Thursday, November 29, 2012
After a solid start to their sophomore season, FX’s horror
hit ‘American Horror Story’ derailed again Wednesday night.
I know, I shouldn’t be surprised – the same thing happened
the first season.
The show started with a lot of promise, is sucked viewers
in, then it completely went off the rails
and ended the first season in a fiery wreck that killed, well, just
about everyone.
The anthology series started their ‘Asylum’ leg off with an
appropriately dark and depressing season premiere that introduced us to some
genuinely eerie characters (Dr. Arden, Sister Jude) and a handful of characters
that were interesting enough to keep us tuning in (Lana, Kit, Dr. Thredson).
As a whole, it was better than the first season – and it
hung on to its quality for a lot longer.
In the end, though, it fell apart as easily as the first
season did.
What went wrong?
I blame show creator Ryan Murphy. He is notorious for this.
He did the same thing with ‘Glee’ and Nip/Tuck.’ Murphy is ultimately one of those
guys that invents something great by throwing a lot of weird stuff on the
screen – and then he inevitably ruins it because he doesn’t know when to stop.
He throws anything he can possibly think of at the wall and then, essentially
sees what sticks.
‘Asylum’ was doing fine with their monstrous Nazi doctor and
his “creations,” their slutty nun and her drinking problem, the newly possessed
nun and her suddenly foul mouth and the murder mystery at the center of the
show.
I felt the “alien abduction” angle was too absurd for the
show to survive, but I kept tuning in, thinking they had to be going somewhere
with it.
Let’s talk about Wednesday’s episode – there are obviously
going to be spoilers people, so turn away now if you haven’t seen it yet.
We open up with Dr. Thredson raping Lana in his little dungeon.
The weight of the scene was not lost on me. Actor Zachary Quinto is gay in real
life. He was playing a straight man (read: serial killer) raping the woman that
he now saw as his mother figure. Oh, and she’s a lesbian.
Lana ultimately fights back and escapes, only to be picked
up by a creepy guy on the road who blows his own brains out while driving in a car with Lana. He did this
within minutes of meeting Lana (literally minutes), thus landing her back at the
asylum.
And viewers are supposed to buy that?
Kit attacks his attorney (love you Don Stark) and races
back to the asylum – managing to sidestep Dr. Alden’s monsters – and stumbles
on Grace within a few seconds. She takes a bullet for him and dies, but not
before we see that one of Dr. Alden’s monsters has entered the facility.
The fact that no one had seen one of Dr. Alden’s monsters –
except for Shelley – is dumbfounding to me. They’re supposedly all over the
place.
My biggest problem, though, is Francis Conroy’s new “angel of
death.”
First off, the wing extension is ridiculous. Second, turning
asylum into a religious battleground for creatures of time past does not make
me more interested. Instead, I can’t figure out why Murphy ever thought this
was a good idea.
He had a ton of good ideas: Dr. Alden being a Nazi doctor,
Sister Jude being the town bike, Lana being locked up for lesbianism, Kit being
framed, that little murderous girl getting advice from Sister Mary Eunice, Anne
Frank getting a lobotomy, etc.
At first, the good outweighed the bad – and there were
problems from the beginning, even if they were sleight.
Now, though, the bad clearly outweighs the good.
I will watch the remainder of this season – mostly because
it won’t last too long – but FX would be smart to wrest control of this show
away from Murphy before he utterly destroys it.
What do you think? What is the real problem with ‘American
Horror Story’?
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