AMERICAN HORROR STORY

I really think this is one of the best-worst shows to happen to TV in such a long time. It has too much everything–though some might argue there is not enough Connie Britton cleavage, it is possibly the only thing not in gluttonous overdrive. It is truly the show of our times, a really tyranny of choice/buffet of over-the-top cliches–there is so much muchness; if you don’t like one ghost, there are like 18 more to be introduced (per episode) and maybe you will like one of them.

Where to start? My co-blogstress, Regarding, covered the pilot–which is, still, probably the highlight–Connie Britton freaks a demon in a gimp suit and a 100-yr-old ghost baby with scissor teeth mauls a high school bitch AND Dylan McDermott, who could not act his way out of a rain-dampened cardboard box, jerks off out his window while crying. It is hard to imagine anything topping that but, BUT! they are certainly trying. In flashback after flashback–1968, 1971, 1983, 1920, 2 years ago–we see the unlucky inhabitants of the house get killed, burned up, mauled by the gimp suited demon, eaten by the ghost baby, shot, faced with a shovel and buried under a gazebo, etc. etc. and it slowly discloses that they are all still in the house, stalking the owners, half alive in 1920’s nightclothes eating major faces, working full time in the kitchen despite being an apparition, so that the backstory is current story, making the place haunted as fuck and also, still they have not even busted out the ghosts of five other decades–OR the 20 or so fetuses aborted in the basement by the drug-addled doctor (Alby from Big Love, looking grey and greasy as he sews pig, bird and baby parts together) that built the place. We may get CGI’s fetal ghosts as a cliff hanger yet! It is cable!

At this pace they have another like, 2-3 seasons here before they even run out of ghost residents, even if they keep introducing them at the current rate of oh, eight a show. (Also, Also, this week, for the Halloween cliffhanger we get a big bitchy gay ghost treat in the form of Zachary Quinto, who you may remember as the only reason to watch Heroes past season 1 (cannot blv I stuck around for four whole seasons, but he and his massive brow are so creepy) and/or his role as nu Spock. Best ghost yet, but maybe the least scary. Also, while the creators of the show say the dude in the gimp suit is going to be the real monster of the show, the like amalgam of every kids nightmare badness*, the century old razor fanged baby in it’s filthy nightgown is way more terrifying.)

Despite the veritable Niagra Falls of the dead/undead in this house, there are some real powerhouse female leads here–Jessica Lange is bona fide scary–like Liz Taylor in Virginia Woolfe style alcoholic cruel bon mots former beauty queen mom– which is scarier than any ghost because she’s always squeezing someone’s face and saying “look here missy” while her stiff bouffy curls loosen in her fit of rage, the woman who plays her daughter with Downs (who, this week went from being BFFs with the baby ghoul to possibly a slut and also possibly dead), Connie Britton of course, the just-stupid enough teen daughter who is totally going to lose it to her boyf. the psychotic/rapey/Fauxbain teen mental patient (he may be a ghost, since he is in their house non-stop, though this past week he did have a therapy session at a playground pumpkin patch so maybe not), and last but not least Frances Conroy as the hot-or-not maid–undead glass-eyed nympho trapped cleaning someones house for all eternity is really a once in a lifetime role, non? All the serious acting of these womenz makes up for all the yelling and crying and pilates’d ass shots we get of Dylan McD; just jogging and weeping and jerking off and occasionally going into a trance and running nude to a flame thru every episode. Seriously, save the sidepeen, sleepwalking and the Ibiza-level spray tan for someone else. zzzz.

(*so far he’s just impregnated someone and broken someone’s neck, bfd.)