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shadowkatI suppose I should do separate reviews, but easier to just do them all at once. This is basically, the good (House), the okay (SPN), the bad (Terra Nova), and the just plain ugly (American Horror Story) - although to be fair are any horror stories supposed to be pretty?
1. House - I think we are on S6 or S7, can't remember which, not sure if it will be the finale season or not. Will state that the premier was surprisingly good. Reminded me of the episode in which House was in the psychiatric ward for several months. Also surprisingly realistic depiction of prisons. I used to visit the one in Leavenworth, KS, as a student intern for the Kansas Defender Project way back in the early 1990s (this was when I was about 26 years of age) and it looked a lot like this. As one of the inmates at the Leavenworth Penitentiary told me at the time - it's not the walls, it's the people who you are locked up with that make prison hell. House when it is at its best - feels like a classic Sherlock Holmes tale. I also like the fact that he put himself in prison, refused to hire a good lawyer, and basically punished himself. When he eventually makes parole - and a shout out to Michael Pare who played the guy on the parole board (Michael Pare was in the 1980s cult rock musicals - Eddie and the Cruisers and...Streets of Fire - both of which I have a special fondness for. I remember seeing Streets of Fire by myself at the age of 17 or thereabouts in an old beaten down movie theater in Overland Park, Kansas, way back in 1984. It was pouring that day. ) Anyhow, when he eventually makes parole, he fouls it up in order to save someone. Breaking all the rules in order to do so. His gift, much like Sherlock Holmes gift, dooms him. Being brilliantly intelligent makes him miserable. The only way to be happy is to not practice medicine, yet that is his reason for being. Unique catch-22 situation. Unlike other anti-heroes, House much like Holmes is a pro-active protagonist. He does try to change and does try to change his situation, he also appears to be self-aware, he knows what he is, and why he's doing it, he owns his choices. Which from my perspective makes him a far more interesting and far more sympathetic character than others in this trope. House is unfortunately an unevenly written tv series - so it is more than possible it will go off the rails again. But this episode was satisfying both intellectually and emotionally. Far better than expected.
2. Terra Nova - hmmm, this appears to be as poorly written as BBC's Outcasts and has more in common with Outcasts than with either Jurrassic Park or Earth 2, which is not a good sign. Quite dumb in places. The second episode is worse than the pilot. I'm beginning to understand why David Fury jumped ship - it's really not his cup of tea, too...Swiss Family Robinson, not enough Jurassic Park. The writing makes Star Gate look like Shakespeare in comparison. Very clunky and silly. But, I remain curious about a few things - so may stick with it a bit longer. I know it is basically dead in the water. The series is too expensive to survive the low ratings it has, but Fox invested so much into it - that it will run all 12 episodes, which I guess is better than what they did with Lone Star (although Lone Star was a better written television series.)
3. SPN or Supernatural - eh, not thrilling me. I already miss Misha Collins and I've only watched two episodes. Also really hope Bobby survived. We need other characters besides just Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean's relationship has been explored to the death by now. So has the whole being tortured by hell routine - or psychological torture bit. I'm still watching mainly for Jenkins - the guy who plays Dean, Bobby, and was for a while Misha Collins. Jared (Sam) doesn't do much for me., I don't dislike him, I'm just ambivalent. He always looks bewildered. Like why I'm here? I don't know, because they cast you and you are pretty? Enjoy it while it lasts dude. I liked him better when he was soulless, he was more interesting. The writers are however still having a blast screwing around with and satirizing the fundamentalist Christian mythos metaphors. The whole God and Angel's warring with each other metaphor appears to have run its course, but there are other things they can play with. Castile basically ate more souls than he could chew, and they literally burst out of him and into the Kansas County Water supply. Now Kansas is more toxic than normal. Literally overflowing with evil monsters who want to eat people. Okay, I lied. I watch this because I find the dark satirical commentary on Midwestern values and beliefs hilarious. And it's twisting of urban horror legends, as well as its faithful devotion to the horror noir genre. We also have a female head writer - Sera Gambel now, instead of a male...which I find interesting, considering the verse and genre.
4. American Horror Story - sorry to say but Supernatural and Secret Circle were scarier this week than American Horror Story. The reason? I wasn't given any reason to care about the people in American Horror Story. Note to Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck - it's a good idea to build up the audience's sympathy for the main characters before you start with all the scares and hijnks. Even Kubrick seemed to understand that concept, at least to a degree, with The Shining. American Horror Story borrows heavily from classic haunted house horror films. There's the Geoffrey Rush remake of House on Haunted Hill with all the bizarre experiments in the basement and jaws with baby heads, the gothic windows of Amityville Horror and the fire references, the twins from The Shining, and the beautiful woman seducing the husband who in reality is an old and possibly dead crone - also from The Shining. It's almost as if they took these films threw them in a meat grinder and added a few bits from Eyes Wide Shut.
I didn't find the episode all that shocking. I don't know what that says about me? Or that scary. Just sort of dull and a bit boring.
Nor did I really care about any of the characters. The best - are Vivian (Connie Britton), the wife who lost her child, and Connie (Jessica Lange) , the nosy neighbor, but that has more to do with the actresses than the script. Dylan McDermot isn't having enough fun with the role - and I already miss the guys from Nip/Tuck - Dylan Walsh would been better in this role...McDermot lacks warmth. (I'm admittedly not a fan of the actor - didn't like him in The Practice either.)
The plot isn't that complicated.
A dysfunctional family moves from the Midwest or some snowy place and buys a gothic mansion in sunny California. The gothic mansion or old Victorian mansion (why are they always Victorian?), has beautiful Tiffany stained glass windows, and has been redecorated. But it also is cheap, because the previous owners killed themselves in a ritual murder suicide. After the family is told this morose bit of news, they say, oh what the hell, we'll take it. (Which makes you sort of wonder about their sanity.) Actually, the daughter, who has explored the creepy basement with her mother's freaked out dog (one of those dirty white poodle combos), asks where it happened? The realtor - in the basement. Daughter? Fantastic, we'll take it. Alrighty then.
Before they buy it - we're told the following about them and the house. 1) Two twin boys try to vandalize the house in the 1970s, a mentally challenged girl attempts to warn them - you'll die in there, they ignore her and go in and sure enough, they discover the deserted and somewhat weird medical labortory downstairs - which appears to be a scene stolen from House on Haunted Hill. After seeing and smashing the jar with a baby's head in it - they die horribly, attacked presumbly by the ghost of said Baby, hard to tell. 2) Present day - Vivian is having a gyno exam - after having lost her baby, where her creepy doctor is attempting to convince her to take the female version of viagra - herbal supplements to help with the sex drive and hormones after having gone through such a horrible loss. She keeps saying no. Goes home, and gets freaked out by a noise upstairs, so calls the cops and picks up a rather large knife - because no one is home. Or supposed to be home. Upstairs we hear moaning and hollering. She opens the door. Then walks out again looking as if someone hit her with a brick. A naked Dylan McDermott trots after her trying to apologize. (I'm thinking, uhm, buddy, she's carrying a really large kitchen knife, I'd think twice about going after her at this point.) He yells at her. And sure enough she slashes him with the knife. (Is it just me or do people do the stupidest things in horror shows?) We learn later that he was having sex with his 21 year old student. 3) Long Car Ride to new home...they've decided to go across country, change everything to heal their family, except of course the family dynamic which is the problem. (This is right out of the Shining and it didn't work there either). Why people think a change of location is going to heal internal issues - I've no clue. They need to watch more television shows and movies. We have a morose teen daughter, and a hubby and wife who are not getting along. The teen daughter is self-mutilating herself. The Dad is a psychiatrist who has decided to run his practice out of his home. (I feel sorry for his patients, although since he only appears to have one at the moment and it's a teenage Charlie Manson wannabee, not so much. Although why any psychiatrist in their right mind would want to treat a homicidial teenager out of his own home, which contains his wife and teen daughter, I've no idea. Makes you wonder a bit about Dad's sanity. Also how are they affording things if he just has one patient? That would however explain why they bought the house...and why he's using it for office space, he can't afford to have an office.).
So they buy the house. The nosy neighbor stops by, Jessica Lange doing her best Blanche Dubois impression. She's actually the best thing in this next to Connie Britton - who I have decided is a highly underrated actress. Britton's the true protagonist here. I could care less about her husband. Constance (I think that's Lange's name) brings her daughter, mentally challenged, Adelaide, who basically tells Viviane the same thing she told the twin boys - you are going to die here. Vivaine is understandably annoyed. Also Constance apparently is a bit of a kleptomaniac - she steals some silver and she has her eyes on Viviane's diamond earrings. Another visitor stops buy - this is an old irish maid, played by Francis Fisher, named Moira.
She's worked in the house forever. And pesters Viviane into hiring her. Vivian doesn't see any problems, so does so.
Which shocks her husband, Dylan McDermot, because Moira is a looker (he is seeing a younger and sexier version in a skimpy French maid's outfit with fish-net stockings, not old Francis Fisher). He's the only one who sees the young sexy version. (This reminds me a lot of the Shining.) Later, Francis Fisher's maid catches Jessica Lange attempting to take off with Vivian's earrings, and Lange says rather cryptically to her, "don't make me kill you again". Okay. Weird. Meanwhile, Dylan who apparently sleepwalks, runs into Moira pleasuring herself, and she looks hot to him, so he retreats quickly to another room where he spanks the monkey so to speak (wanks off). Later, she entices him to fondle her breasts, which his daughter catches him doing, but she sees old Frances Fisher.
This is mildly entertaining. But hardly scary. So...at night, Vivian hears a noise and decides to visit the attic. (Okay, I don't know about you - but if I heard a noise at night in the attic - I'd get someone to go with me to investigate or wait until morning. Not go buy myself. ) Anyhow - she goes up and screams when she sees a man in a rubber suit. Turns on the light and discovers it is just a rubber suit. Her hubby and teen daughter have joined her - do to the scream - and the hubby, Dylan, disposes of the kinky rubber suit. Later, while hubby is sleepwalking - he's wandered into the kitchen to put his hand on a hot stove, but the sexy maid named Moira tells him its not time yet and to stop - a man in a rubber suit shows up in his bedroom and seduces Vivian. Vivian thinks it is Dylan and visualizes Dylan, but in reality it is someone else - we just don't know who.
(I'm guessing this was supposed to be kinky or shocking or something? But I've watched Farscape. I'm sorry once you see muppet in a rubber domintrix outfit attempting to have sex with Ben Browder in a twisted dream sequence, you've seen it all.
Ryan Murphy needs to watch more cult tv. As do the critics.)
I'm guessing this should be creepy. But since I find Dylan McDermott creepy in this...not so much.
We aren't done. Teen daughter is being bullied at school. Her father's patient, a boy with a serious Charles Manson wannabe complex, takes a liking to the teen daughter. They bond over her self-mutilation and fearlessness. He wins her over by telling her that she should cut vertically instead of horizontally if she wants to kill herself, because they can't stitch that up. (The series has jumped from the Shining to Heaters, except Winona Ryder and Christian Slater were more charismatic and endearing). Young Charlie Manson convinces Teen Daughter to trick the school bully into coming to her house for drugs. Apparently school bully is a drug addict, who knew. Does explain a lot. They'll scare her to death. They take her down to the creepy basement and into the former torture chamber, where Charlie Manson Jr is sitting and he proceeds to say creepy things to the bully in the dark. But, it's not him who scares her - it's a weird ghost that pops out when they turn off the lights. The ghost tries to rip the Pretty School Bully's face off (it's a girl Bully), but teen daughter saves her and throws Charlie Manson Jr out asking him what that was about and why did he conjure up the scary ghost thing. Unfortunately or Fortunately depending on your pov this did not create a bond between bully and teen daughter. Or make us like any of the three characters any more than we did before.
Meanwhile, Dylan is being stalked by creepy guy with half his face burned off - played by Denis O'Hare (fresh off of True Blood). O'Hare gets around. At any rate...the creepy guy who watched Dylan wank off, confronts Dylan and tells him that he must leave the house immediately. "It was six months before I started hearing voices, and then obeyed the voices and burned my family and myself alive in the house." This of course doesn't scare Dylan, who tells creepy burned guy to leave him alone or he will have him committed to the nearest insane asylum which is a lot worse than prison.
Dylan comes home and finds that his wife, Viviane has peeled back all the wall paper to reveal a rather violent and creepy mural of demons torturing humans like something out of Dante's Inferno. She tells hubby that she doesn't know why they covered it up, she finds it rather comforting. Hubby says, well, often people created these types of murals to comfort themselves, to believe that evil did get punished and vanquished. They have sex. (This bit actually happens before the rubber man bit.)
The very end? Vivian tells hubby that she's pregnant again. And we wonder whose kid is it? Rubber man's or Dylan's.
Probably rubber man's. Actually I'm willing to beat it is rubber man's, knowing Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck.
So little mystery there.
Also, at this point, I'm thinking these crazy people deserve the house and whatever comes with it. They are made for each other. Which means, not really that scary, or funny, just mildly amusing in that it is weird things happening to dumb people that you can't really be bothered to care that much about. I think Vivian has potential - Britton does a good job of making the character sympathetic and likable. McDermott on the other hand is sleep-walking through his role - he's out of his depth.His emotions when they are there - feel telegraphed. I think he was miscast. I'm already missing Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights, although he'd be all wrong for this too. No, this story begs for Dylan Walsh from Nip/Tuck.
A lot happens in this episode. It's a bit on the busy side. We aren't really given much chance to build up sympathy for or care about the characters. We're told who they are, not really shown. And they are mostly reactive - reacting to things that happen which is often the case with haunted house stories. But the good ones - the characters are more pro-active. Also this criticism isn't isolated to American Horror Story, it's true of all of Ryan Murphy's work. Murphy often takes the story too far, without first building on character. It becomes more about what wild plot device he can cook up or shocking thing he can show than his characters. I noticed this happening on Nip/Tuck in the later seasons, where the cases and storylines got more and more absurd, to the point that the characters became jokes or caracitures of themselves, cartoonish. This has happened on Glee as well. Until the audience stops caring about them.
In American Horror Story - I can't really care enough to be frightened, shocked, or dismayed. I was mostly bored. A lot happens but it was a bit like watching a rollercoaster in an Imax theater. Good horror - makes you care so much about the central characters, and so worried about their survival, that you clutch your seat. Aliens is an example. If you don't care, what's the point.
I doubt I'll stay with it. I've seen all the writer's tricks, the characters don't interest me, and the story feels stale. Shame, since there is potential there.
1. House - I think we are on S6 or S7, can't remember which, not sure if it will be the finale season or not. Will state that the premier was surprisingly good. Reminded me of the episode in which House was in the psychiatric ward for several months. Also surprisingly realistic depiction of prisons. I used to visit the one in Leavenworth, KS, as a student intern for the Kansas Defender Project way back in the early 1990s (this was when I was about 26 years of age) and it looked a lot like this. As one of the inmates at the Leavenworth Penitentiary told me at the time - it's not the walls, it's the people who you are locked up with that make prison hell. House when it is at its best - feels like a classic Sherlock Holmes tale. I also like the fact that he put himself in prison, refused to hire a good lawyer, and basically punished himself. When he eventually makes parole - and a shout out to Michael Pare who played the guy on the parole board (Michael Pare was in the 1980s cult rock musicals - Eddie and the Cruisers and...Streets of Fire - both of which I have a special fondness for. I remember seeing Streets of Fire by myself at the age of 17 or thereabouts in an old beaten down movie theater in Overland Park, Kansas, way back in 1984. It was pouring that day. ) Anyhow, when he eventually makes parole, he fouls it up in order to save someone. Breaking all the rules in order to do so. His gift, much like Sherlock Holmes gift, dooms him. Being brilliantly intelligent makes him miserable. The only way to be happy is to not practice medicine, yet that is his reason for being. Unique catch-22 situation. Unlike other anti-heroes, House much like Holmes is a pro-active protagonist. He does try to change and does try to change his situation, he also appears to be self-aware, he knows what he is, and why he's doing it, he owns his choices. Which from my perspective makes him a far more interesting and far more sympathetic character than others in this trope. House is unfortunately an unevenly written tv series - so it is more than possible it will go off the rails again. But this episode was satisfying both intellectually and emotionally. Far better than expected.
2. Terra Nova - hmmm, this appears to be as poorly written as BBC's Outcasts and has more in common with Outcasts than with either Jurrassic Park or Earth 2, which is not a good sign. Quite dumb in places. The second episode is worse than the pilot. I'm beginning to understand why David Fury jumped ship - it's really not his cup of tea, too...Swiss Family Robinson, not enough Jurassic Park. The writing makes Star Gate look like Shakespeare in comparison. Very clunky and silly. But, I remain curious about a few things - so may stick with it a bit longer. I know it is basically dead in the water. The series is too expensive to survive the low ratings it has, but Fox invested so much into it - that it will run all 12 episodes, which I guess is better than what they did with Lone Star (although Lone Star was a better written television series.)
3. SPN or Supernatural - eh, not thrilling me. I already miss Misha Collins and I've only watched two episodes. Also really hope Bobby survived. We need other characters besides just Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean's relationship has been explored to the death by now. So has the whole being tortured by hell routine - or psychological torture bit. I'm still watching mainly for Jenkins - the guy who plays Dean, Bobby, and was for a while Misha Collins. Jared (Sam) doesn't do much for me., I don't dislike him, I'm just ambivalent. He always looks bewildered. Like why I'm here? I don't know, because they cast you and you are pretty? Enjoy it while it lasts dude. I liked him better when he was soulless, he was more interesting. The writers are however still having a blast screwing around with and satirizing the fundamentalist Christian mythos metaphors. The whole God and Angel's warring with each other metaphor appears to have run its course, but there are other things they can play with. Castile basically ate more souls than he could chew, and they literally burst out of him and into the Kansas County Water supply. Now Kansas is more toxic than normal. Literally overflowing with evil monsters who want to eat people. Okay, I lied. I watch this because I find the dark satirical commentary on Midwestern values and beliefs hilarious. And it's twisting of urban horror legends, as well as its faithful devotion to the horror noir genre. We also have a female head writer - Sera Gambel now, instead of a male...which I find interesting, considering the verse and genre.
4. American Horror Story - sorry to say but Supernatural and Secret Circle were scarier this week than American Horror Story. The reason? I wasn't given any reason to care about the people in American Horror Story. Note to Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck - it's a good idea to build up the audience's sympathy for the main characters before you start with all the scares and hijnks. Even Kubrick seemed to understand that concept, at least to a degree, with The Shining. American Horror Story borrows heavily from classic haunted house horror films. There's the Geoffrey Rush remake of House on Haunted Hill with all the bizarre experiments in the basement and jaws with baby heads, the gothic windows of Amityville Horror and the fire references, the twins from The Shining, and the beautiful woman seducing the husband who in reality is an old and possibly dead crone - also from The Shining. It's almost as if they took these films threw them in a meat grinder and added a few bits from Eyes Wide Shut.
I didn't find the episode all that shocking. I don't know what that says about me? Or that scary. Just sort of dull and a bit boring.
Nor did I really care about any of the characters. The best - are Vivian (Connie Britton), the wife who lost her child, and Connie (Jessica Lange) , the nosy neighbor, but that has more to do with the actresses than the script. Dylan McDermot isn't having enough fun with the role - and I already miss the guys from Nip/Tuck - Dylan Walsh would been better in this role...McDermot lacks warmth. (I'm admittedly not a fan of the actor - didn't like him in The Practice either.)
The plot isn't that complicated.
A dysfunctional family moves from the Midwest or some snowy place and buys a gothic mansion in sunny California. The gothic mansion or old Victorian mansion (why are they always Victorian?), has beautiful Tiffany stained glass windows, and has been redecorated. But it also is cheap, because the previous owners killed themselves in a ritual murder suicide. After the family is told this morose bit of news, they say, oh what the hell, we'll take it. (Which makes you sort of wonder about their sanity.) Actually, the daughter, who has explored the creepy basement with her mother's freaked out dog (one of those dirty white poodle combos), asks where it happened? The realtor - in the basement. Daughter? Fantastic, we'll take it. Alrighty then.
Before they buy it - we're told the following about them and the house. 1) Two twin boys try to vandalize the house in the 1970s, a mentally challenged girl attempts to warn them - you'll die in there, they ignore her and go in and sure enough, they discover the deserted and somewhat weird medical labortory downstairs - which appears to be a scene stolen from House on Haunted Hill. After seeing and smashing the jar with a baby's head in it - they die horribly, attacked presumbly by the ghost of said Baby, hard to tell. 2) Present day - Vivian is having a gyno exam - after having lost her baby, where her creepy doctor is attempting to convince her to take the female version of viagra - herbal supplements to help with the sex drive and hormones after having gone through such a horrible loss. She keeps saying no. Goes home, and gets freaked out by a noise upstairs, so calls the cops and picks up a rather large knife - because no one is home. Or supposed to be home. Upstairs we hear moaning and hollering. She opens the door. Then walks out again looking as if someone hit her with a brick. A naked Dylan McDermott trots after her trying to apologize. (I'm thinking, uhm, buddy, she's carrying a really large kitchen knife, I'd think twice about going after her at this point.) He yells at her. And sure enough she slashes him with the knife. (Is it just me or do people do the stupidest things in horror shows?) We learn later that he was having sex with his 21 year old student. 3) Long Car Ride to new home...they've decided to go across country, change everything to heal their family, except of course the family dynamic which is the problem. (This is right out of the Shining and it didn't work there either). Why people think a change of location is going to heal internal issues - I've no clue. They need to watch more television shows and movies. We have a morose teen daughter, and a hubby and wife who are not getting along. The teen daughter is self-mutilating herself. The Dad is a psychiatrist who has decided to run his practice out of his home. (I feel sorry for his patients, although since he only appears to have one at the moment and it's a teenage Charlie Manson wannabee, not so much. Although why any psychiatrist in their right mind would want to treat a homicidial teenager out of his own home, which contains his wife and teen daughter, I've no idea. Makes you wonder a bit about Dad's sanity. Also how are they affording things if he just has one patient? That would however explain why they bought the house...and why he's using it for office space, he can't afford to have an office.).
So they buy the house. The nosy neighbor stops by, Jessica Lange doing her best Blanche Dubois impression. She's actually the best thing in this next to Connie Britton - who I have decided is a highly underrated actress. Britton's the true protagonist here. I could care less about her husband. Constance (I think that's Lange's name) brings her daughter, mentally challenged, Adelaide, who basically tells Viviane the same thing she told the twin boys - you are going to die here. Vivaine is understandably annoyed. Also Constance apparently is a bit of a kleptomaniac - she steals some silver and she has her eyes on Viviane's diamond earrings. Another visitor stops buy - this is an old irish maid, played by Francis Fisher, named Moira.
She's worked in the house forever. And pesters Viviane into hiring her. Vivian doesn't see any problems, so does so.
Which shocks her husband, Dylan McDermot, because Moira is a looker (he is seeing a younger and sexier version in a skimpy French maid's outfit with fish-net stockings, not old Francis Fisher). He's the only one who sees the young sexy version. (This reminds me a lot of the Shining.) Later, Francis Fisher's maid catches Jessica Lange attempting to take off with Vivian's earrings, and Lange says rather cryptically to her, "don't make me kill you again". Okay. Weird. Meanwhile, Dylan who apparently sleepwalks, runs into Moira pleasuring herself, and she looks hot to him, so he retreats quickly to another room where he spanks the monkey so to speak (wanks off). Later, she entices him to fondle her breasts, which his daughter catches him doing, but she sees old Frances Fisher.
This is mildly entertaining. But hardly scary. So...at night, Vivian hears a noise and decides to visit the attic. (Okay, I don't know about you - but if I heard a noise at night in the attic - I'd get someone to go with me to investigate or wait until morning. Not go buy myself. ) Anyhow - she goes up and screams when she sees a man in a rubber suit. Turns on the light and discovers it is just a rubber suit. Her hubby and teen daughter have joined her - do to the scream - and the hubby, Dylan, disposes of the kinky rubber suit. Later, while hubby is sleepwalking - he's wandered into the kitchen to put his hand on a hot stove, but the sexy maid named Moira tells him its not time yet and to stop - a man in a rubber suit shows up in his bedroom and seduces Vivian. Vivian thinks it is Dylan and visualizes Dylan, but in reality it is someone else - we just don't know who.
(I'm guessing this was supposed to be kinky or shocking or something? But I've watched Farscape. I'm sorry once you see muppet in a rubber domintrix outfit attempting to have sex with Ben Browder in a twisted dream sequence, you've seen it all.
Ryan Murphy needs to watch more cult tv. As do the critics.)
I'm guessing this should be creepy. But since I find Dylan McDermott creepy in this...not so much.
We aren't done. Teen daughter is being bullied at school. Her father's patient, a boy with a serious Charles Manson wannabe complex, takes a liking to the teen daughter. They bond over her self-mutilation and fearlessness. He wins her over by telling her that she should cut vertically instead of horizontally if she wants to kill herself, because they can't stitch that up. (The series has jumped from the Shining to Heaters, except Winona Ryder and Christian Slater were more charismatic and endearing). Young Charlie Manson convinces Teen Daughter to trick the school bully into coming to her house for drugs. Apparently school bully is a drug addict, who knew. Does explain a lot. They'll scare her to death. They take her down to the creepy basement and into the former torture chamber, where Charlie Manson Jr is sitting and he proceeds to say creepy things to the bully in the dark. But, it's not him who scares her - it's a weird ghost that pops out when they turn off the lights. The ghost tries to rip the Pretty School Bully's face off (it's a girl Bully), but teen daughter saves her and throws Charlie Manson Jr out asking him what that was about and why did he conjure up the scary ghost thing. Unfortunately or Fortunately depending on your pov this did not create a bond between bully and teen daughter. Or make us like any of the three characters any more than we did before.
Meanwhile, Dylan is being stalked by creepy guy with half his face burned off - played by Denis O'Hare (fresh off of True Blood). O'Hare gets around. At any rate...the creepy guy who watched Dylan wank off, confronts Dylan and tells him that he must leave the house immediately. "It was six months before I started hearing voices, and then obeyed the voices and burned my family and myself alive in the house." This of course doesn't scare Dylan, who tells creepy burned guy to leave him alone or he will have him committed to the nearest insane asylum which is a lot worse than prison.
Dylan comes home and finds that his wife, Viviane has peeled back all the wall paper to reveal a rather violent and creepy mural of demons torturing humans like something out of Dante's Inferno. She tells hubby that she doesn't know why they covered it up, she finds it rather comforting. Hubby says, well, often people created these types of murals to comfort themselves, to believe that evil did get punished and vanquished. They have sex. (This bit actually happens before the rubber man bit.)
The very end? Vivian tells hubby that she's pregnant again. And we wonder whose kid is it? Rubber man's or Dylan's.
Probably rubber man's. Actually I'm willing to beat it is rubber man's, knowing Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck.
So little mystery there.
Also, at this point, I'm thinking these crazy people deserve the house and whatever comes with it. They are made for each other. Which means, not really that scary, or funny, just mildly amusing in that it is weird things happening to dumb people that you can't really be bothered to care that much about. I think Vivian has potential - Britton does a good job of making the character sympathetic and likable. McDermott on the other hand is sleep-walking through his role - he's out of his depth.His emotions when they are there - feel telegraphed. I think he was miscast. I'm already missing Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights, although he'd be all wrong for this too. No, this story begs for Dylan Walsh from Nip/Tuck.
A lot happens in this episode. It's a bit on the busy side. We aren't really given much chance to build up sympathy for or care about the characters. We're told who they are, not really shown. And they are mostly reactive - reacting to things that happen which is often the case with haunted house stories. But the good ones - the characters are more pro-active. Also this criticism isn't isolated to American Horror Story, it's true of all of Ryan Murphy's work. Murphy often takes the story too far, without first building on character. It becomes more about what wild plot device he can cook up or shocking thing he can show than his characters. I noticed this happening on Nip/Tuck in the later seasons, where the cases and storylines got more and more absurd, to the point that the characters became jokes or caracitures of themselves, cartoonish. This has happened on Glee as well. Until the audience stops caring about them.
In American Horror Story - I can't really care enough to be frightened, shocked, or dismayed. I was mostly bored. A lot happens but it was a bit like watching a rollercoaster in an Imax theater. Good horror - makes you care so much about the central characters, and so worried about their survival, that you clutch your seat. Aliens is an example. If you don't care, what's the point.
I doubt I'll stay with it. I've seen all the writer's tricks, the characters don't interest me, and the story feels stale. Shame, since there is potential there.