I’m nuts. Seriously.
I vowed I wouldn’t write again about the FX series, American Horror Story, but I’m compelled to do so, in part because I just watched episodes 5 & 6 back to back. And in the course of a combined 56 minutes of broadcast television, minus the commercials, I’ve had 49 pure WTF? moments.
I should know better than to believe the creative team of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk could ever write and produce a story with a defined beginning , middle and end. And while this sixth season is the only one since the uber haunted Murder House in the first year. I couldn’t bear the subsequent four seasons, although I tried.
Asylum lost me as did Coven and last year’s Sideshow or Freaks or whatever the hell it was called, defied what little tolerance I had. BUT, as a fan of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and Daphne the brainiac sleuth-slash-one of the meddling kids from Scooby Doo, I love crime tales. And when you add a supernatural element to re-enactment shows like Dateline, Lt. Joe Kendra (retired) and others, I’m a sucker. Season 6 has all those elements with a soupçon of history from colonial America….and did I mention cannibals, lunar phases, horny forest nymphs, knife, axe and torch wielding villagers with bloodlust, inbred rednecks just a click south of the kind which had hankering for Ned Beatty’s ‘purdy mouth’—with bloodlust, property disputes, ritual sacrifice for land consecration, a very odd 300 year old house with no electrical lines attached yet, it has power AND and the inclusion of network TV weasels who only care about ratings—with bloodlust????
Last night, as I mentioned, I watched two AHS episodes back to back. At any one given time, it felt like I was watching The Blair WItch, Deliverance, every movie ever adapted from every Nathaniel Hawthorne book ever written, the movie about the Argentine soccer players whose plane crashed in the Andes, and maybe even Green Acres…with bloodlust.
I’m too exhausted to give you a complete synopsis of both offerings, but I will say this: I’m six episodes into this season; four more than I could stomach in recent years. Is it convoluted? Yes. Are there stellar performances? Well, Downton Abbey it ain’t, but the divine Kathy Bates is an acting tour de force. I smell a second AHS Emmy for La Bates and I hope it’s just enough to someday inspire a drag queen to strut his/her stuff as Kathy Bates–the Misery years.
i think there are five episodes left. Maybe four, maybe six more, I don’t know. But AHS must end so the highly anticipated third season of Fargo can premier on FX in January. Now THAT is a well written show deserving of my obnoxious, middle-aged allusions to the ancient and obscure films and cartoons from the 60’s and 70’s….with bloodlust.
