Agreed on most counts. What’s great about this show, though, is that it’s immune to shark-jumping. Nothing could be too ridiculous to fit in.
I loved the Anne Frank, even though it’s ridiculous to try to pull that off. Loved “The Name Game.” I loved the monsignor crucified. They turned it all up to 11.
The aliens and the breeding ‘experiments’ performed by Grueper just got dropped, which was real anticlimactic, so that’s a drag. Also Pepper’s end should have been shown to us and interesting.
Not as good as first season, but I’m coming back for the third. Even if it’s literally about Hitler’s little know fetish for water skiing in shark tanks.
aside: Has Jessica Lange ever been noticed for acting before, instead of just being beautiful? I remember her starring in “Sweet Dreams: The Patsy Cline Story,” but that’s it.
Quite a bit, actually. It looks like she’s a 6-time Oscar nominee and 2-time winner (Best Supporting Actress for Tootsie and Best Actress for Blue Sky).
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aside: Has Jessica Lange ever been noticed for acting before, instead of just being beautiful? I remember her starring in “Sweet Dreams: The Patsy Cline Story,” but that’s it.
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She won the 1994 Oscar for Blue Sky (a film she actually made with Tommie Lee Jones in 1991 but that sat on the shelf for three years), but I have said on SDMB somewhere and others have shared my sentiment that her performance was hammy in that and in many other films. (Her Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was also dreadful- curiously that was also with Tommie Lee Jones, so maybe he just brings out the worst in her.) It wasn’t until season 1 of AHS that I really thought “Damn, she’s good”. My opinion only, but to me it’s ironic that with serious dialogue she she comes across campy and with AHS’s campy dialogue she came across as a gifted actress.
And I love it. I love the high camp. I love the bizarre structure. I love the red herrings. I love that I wonder what AHS will be “about” this week. I don’t get the dislike for this season at all. I guess maybe the people who hate it wanted a straightforward horror story, but that’s not what this is. It’s about being crazy. It’s about all the different ways of being crazy. It’s about “This is what the world feels like when you’re a crazy person” and of course it’s a weird disjointed ride.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it ain’t high art. But IMO it’s perfect for what it is. It’s just so much fucking fun, you know?
Sharing my favorite comment about this episode, which I sadly can’t link directly to, by Dwight over at the Onion AV Club; “So I Married an Axe Murderer 2: So I Married Two Axe Murderers.”
Come on people! I need someone to explain what happened in the season finale! Was Lana ever incarcerated at Braircliff or did she make the whole thing up?! And if she wasn’t, is Bloodyface really the son of Dr. Threadson? Were some of the things in Braircliff real and Lana just inserted herself in the story to make her book more sensational?
I have a thousand more questions and I need answers!
I think she only existed in a novel being written by Roseanne Connor.
But seriously folks… I think she was there and most happened as portrayed.
Biggest shock is how quickly the “demonically possessed nuns and the fugitive Nazi doctors who love them” plot was just dropped.
Least surprising: that once she got the gun she wasted her baby boy.
Most surprising omission: I kept expecting them to reveal that her son was the bully on the playground, not the one she comforted.
And why let Kit off only to give him pancreatic cancer? Even with the space aliens (another “just along for the ride” plot that never really got resolved) it felt empty. Give him a 21st century cameo. (Maybe he can show up still looking 25 thanks to alien rejuvie.)
But all in all a better wrap up than I’d expected.
I didn’t want to see everything wrapped up nicely !
I wanted them to suffer more !
When the aliens took Kit, why coundn’t they just start dissecting him? Or tell him his kids are a key part of the “alien takeover” of our planet?
Lana should’ve been skinned by her son !
Jude, after being kissed by the Angel of Death, should’ve been sent straight to Hell, welcomed by Dr Warcrimes and Evil Santa ! She was more than sinful enough to deserve that !
They had options, people ! Why did they go the “nice” way???
Jude, after being kissed by the Angel of Death, should’ve been sent straight to Hell, welcomed by Dr Warcrimes and Evil Santa ! She was more than sinful enough to deserve that !
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It would have been kind of cool to hear Al Swearengen singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, perhaps with Hans Gruber singing Stille Nacht in harmony ala Bowie & Crosby.
I thought the final scene had a lot of tension as any scene where people hold guns to other people’s heads would have. But it didn’t make sense that Lana would allow that situation to develop. If you knew a murderer was in your house with you, would you calmly offer him a drink and sit down with him? She knew he was there when the rest of the TV crew was there. Why didn’t she get the heck out of there when she could?
Also, it seemed odd that they re-married Kit, but didn’t say anything about the whereabouts of the new wife when they showed him in his final (earthly) moments, unless I missed it.
It did seem like her walking out the front door was meant to suggest that. I don’t know if a version of that actual scene was in one of the first episodes. Somebody will probably come along and tell us.
As a Season 2 “hater” I can appreciate DianaG’s “love” as expressed a couple posts ago. I just thought it could be much better…especially if they had moved back and forth in time more. The aliens added nothing.
The finale was pretty darn good though.
Question… I didn’t get the Angel of Death and the Prison Guard Bitch being the same actress??
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Question… I didn’t get the Angel of Death and the Prison Guard Bitch being the same actress??
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As I understand it, the butch prisoner was just a butch prisoner, but Jude was seeing her as the Angel of Death because of her mind unraveling. There wasn’t really any resemblance, but Jude was hallucinating the Angel of Death everywhere.
I thought they did a decent aging job on Lana Banana, but Kit at 40 and ravaged by pancreatic cancer looked amazingly like he did at 25 except for the wheelchair.
It surprised me reading through this thread seeing how many people were saying this season was all over the place, and comparing it unfavorably to last season. This season has had a bunch of craziness in it, but so did last season. There were ghosts, a school shooting, rape and murder by Rubber Man, good and evil twins, an abortion doctor with jars of things, the Black Dahlia, a half-burned neighbor who killed the crazy stalker girlfriend, and probably other things I’m forgetting.
There has been a lot of terrible things inflicted on the women, but also a lot on the men. The only actual rape scene I remember was Devil Nun raping the monsignor. So there’s been a lot of uncomfortable moments watching, but I never felt like it was misogynistic like some horror movies can be.
I wasn’t fully paying attention, but there was a flashback where some cops (or someone) was telling Lana about Johnny, and how he was suspected of some murders, and showed his picture to her. I think she felt guilty. Like she was thinking maybe he wouldn’t have grown up to be a murderer if she kept him. Or the problem would also be solved if she went through with the abortion.
I don’t know what her plan was though. She didn’t think he would have a gun. I had been thinking that she’d somehow poison the drinks and kill him and herself.
My dream would be for the next season to follow MurderSanta on one of his sprees. But that would probably involve multiple locations, instead of revolving around one location like the first two seasons, so I don’t know how likely it is.
Lana was raped repeatedly by Thredson, resulting in their son. Chloe Sevigny’s character wasn’t raped, exactly, but she did have to trade sexual favors to get anything from the guards.
If you hang a fucking gun on the fucking mantle in act fucking one, it better fucking get fucking shot before the fucking final fucking curtain.
If there are alien lights and alien wind in episode one, you better fucking well see an actual alien, or that the whole thing was a hoax, or whatever, before the end. You can’t just see the fucking lights and wind every few episodes. It has to get BIGGER.
If you have a Nazi war criminal breeding quasi humans in the basement of your insane asylum, they better escape, or attack the patients, or the nuns, or something before the final episode. It’s not fair to just have them contained by the Nazi war criminal until the Nazi war criminal drops them with several quick shots a few episodes earlier and never have any repercussions.
But that is a season-wide problem. Last night’s wrap-up was pretty good.
If you have a Nazi war criminal breeding quasi humans in the basement of your insane asylum, they better escape, or attack the patients, or the nuns, or something before the final episode. It’s not fair to just have them contained by the Nazi war criminal until the Nazi war criminal drops them with several quick shots a few episodes earlier and never have any repercussions.
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If you have a demon who is not only capable of possessing humans but who we know from the first time we see it that it can leap from one human to another when his host dies or is exorcised, it’s unfair just to have it die when it’s next host dies and the angel says “give us a kiss”.
And it seems whimpy that it even responds to a death angel- it’s disembodied after all.
And I would have liked to see the angel kiss Dr. Arden. Is she any different in her kiss when the person is evil?