Let me describe in my own words, what I think of season three of the AHS saga so far: style over substance.
I can take that one step further by admitting I fell asleep twenty minutes into this past Wednesday episode.
While still better than last season’s bouillabaisse of silly badness ( Nazis, aliens, zombies, serial killers, sadistic nuns, Anne Frank, homosexual rehab sessions, demonic possession, microcephaly, evil Santas, caning, murder, suicides, asylums and more gore than any politician named Al) I still find it in dire need of ……in need of….well, I’m not quite sure.
But with just two episodes in, I’ll give it till Halloween to win me over. I am nothing if not fair.
It’s got a great premise: its all about black magic and witches in the witchiest city all–New Orleans. And acting wise, its got major star power. Jessica Lange is back, this time as the Witch Supreme. Sarah Paulsen returns (she was Lana the Lesbian Reporter last year. Taiisa Farmiga is back. She was Violet of the Bad Attitude in season I. This go round she’s a witch, with a killer vagina.
Literally. More on that in a big.
Evan Peters returns. He played Tate in season one and an accused wife killer last season. In reality, she had been inducted by aliens in episode I and returned later or some such nonsense. Season II was largely forgettable. This time, Evan plays a Tulane frat rat named Kyle, with a fairly decent portrayal of an Orleanian diphthong, BUT….he dies in a horrific bus accident in the first episode. But like Frankenstein’s monster, he’s returning for more action. As we learned in episode II, this was a horrible, horrible accident. He was terribly dismembered, as was the rest of the occupants. They were in a rented party bus hightailing it away from a mixer at the Frat House after gang banging Madison, an actress witch with telekinetic powers (played by Emma Roberts, daughter of Eric and niece to Aunt Julia). When revived from the Roofie she’d been given, Madison ran out to the street and willed the bus to crash, killing all the rapists, including Kyle who never touched her. In fact, he was the only one to attempt to stop the attack and was dragged on board the bus prior to the escape to keep him from ratting out his randy brothers.
Taiisa Farmiga’s character Zoe, fell for Kyle earlier at the party. Because Madison killed her boyfriend in the crash, she promises to do Zoe a solid, so they break into the morgue found the section where the dead frat boys were kept on ice and realized that the victims had all been terribly dismembered in the accident. Soo like an old fashion quilting party, they decide to create the perfect boyfriend, using the best parts of each victims. Kyle’s head, someone’s bitching torso, another arms, legs, hands., etc and and other parts I’m sure and they sew all the parts together, while performing an ‘incant’ over him and voila! He’s alive. Uncoordinated and mono syllabic as hell, but alive.
Mary Shelley would be proud.
And Addie is back. Jamie Brewer, the Texas actress with Down Syndrome is back this season playing Nan, a witch with incredibly psychic powers. Hats off to the writers and producers for allowing this actress to just portray your basic witch with all seeing powers. No mention of her “handicap” in terms of this role. Nicely played, Hollwyood. Dennis O’hare was Burned Guy is season one. He’s back this year as Spalding, the school’s mute butler/man servant/factorum with long, stringy Edgar Winter-ish hair.
Lilly Rabe returns. She was Mrs. Montgomery is season one, the possessed nun last year and this go round, she’s a witch with the powers of necromancy. She brings the dead back to life. A re-animator, if you will. Lilly has always been one of my AHS stable of actors. She’s spunky. Plus, her mother was none other than the late, great Jill Clayburgh. A talented
actress who’s star rose and fell in the late seventies, early 80′s. Back then she was most ubiquitous. In every movie, or so it seemed, paired up on theater marquees with Burt Reynolds and other A-listers of the era. Her stock fell in the early 90′s. Yes, she had the gall to age and well, Hollywood frowns on natural body processes. Her last film was “Bridesmaids” in which she played Kristin Wiig’s mother. She died from a lengthy bout with cancer, shortly after the film wrapped.
Kathy Bates joins the cast this year who plays New Orleans socialite Madame LaLaurie (love last name, by the way), a very real New Orleans character who back in the early 1800′s, treated her slaves and servants with a form of sadism that would make Dr. Mengele cringe. I like La Bates in most roles and hope she can pull this off. Angela Bassett is given a co-starring role as well. She comes on board as Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. Apparently, Voodoo and witchcraft are like big rival union bosses in the magic underworld of New Orleans, so we can expect lots of story lines about pins stuck in dolls vs. bubbling cauldrons.
Speaking of Bassett, she has never looked better. She’s absolutely stunning in this role. The woman’s skin is incredible. Still beautiful.
Gabourey Sidibe rounds out the cast as Queenie. Remember her from the movie, “Precious”? She too is a witch, and her powers involve being a human Voodoo doll. She can shove her arm into a f frying pan filled with breaded shrimp just a bubblin’ away and she wouldn’t feel a thing—but her intended victim would. His arm would–out of the blue–turn beet red and blister up. Next thing you know, it’s goodbye arm, hello charred cinder stick. As for the others, Zoe kills during the act of mating. Nan is psychic, Madison has telekinetic powers (you know, like Carrie) and Cordelia (Sarah Paulsen) is the school’s Headmistress. She’s a witch too but so far, her only power seems to be having a green thumb. We’ve yet to see her mojo.
Queenie is a direct linear descendant of Tituba, the slave girl was the very first person in Salem to be accused of consorting with the devil. She was arrested and jailed for her crimes, but never convicted. After she was released from prison after squealing on several other young girls in the community who were tried and executed (read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible or watch a few episodes of “Bewitched” circa 1972…the season which they learn son Adam also has powers) everyone lost track of old Tituba. It was never really discerned if she was a practicing witch or not, but I think every time the Celtics, Red Sox and Patriots have a bad season, the answer becomes clearer. Payback’s a bitch.
All the young witches have connections to the first American witches in Salem. After the first few witches were executed, they decided to seek safety by heading south, to call New Orleans home. The young witches, Zoe, Madison, Nan and Queenie have been sent by their families to a special private school boarding school in New Orleans. It’s like a Hogwartz for girls to help them use their powers wisely and to perpetuate witches and witchcraft for posterity. Seems like being born a witch was an abortion stimulus in the world of Coven: Season III. . Self-hating witches wanted the buck to stop with them so they either elected not to procreate in the first place or aborted the babies before given the chance to turn a toy horse into Thomas Edison, thus forcing daddy Darren to convince a potential client AND Larry Tate that their firm, McMann and Tate had their best advertising interests at heart and should be given the account. She’s good with plants and herbs. She’s also the daughter of Fiona, who is the Witch Supreme, one who’s born with all the powers, including some awfully bad ass saliva, as we witnessed in episode II.
Lilly Rabe’s character, Mist Day, will eventually join the girls at the school. Just for bringing a pigeon back to life in the middle of some uber religious strychnine drinking service outdoors, she was burned by her fellow church members. Guess she did a number on herself 
because she was popped up and surprised Zoe after she piled Mr. Piecemeal Kyle into the car to escape the morgue. They had to because shortly after Kyle came back to life, he and Zoe were discovered in the morgue by an employee. A fight ensues with grunting and screaming and bing, bang boom, Zombie Kyle suddenly becomes a murderer facing 20 to life.
But Misty Day can bring Khim back to life where he’s able to speak and walk and the best part of all? If he and Zoe decide to date, sex will be a breeze because he’s already dead!!!
Madame Lalaurie kills a slave who happens to be a boyfriend of Marie Laveau, so with the held of a lynch mob, she drugs Lalaurie with a potion that gives her eternal life. They wraps her in chains, puts her in a coffin and buries her alive on the Lalaurie estate. On a field trip with the young witches, Fiona (Jessica Lange) takes them on a tour of the notoriously haunted Lalaurie House. Nan looks down under some bricks and realizes there’s a casket buried below. Fiona, who’s obsessed with eternal life and beauty, realizes it must be Madame Lalaurie down there somewhere. She hires some guys to exhume the coffin and when it’s opened, out plops a very alive, but very dirty Madame Lalaurie. Fiona wants to know what her secret for eternal life is. So she kidnaps Lalaurie, takes her back to the school and ties her up and gags her. I’m not sure why this is important to Fiona. In the opening sequence of episode I, you can see her in the crowd at a witch’s execution in 1692 Salem. I’ no Pythagoras, but wouldn’t that make her something like…..321 years old this year???? She still looks pretty good to me.
Then there’s a scene from episode II that pits old rivals Marie Laveau and Fiona exchanging words on a battle field that is a black hair salon in the Ninth Ward. Fiona goes there, perhaps seeking a process, and perhaps, a chance encounter with her old nemesis, Marie Laveau, who just happens to look great in cornrows AND owns the shop.
I’m leaving out a lot and this review is rambling. My apologies.
in closing, I’m not in love with season III. Not yet, anyway. I’ll give it a few more episodes, but it better hurry and congeal into a solid form of entertainment. I don’t think I’m asking for much. I’m just a viewer who likes a cohesive script. I hate Swiss Cheese story lines, those with gaping holes and lacking logic that are never addressed. In season I, we never learned why Murder House had become Murder House and why dying on property guaranteed your ghostly return. In season II, we never knew the reason why the Nazi doctor created the zombie creatures that lived in the woods behind the asylum or the relevance of the aliens being in the story line or why they abducted hot chicks only to return them before the season ender. This year, I’d like to see less of Fiona’s version of Krav Maga. She can body slam people by teleporting them against the wall and more intrigue. And more magic that makes sense. Thank God for special affects. If we are to witness magic in Coven, I for one, am most grateful that special effects have improved since the days of flying ash trays courtesy of very visible fishing lines in the days of ”Bewitched”.
We shall see what the coming weeks will bring and I will continue to bring to you my take on the latest episodes of the newest season of American Horror Story. But if the producers and writers really want to make me happy, insert a character like Aunt Clara from Bewitched. An older, kind hearted, but eccentric witch who’s magic has run a foul, a victim of her years. Well kids, I wouldn’t be surprised if I get my wish. I have a feeling that perennial AHS actress, Francis Conroy (she was milk eyed Moira the Older in season I and the black winged Angel of Death is season II) will fill that bill. She had a brief part in the first episode when she (in a carrot orange wig wearing Dark Shadows chic) was in the scene when Zoe was taken by black-suited Albino thugs in RayBans and forced into admission at Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies in New Orleans, set at a lovely, very large, all-white Greek Revival home adjacent to the tracks of the St. Charles line, who’s front gate, some friends and I tee-tee’d near, one very drunken night while partying in the Garden District of New Orleans.
A streetcar named Pissoir.
Indeed.
