I have to take issue with this. I haven’t liked any AHS I’ve watched. At all. But de gustibus non est disputandum and so on. But it’s not “horror-done-right”. It’s not horror at all. It’s high concept soap-opera with the occasional horror element.
Really? You didn’t think Asylum was horror? I thought so, though it is more than just that. I get it that not everyone likes this show, but I have found it to be surprising and fresh compared to most of what else is on TV.
Asylum had a short horror movie intersected in the form of the fragments happening in the present. The rest was, as far as I could tell for the few episodes I could stomach, absolutely a soap opera. Not as camp as (what I saw of) Coven and (what I saw of) Freak Show, but still very campy.
This is a funny argument. I have described The Walking Dead as, “a soap opera with zombies,” since I think that is exactly what it is. Maybe I don’t see AHS that way because it is a whole nother story every season. I still think it is horror (it’s right there in the title!). I agree that it can get pretty campy. That’s part of the charm, like it is some kind of gymnastic display. Like, in Asylum, can we do a show involving a rapey mass murdering victim-skinner while winking at horror movie tropes in such a way that you want to laugh right during the very darkest moments? If I had never seen the show I would think that isn’t a good idea, but the way the show is put together gives me a lot to chew on, at a time when I find so much television basically vapid. Ymmv of course.
Finally got around to watching this!
Would it kill them to nudge the lights up just a little? I don’t know if it’s just my TV, but like last season I’m missing some of the “jump” moments because the screen is just too dark for me to see the fleeting glimpse of the scary thing.
Also, vehicles in North Carolina don’t have license plates on the front.
I sort of like the new format though…I’m interested to see where they’re taking this.
I don’t think it’s your tv, unless mine has the same problem. For instance, who /what did Kathy Bates meet in the woods when she had the metal cage on her head? I got the gist that she ate a heart(?) but who was the woman supposed to be? And for that matter, whose heart?Also, was she played by Gaga? I watched it twice and could barely make anything out. Who / what did Sara Paulson catch Cuba schtupping in the woods? Same character? What happened to the ex-husband? I get that he came to a bad end but when Angela finds him and screams, I could not make out what had happened to him. Maybe they didn’t show anything; maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s just kind of annoying not knowing if I’m missing anything important. By the way, apologies for not using the character’s names. I tuned in to this season for the first time last night and the names are escaping me at the moment.
The image was definitely dark, but this is what happened:
Kathy Bates (“The Butcher”) met some kind of evil spirit/witch/priestess-type figure played by Lady Gaga. We don’t know more about her character yet. Presumably she is what turned the Roanoke colony evil/gave them spiritual powers. We had earlier seen this figure briefly in a previous episode when The Butcher was roasting a man over a fire. Gaga’s character killed the wild boar that had been chasing The Butcher and removed it’s heart, handing it to her to be eaten. Sara Paulson sees Cuba fucking the Lady Gaga character from behind (he was somehow possessed and in a trance while doing so, obviously he didn’t know what was going on.) Paulson sees two figures masturbating while watching them have sex and thinks they are the hillbilly Polks, though we don’t see their faces. Lee’s ex-husband was tied up to some kind of large wooden cross/circle thing and burned to a crisp.
Well, I’m loving it. I still don’t know what’s up with the parallel casts (described as a “dramatic re-enactment” at the start of each episode) but I assume that will eventually come home to roost. Or maybe it’s just a red herring, which will also be amusing as hell!
Thanks, Eyebrows! Maybe it’s for the best that I *can’t *see better :eek: I’d really like to watch the first two episodes that I missed but it doesn’t look like they’re available. Anyone heard anything different?
You can watch previous episodes here.
Does everyone just want to have one thread for this series? I have been opening a new one for each episode, but it looks like people are just posting in this one…
I just want to say, these last couple episodes were the most horrifying of all.
I mean…
A snack that consists of apple slices and apple juice?
Come on, where’s the variety? Where’s the protein?
I am not sure how to sum it up so far. Our haunted couple has been unabashed with their condescending low opinion of the locals. I kind of felt sorry for the locals having to deal with these fancy pricks. But then there was that horrible scene with those inarticulate teenagers sucking off that sow’s teats… :eek:
We’ve seen the claw-footed tub with the closed shower curtain in AHS before. Something has to be jumping out of there. But- what is it going to be? It could be anything! Well, I guess I should have guessed squealing pig-headed man attacking with giant kitchen knife, chasing poor Sarah Paulson all over the house, until the professor from the video just pops in with an axe and whacks pig guy square in the back. Problem solved. But the damn thing gets back up, squealing loudly! So the professor yells, “Croatoan!”, and the thing just vanishes. Ghosts are obvious sometimes.
Then he takes our haunted couple on a guided tour of the history of the place. There is the more immediate history, but it goes all the way back to Colonial times and the Roanoke colony’s history. I think if you are going to take on the challenge of presenting a ghost story, it is a good idea to chain it to the heaviest parts of our nation’s dark history, and include maniacal characters who speak like formal 17th century pirates while they lock each other in iron masks or chop each other to bits with butcher’s knives. If these exact ghosts aren’t haunting our geography, it seems like there is something similar for all the violence and unnecessary suffering we have witnessed.
And then there is Gaga’s Sorceress. To me, she represents whatever dark thing it is that infected the white man from the New World to which they were as susceptible as the natives were to smallpox. Only they never knew they caught it… I will say it again, I think the writing for AHS is more thought-provoking than any other show I can think of.
I love it that Gaga is running around with deer horns tied to her forehead. That sexy toothy thing she does strikes me as French, but then it turns out the teeth are bad and she is, of course, English lol. Apparently she loves to fuck Cuba Gooding Jr., but she isn’t being nice about it, instead sowing a whole new level of doubt and distrust among our characters with it.
And as a viewer, we can feel the doubt and distrust. A diminutive spirit medium? A know-it-all ghost professor? The constant cutting to the yellow-journalistic true crime drama style interviews, which are overlaid with digital static to make those segments appear as if they were filmed on old celluloid for some reason. We doubt why they are doing this at all, we doubt the characters, and, um, ghosts, no matter how cleverly conceived… Speaking of which, does anyone think the medium and the professor were also ghosts, and just never let on? Maybe they get re-enactment ghost disemboweled and arrow-shot every year, and actually just want an audience. Ghosts need attention.
I like it. It is full of awful and heinous scenes and characters with horrible motivations and deeds, but it may actually have a question to ask or a point to make, a sort of because of and in spite of the horror format kind of observation.
I really like the idea of the wacky professor (why can I never remember character names with this show?) as a ghost. We’ve seen fully functional ghosts in this series before, so it’s established as “normal” in this universe. I’m thinking he had an investment account set up somewhere for the purposes of paying taxes, so those and other bills would have been taken care of automatically, but the account drained far faster than expected after the recession…
Loved last nights episode and it looks like we’re done with the current characters? Seems like the preview for next week shows a whole new storyline…
And…another Chaz Bono sighting!
That fits. But seeing him bemoaning missing parts of limbs made it seem less likely that he is a ghost. But it also seemed weird that he would survive his arrowing- he got pierced straight through the trunk like, 2 or 3 times, right? How could anyone survive that, even with Mama’s “magic”? And, did he seem like he’d aged to you? Not to me…
Maybe he is supposed to be some kind of zombie St. Sebastian, I dunno. I think the show is succeeding in tacking a creepy course through its story arc. What will happen when our haunted couple returns to the property with the camera crew? Maybe they’ll get kilt. You don’t know!
I hadn’t actually seen the latest episode when I posted that…:o I’m inclined to agree with you. I still wonder why some of the ghosts appear to be intact, and some are mutilated (the hunters, the pig man).
I’m also curious about what we’re going to see now that we’re apparently switching away from the documentary format. It’s been established that all the action we’ve seen so far is meant to have been reenactments; does this mean we’ll see a change in who’s portraying Butcher and Friends now that the reenactment formula is being dropped?
I wonder how they will handle it too. First, we got to see how our haunted couple perceived events. Next, we get to see how “reality TV” will perceive the property. If they use the same actors for Butcher and Friends, that means we can trust the claims of our haunted couple. If it turns out the dirty teenagers weren’t really sucking on a big ol’ sow’s teats, but had actually just walked in the door dirty from doing some heavy farm work and Mama had set out some pork chops and glasses of milk, which they dug into, and so they couldn’t speak clearly with mouths full of food when an already-crazed Sarah Paulson barged in on their dinner and saw things her way, well, maybe these people are only so reliable. We’ll see! 
Either way, I think the couple and the locals can relate on the level of their feelings about their children. The couple lost Flora and the locals lost their suckling teens. Their senses of bereavement really are the same, although the dynamic has shifted now that the couple has retrieved Flora while the locals have not yet retrieved their suckling teens.
It seems like the higher-ranking ghosts get to stay intact, while the victim-ghosts are a mess.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
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I have a million thoughts about last nights episode. First of all, I loved it. I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I loved the way they turned the whole thing around and explained how the first part of the season was a very successful reality show. My thoughts:
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- Kathy Bates’ Agnes going off the rails and the way Sidney fooled her with the restraining order. That’s gonna come back to bite Sidney for sure.
- Matt & Shelby separated and Shelby having a fling with the guy who played Matt (Cuba Gooding Jr)in the re-enactments!
- Evan Peters’ work in this series has been incredible. He was full-on “dude bro” and seeing his demise at the hands of the nurses to complete the MURDER spray paint was fascinating to watch.
- Finding out that we’re watching lost footage and that everyone dies except ONE character? AWESOME. I thought it was a brilliant way to put an end to the popular critique of “we know they survive because they’re being interviewed.”
- I think the whole point of this is to show how brutal reality TV producers can be: rigging the house with fake scares, keeping the cameras rolling and Sidney confessing that he wants to be the one who gets Lee to confess to Mason’s murder (did you notice burned ghost Mason stalking Lee in the hallway?!)
- Reality TV is the real horror here, and it’s amazing.
-One final note: when Sidney goes outside to have the production trailers moved away from the house, I swear I saw Flora (or the actor who portrayed her in the re-enactments) running past him in the background.
Can’t wait for next week - I’m loving this season. Never seen anything like it!!
The twist is interesting, and some of the jump scares were effective, and I absolutely loved Kathy Bates as the actress. I’m not sure what to think about the “3 Days Back in Hell” show, since we’ve already seen that the “creator” of the show intends on deceiving the TV audience. Like I’m doubtful of any death of any character, or any other creepy things that happen. I’m not sure what the behind the scenes footage is even being filmed for in the reality of the TV show, since he said that they would make everyone sign non-disclosures about what was real or not. So like earlier in the season a lot of the things the people are doing don’t make sense, but I like the actors enough to keep going along with it. Cheyenne Jackson is great as the sleazy show creator.
Yeah, there is definitely a social commentary angle now. It is as if they have been lifting veils off of all the mysteries of the Roanoke ghost property one by one, and when it looked like they had revealed everything- BAM! They lift the veil off of the whole show revealing that the whole thing has been taking place in this larger context. Suddenly everything we’ve been shown is potentially unknown again now- are there Really killer ghosts? The producers sure don’t think so, but, whoops, it looks like all but one of them are going to get kilt, and it is looking like it is the ghosts that are going to be doing the killing, even though the characters are now a crazy powder keg of seething conflicts and bottoms about to be falling out as they go barking mad and die violent, supernatural deaths in each others’ sight.
So. From here it is a kind of found footage reality show ghost murder snuff movie? I’m sure the writers have thought of things to do with the new format to keep this plot extra twisty. Still pretty awful that we know in advance that nearly everyone gets killed- it is just wrong to see the ending at the beginning like that! And it’s pretty bad- implacable killer Colonial ghosts that won’t quit slaughtering the whole cast before we really even get to know them. It is like The Masque of the Red Death, only instead of a poorly understood disease doing the killing it is vengeful spirits. And it isn’t clear that the characters really deserve it in the way they often seem to do within the bounds of horror-movie (or even Edgar Allen Poe) morality. Teens having sex? Those always get killed. Being a jerk and various other sins always seem to distinguish the survivors from the victims.
Is that what is supposed to be going on here? I mean, we have adulterers, a shameless reality-show producer, snooty successful actors and actresses- but do we really hate them and want them to die? Well, I like Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr., so maybe that is an unintended distraction, but I can’t say I really have it in for any of these characters. They don’t deserve to die, especially not like this. But maybe that is the point- the popularity of reality TV is evidence of hateful attitudes in the populace, and that there is an American horror story.