. A character can have their whole head chopped off but as long as another character does magic they can be brought back to life. If no magic, then hey it’s ghost time. Um, please stop? I know you won’t though because this isn’t that type of show. It’s not like The Haunting of Hill House or whatever where they intentionally implant emotional stakes because that’s a theme of the show. They can’t bring back the dead mom character and have her walk into the room waving at her kids like Hey u guise sorry about when I killed myself lolz. That show would be a whole Flop. But AHS is mostly just a camp circus and if they don’t bring back every actor people love for no reason then they’ll be #cancelled and maybe Ryan Murphy will have too much time on his hands and try to revitalize Glee or something. That must never happen.
Freak Show:
A flop season if there ever was one. I’m not sure if this is a popular opinion, but for me it fails in the most crucial category: Not fucking boring me. This season is MAD BORING. Like, what? A show about a bunch of freaks in a circus surrounded by at least a couple of serial killers should not have me snoozing. But alas. I don’t care about any of the freak show characters, except for Seal Boy, and that’s just because he was hot. I start zoning out thinking about how it wouldn’t be so bad to have a couple of seal babies running around. That shouldn’t be happening while I’m watching an infamously insane TV show. Shouldn’t I care about these characters and what happens? What’s going on. The only characters I liked this season were Dandy (an icon) and the clown. I think the entire season should be demolished and AHS should build everything up again from the ground. Start all over. For me the season could have been interesting had they made either Dandy, or the clown central characters, and then we see these more “innocent” freaks around them and how they’re affected by these two psycho killers. But I get the foundation is meant to be this circus and the people who live there, but the characterization is just a flop. Dull dull dull. A character with three boobs' entire characterization shouldn’t be just that they have three boobs. Yike.
Also the backstory for the clown? No. He was scary, then the show is like no actually he’s mentally challenged and sad so it’s okay he killed people it’s fine. I never think clowns are scary. This was like the one time that ever happened and they dooked all over it. This is why Jessica left smh.
Hotel:
Who likes Hotel? How did Queenie sum it up: A bunch of boring white people and their problems? Something like that, and basically. This season isn’t as bad to me as Freak Show was, though. Shocker. Even though they completely waste Sarah and Evan and even Kathy, really, with completely lame characters this season and give wooden, generally charmless actors like Chloe Sevigny and Wes Bentley far too much screen time...it just still wasn’t as insufferable or unwatchable as Freak Show. If you transported Patti LaBelle’s character from Freak to here I would almost say I liked Hotel. Almost.
But what stood out to me the most this season, and what I just could not stop thinking about was that little girl. In a mostly comical way. Who...where is that little girl? How are both of her parents posted up at the Hotel dealing with the Cortez shenanigans? Who is watching this child? Like, they did not give a fuck. It was honestly distracting. But them abandoning her wasn’t even played for camp or anything. It’s just like...we only give a fuck about this one kid. That girl can suck rocks. Honestly this season should just be renamed AHS: Why Is Queenie Here and Where the Fuck Is That Little Girl...Who Is Looking After Her...Oh, She’s At Her Grandma’s House? Thanks for Explaining This in Like Episode Fucking Eight or Some Shit
Roanoke:
Surprise, I actually liked this season. I love super-meta things like this. But I get why some AHS fans might not like this. It’s done in a very different format from other seasons. But this is an anthology series so I’m not bothered by that. It was a much-needed reset cuz shit wasn’t working out the last two seasons and that’s period.
Roanoke loses me at the end. But thankfully, I believe this is one of the shorter seasons so Roanoke has much less time than previous seasons to embarrass itself. I think this season is pretty tight up until they get to probably the last two episodes. Or once the second season of the reality show within the season begins filming is pretty much when it’s lost. But I still held on. For me the show didn’t totally lose me I think until the very last episode where they wrap up Adina’s storyline and the thing with her daughter. It was a flop, especially because I expected her character to turn out to be secretly evil or something? Why did they bring up the first daughter she had who was kidnapped? As a red herring? Are you kidding? Totally inappropriate...for you to not make her character legit evil. Like, she killed her ex-husband. Why does the show not lean into that? I will say I thought Adina was pretty creepy. She definitely seems like a strange actor that I’m not totally sure Ryan & Co. know what to do with. No, she cannot be an Angela replacement. Her best role was as Ben’s boring patient in Murder House, and I stand by that.
Cult:
I liked Cult. I’ve seen some criticism about it concerning the ~politics~. There is no way in hell I will ever in my life watch American Horror Story and waste any ounce of energy taking it even a little bit serious. Except for Hotel’s season when I was genuinely concerned for the little girl, but never any other time outside of that!! So any weird politics stuff: I don’t care. This isn’t The Newsroom where you’re inexplicably expected to sit and watch characters give really genuine cocaine-riddled Sorkin monologues and actually take it seriously and care about what’s happening. This is American Horror Story. Evan’s hair is blue now and it's long enough for him to put it into a bun. Which is to say, it’s fucking lit!
Trypophobes? Who was bout to not even watch this season? I was like Oh, lord. But they didn’t linger on the holes too long. Plus the CGI was terrible - thank god.
My fave thing about this season is that Evan finally gets a good role. I’m not saying Evan never had anything to do. Tate is iconic, and his Clark Gable cosplay in Hotel was pretty good, etc. But he really never gets anything to chew on the same way the Sarahs and Jessicas have gotten to do. Now, that just could be that Evan is not on their level like that, but I think he’s pretty good. He’ll get a lame character and still do something with it, like his actor character in Roanoke lol or even his primarily unintelligible Frankenstein monster in Coven. But if you’re putting my son’s name in the title cards, y’all need to give him something to do like the other title card girls, okay?!
So finally Ryan & Co. give us Kai.
A Caucasian King!!!!
Of course the season falls flat on its face towards the end and ruins any goodwill built. Plus, next season, Evan goes right back to not having anything good to do, so gr8 thanx!!! Plus Billie Lourd!! Gr8!!! Now I almost like Emma smh!!!
Apocalypse:
Bitch, wtf. BY FAR the worst American Horror Story season. Even worse than Freak Show and Hotel combined if you gutted all the good bits from both those seasons. A total flop, fan-service dumpster fire of a season. From start to finish. Usually AHS can at least grab you in the beginning. This season STARTS as a flop smh.
The Apocalypse theme should be one where you sit down to write and all sorts of crazy, interesting ideas just naturally flow out. Yet this season starts out with a bunch of insufferable people bickering amongst each other in some sort of bomb shelter after the entire apocalypse has already transpired off-screen.
What
This was actually the first season where I started to suspect this show isn’t given much of a budget. And this is the sort of thing I won’t usually notice. I am entirely unobservant when it comes to things like setting and costume lol. You can place the most ratchet production in front of me and I will drink it down the same as something that cost like a gazillion dollars and has the best of the best talent behind the scenes. It’s just not something that usually stands out to me. But this season had me wondering why they wouldn’t focus on the world post-apocalypse and characters navigating the terrain. In the earlier episodes they show glimpses of the outside. Like that one scene where you see the horses being dragged into some bushes or something and all the smoky stuff. I was certain eventually the characters would be forced outside to look for food or whatever and we’d get scenes with them traveling to and through the unknown.
Nope!
Instead, all the characters within the outpost are killed and then we start getting backstory lead-up to what caused the apocalypse.
I’m shocked.
Even the most idiotioc, simpleton AHS stan was probably expecting a whole season full of end-of-the-world centered shenanigans like radiation scenes or characters scavenging for meals or characters being attacked by apocalypse creatures or whatever. Not the bullshit we were presented. Who in their right mind expected this bullshit? Did Ryan & co. think they were doing something? If not, was this just their way of working with like the twelve dollars they probably get from FX? I don’t know. Like, I’m at a loss for words what the hell.
There were some good things, like Madison being in Hell and AHS finally introducing us to Cody...but that’s not enough. It just started off too whack and the show doesn’t rectify it. I’m sure they were writing the early episodes and were like man this is dumb. Then, instead of scrapping it and starting over they were like lolz let’s just bring back characters from past seasons the audience actually gives a fuck about. That’ll save this mess!
Wrong!!
Please explain:
- Why Michael was able to be killed when Billie went back in time? Just five minutes prior they show he can be resurrected by Satan powers. How is running him over with a car enough to kill him when y’all JUST pelted his ass with bullets and he got up like it was fucking nothing? DUMB.
- The purpose of those younger characters????? No, I want Ryan Murphy himself to come to my house and tell me what the fuck. They introduced them in the beginning and I fully expected them to eventually matter. Nope, they get killed. Kay. Then the finale rounds back to them and oh lol in this new timeline they give birth to the Antichrist. What? Didn’t Michael only exist because a ghost/demon raped a human woman? Is the show implying a similar situation happened with the young kids? No, you know what, I don’t even care. Imma just pretend this was a full troll season and Ryan and them don’t even take this show seriously at all now that they have made better things like American Crime Story and Fosse/Verdon. They’re just like WHATEVER, and honestly, same.
1984:
Here’s the tea: I don’t like Emma, Billie, or Leslie. Cody is cute, but he’s no Evan. You think you can have an American Horror Story season and NONE of the bad bitches are here? Delusional.
When Cody is the baddest bitch you got I don’t know what to tell you.
That being said, this season is at least watchable. Though I’m lying because I still have those two episodes left, and I couldn’t care less.
The dude who plays Richard Ramirez though? Mwah! His zaddiness is enough to make me mostly forget that it’s weird to be acting nostalgic over an infamous serial murderer. It’s like, weird as hell to be like Isn’t Richard Ramirez sexy as fuck, y’all. Like, dude yeah, but chill with all that smh.
