Now that the season is over and I’ve had a little bit of time to compile my thoughts on the matter, I want to whine about rehash the latest season of American Horror Story. (Freak Show, for those of you who don’t watch it.)
Since here there be spoilers, I’ll see you after the jump…
Okay, ready?
Let’s begin.
First of all, let me say that no, I STILL haven’t watched AHS – Coven. It just hit Netflix a few weeks back, and I’ve been busier than a…well, really farking busy. So busy I’m so brainfarted that I can’t even come up with a slightly decent/funny/snarky simile to say how busy I am. (Busier than Dandy at a Tupperware party. How’s that?)
What did I love about this season?
I loved the visual effects, the diverse cast, the way they wove Pepper’s origin story into AHS – Asylum, how they tied Elsa’s friend into Dr. Gruper/Arden (again, AHS – Asylum), loved how they took a page from the The Walking Dead screenwriters’ playbook (meaning beloved character=dead character in most shocking and disturbing way possible), and that they didn’t overly focus on supernatural elements this season (it was mostly disturbing from a “what man can do to fellow men” aspect).
However…
And if you are an avid fan of the show, you cannot in all good conscience deny there weren’t a few shortcomings this season.
It seemed like this was the season of the Bermuda Triangle of side-stories. Meep and the dead cop, Lizard Girl, Lizard Girl’s dad being tarred-and-feathered, Pepper, Dot and Bette MARRIED Dandy (so did they inherit his money?), did Dandy kill Stanley, too, when he murdered all the other freaks, did the police no longer care about Dot and Bette apparently killing their mother, Dora and her Daughter, Chester and his backstory, why were the cops so fast to turn on Jimmy when he was hailed as a hero by the whole town before, where are Jimmy and Bette and Dot living now and how did they just walk away from a massacre like that with NO ONE NOTICING? What happened to all the freak show’s gear, etc. etc. etc…
…Aaaaaand then those side-stories flounder and disappear and leave us scratching our heads.
In one episode, the cops are searching the camp for Jimmy, and Elsa makes a comment about sure, tear the camp apart AGAIN…and yet shortly thereafter the cops are just..gone? No one was taken in to be questioned? The cops killed Meep in custody, yet will just leave a camp there not once, but twice?
The whole thing about the property’s landlord in the beginning, too, where he was trying to run the freak show off because a church group was coming through to rent it…yet they’re still there? You’re telling me after the first round of murders committed by Crusty Twisty that someone in that town wouldn’t have been saying, “Um, helloo, you will vacate immediately, do not pass go, do not stop until you hit the Georgia state line.”
Not. Buying. It.
There were soooo many missed opportunities to not follow meaningless side-stories down the rabbit hole, and instead give us GOOD solid side-stories involving the existing cast, some of whom seemed to be there for little more than their physicality. Soooo many missed opportunities. (Can you hear that casting session? “We need a few token little people and a seal boy…”)
Really? They could have kept the shock factor intact and used some of those useless side-stories instead to build excellent character studies while still advancing the plot and let us feel and get to know the other characters and make us feel they weren’t just there for set dressing.
So yes, I loved the season. There were a few times both Hubby and I gasped and even did the whole covered mouth thing as shit. Went. Down. (Dandy’s payback? PERFECTION. And too damn quick for him. And hello, never saw Maggie getting her comeuppance like THAT.)
What did you think of the season? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.
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I agree with everything you mentioned. I wondered why the police never came looking for Jimmy after he was broken out of jail. I also wondered about Chester. Was he killed in the massacre by Dandy? Did no one ever find Dandy’s mother? Lots of questions that were left unanswered. The finale was making me cringe with Dandy shooting everyone. I was hoping that Eve could have taken him out. At least she got a few punches in.
Yes, there were a lot of loose ends that they could have tied up. I think, this year, they were having too many things going on and too many cast members. Kathy Bates, Michael Chicklis, and Angela Bassett were terribly underused.
I would have loved to see more of Twisty and Dandy working together. They were fascinating.
I’m still broken hearted over the “Peppisode”. From Pepper finding Salty, to the screaming, and the look on her face when she was sitting on the couch in her sister’s house while the sister and Elsa talked about her like she wasn’t there. And when she saw that picture of Elsa on Life Magazine and touched her cheek. It just destroyed me. I even dreamed of the whole thing for the next three nights. Brilliant acting by Naomi Grossman who played her.
Bette and Dot were frustrating. They went from wanting to leave the freakshow to calling everyone “family” very quickly. Sara Paulson is great, but I thought a lot of the dialogue with them was corny and dull.
I effing LOVE Dennis O’Hare. Russell Edgington was the single greatest bad guy on True Blood, and last season’s Coven as Spalding was hilarious. I honestly wanted his 13 inch penis to end up in a jar at the museum rather than having him turned into Meep 2.0. I guess it was fitting, but Heaven help me, I wanted to see that dick.
All in all, the season was great, but Asylum and Coven were better. If this would have been a full season show with 26 episodes instead of 13 it could have been really amazing. There could have been more detailed backstories for everyone, even the lesser characters. NPH was incredible as Chester, and Jamie Brewer as Marjorie (and wasn’t Nan awesome last season?). I was so sorry to see Dandy shoot everyone, and I had hoped that Eve could have stopped him. Dandy’s end was fitting, and I loved that Desiree, Jimmy, Bette, and Dot sat and ate popcorn as they watched that tank fill.
Ok. I’ve rambled long enough. There is so much more that I could talk about, but it’s already a novel here. It was good to read about how someone else thought about the show.