American Horror Story

[reboot]

So a new go to for me, but so many cool race/class/gender issues come up. Anyone else watch?

[eselle28]

This season? I've watched previous ones, but have this one on DVR and waiting to watch. Are you enjoying it so far? The women on the show (most of the actresses do different roles from year to year) are amazing.

[reboot]

I binge watched the first seasons and am one by one watching this one.

Jessica Lange and Angela Bassett are so good! All the actors/actresses are but those two are standouts.

[fakely mctest]

A flash fiction writer I follow just had what I think is a really interesting analysis published on the Murder House season in The Female Gaze.

I tend to agree with her assessment of the series as a whole: "a gaudy, gory, hugely flawed mishmash of an anthology series."  I love it because it's so blowsy and melodramatic.

I think AHS does better when it confines itself to a pretty small storytelling space. So Murder House obviously takes place in a single house, then Asylum is in a much larger building pulling in some stuff from the outside world, and then Coven is New Orleans (mostly French Quarter). So this season is back to being at least a little smaller scale and that may be why I find it working better for me, at least from a storytelling perspective. It's always going to be sort of gaudy and overwrought and neo-Gothic, but imposing physical limits on itself helps to keep things in check.

My quibbles with this season are the fact that I'm not at all scared of clowns (which is a me thing, I get it) and that I don't care for the characters they're emphasizing. Sort of bored with Evan Peters' iterations of the earnest hero from season to season. I know a lot of people hated Coven and I agree it was a mess from a story perspective but my god it was so pretty to look at. I want that set designer to do my place.

OH AND for anyone who's an AHS fan, Penny Dreadful is worth a gander. It's missing that undercurrent of humor that comes to the surface in AHS sometimes, but I found it to be a solid watch. Plus Eva Green is just delightful.

[reboot]

Yeah, this season and coved did not catch me on the same spooky level as the first two, but I am a total sucker for over the top Gothic horror.

Coven was a bit messy and I think the story would have worked better in an isolated plantation house. I did like all the youth and age issues they tied in.

[fakely mctest]

Yeah, this season and coved did not catch me on the same spooky level as the first two, but I am a total sucker for over the top Gothic horror.

Coven was a bit messy and I think the story would have worked better in an isolated plantation house. I did like all the youth and age issues they tied in.

Totally agree with the bolded bit although I hated all the alien stuff from the second season. I wish they'd bring back James Cromwell for something as I love him so much OMG (although I did have to watch Babe about a billion times as a palate cleanser after his turn as the Nazi doctor).

I think Coven would have benefitted from a smaller setting as well! I think what they were going for was to have the city of New Orleans serve as a character but it didn't really play out that way. And the Xavier's Home for Gifted Students ending felt really tacked on. I'm a bit torn though because Frances Conroy as Myrtle Snow may be my favorite character from all of the seasons so far. Plus the part where Queenie makes Madam Lalaurie watch Roots was priceless.

[reboot]

The Queenie/Madam Lalaurie relationship was great and I loved that scene.

Actually, I really liked the whole Queenie story because she was so not what popular culture considers what a witch would look like. Her crack about Sabrina made me laugh.

Actually for the whole series I like how they bring in women not commonly seen in media like Jamie Brewer and give them multidimensional characters.

[fakely mctest]

The Queenie/Madam Lalaurie relationship was great and I loved that scene.

Actually, I really liked the whole Queenie story because she was so not what popular culture considers what a witch would look like. Her crack about Sabrina made me laugh.

Actually for the whole series I like how they bring in women not commonly seen in media like Jamie Brewer and give them multidimensional characters.

I think that's one of the reasons I love the series: even when it's not cohesively strong there are ALWAYS individual elements that are really interesting and worthwhile either in the sense that I'm like: man, I could write a pop culture crit essay on this angle OR because I just look forward to whatever terribad stuff a specific character will get up to from week to week. I loved Zachary Quinto's turn as the Ed Gein serial killer, for example. For me the show hits this media sweet spot where I would much rather see an author/creator/whatever try for something ambitious and not quite make it rather than playing it safe.

I also like thinking about how the title hooks into the various horrors that crop up and how their particular iteration touches on specific American cultural fears.

Selfishly, I kind of wish Connie Britton's schedule would free up some because I'd love to see her back.

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