AMERICAN HORROR STORY
Though the seasons are very thinly linked, each year this show comes at its horror from a new angle. Unfortunately for me, most years I come away disappointed in the show about halfway through a season because the situation or a character has taken a turn too many into unbelievability.
Most of the time, it seems the season is too long for the writers of the show and they throw in unnecessary and illogical twists and my tolerance, which is usually fairly low for things like this, goes out the window.
But I do appreciate the effort. And, each year, I have to agree that they swing for the fences. Its just that the batting average is a bit low by the end of the season.
Season One’s “Murder House” was probably my favorite, featuring a disfunctional family moving into a refurbished mansion that is haunted by those who have died on the property (and there have been quite a few deaths there). It was strange, different and had the new show smell and I was up for the experience.
“Asylum”, the second season is set in the mid-60s and features the dark goings on at a sinister mental institution—meaning those running it were as bad, if not worse than the inmates. And, considering that one of the nuns becomes posessed by a demon—nuff said. It is an interesting season as, beyond demonic posession, alien abduction plays a heavy role.
“Coven” follows the last surviving witches who are descended from the few who survived the Salem witch trials as they seek safety in an all girls boarding school in New Orleans. From there, it descends into politics and infighting and witch hunters and Marie Laveau and Delphine LaLaurie.
Set in Jupiter, Florida in the early 1950s “Freak Show” is about a struggling Freak Show and it’s leader Elsa Mars, who wants to find a place for her “monsters” so she can seek her own fame in Hollywood. As is always the case, there are flashbacks to earlier in the Freak Show’s history. Of course there’s a murderous clown, a demented rich boy and cruelty from the normals.
“Hotel” is another example of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Set in modern times at the haunted Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, the story features a vampire, a prostitute ghost, a transgender bartender, a policeman hunting a serial killer known as the Ten Commandments Killer. The history of the hotel leads to it’s founder who built it as a torture chamber.
“Roanoke” is more a meta thing as it features a documentary and dramatizations of supernatural events that occurred a few years earlier. It’s linked to the Roanoke Colony and where they moved, while lead by witch Scathach and Thomasin White.
This year it’s “Cult” and it features a charismatic young man, played by Evan Peters, building an army of underlngs in a very Joker-like fashion pre and post election. So far, so good—this season. We’ll see how it goes.
Despite how I’m 50/50 on this show, there are obviously things I like enough to stick around for and one of them is the rich visuals, the acting, the mainstreaming of the unusual and I’m sure there’s more.
Available on Amazon Prime, Hulu or on Disc,
So here are my
Top Three Episodes
of the series…
“Smoldering Children”
Season 1, Episode 10
“The Name Game”
Season 2, Episode 10
“I am Anne Frank: Part 2”
Season 2, Episode 5
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