Thoughts and Questions about "American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare"
Friday, October 14, 2016 at 2:00PM by Eric Blume
Despite five years of shifting locals and time frames and characters, American Horror Story remained essentially the same beast. Season 6 is shaking the formula up but I couldn't be more bewildered. Here are three general questions. Perhaps we could work out the answers together?
01. What the hell is happening?
We are meant to be watching a “true crime TV show” but what show like that looks like this? When re-enactments are made in a show of this nature, they’re never dramatized at length like the extended scenes in My Roanoke Nightmare. Even if we grant them structural leeway...
02. Why are the scenes so repetitive and dull?
For the first three episodes, our three main actors (Cuba Gooding Jr., Sarah Paulson, and Angela Bassett) are forced to play the same basic scene on loop: stumble into situation, find something creepy/scary. That's it. Paulson gives good scream but that's a precious waste of her enormous gifts. What's more the scares have felt desperate. And the running interview/commentary merely repeats what we've been shown.
03 What has become of these formerly great actresses?
Is Kathy Bates trying an Irish accent? She’s now playing "scary” as opposed to just being scary (as in the early scenes of Coven). And why is Angela Bassett the same kind of angry in every scene, without any shading. She was great fun as the voodoo priestess in Coven, where she went toe-to-toe with Jessica Lange, but since then its been drastically diminishing returns within this series. It's not much better for the talent working the interview portions. Lily Rabe, who was so wildly inventive as the kinky nun in Asylum, is saddled with painful exposition.
It’s neat that they’ve scaled down this season (though the generally spectacular production design is missed), and it's always admirable when a long in the tooth show tries to completely reinvent itself, but this is the result? There's supposedly a huge twist coming in Episode 6 that will spin everything on its head… but isn't five hours to get there a rather torturous wait?
P.S. These questions were written before this week's episode "Nightmare's End". If you've also been frustrated did it change the season for you?
AHS, Angela Bassett, Horror, Kathy Bates, Lily Rabe, Sarah Paulson, TV
Reader Comments (19)
These poor actors needs to get out of these contracts or risk their having their reputations dragged into the gutter with this series.
I'll go the boards for Asylum (which still is the best of the lot), but not overboard for anything since. (Seriously, it's been all downhill since 2012.)
I cannot tell you how much i hate this season ... It is stupid , trite, badly acted, horribly written and poorly directed ... other than that, it is medioccre LOL..
No one comes out of this mess unscathed...
It's awful. We're masochists.
Knowing what I do about previous seasons of this show, I should have no faith at all. (The pattern is usually promising premise + interesting actors followed by outrageous and admirable choices followed by off the rails stupidity.) But so far I'm enjoying My Roanoke Nightmare more than any season since Asylum because it's actually holding my interest as a mystery (as in, what's really going on here?) and I suspect next week (when it becomes just Roanoke) is going change the game and start to explain some of the inconsistencies and inanities of Episodes 1 through 5.
But I'm probably wrong.
Paul Outlaw, the pattern you perfectly described is also what ruined Nip/Tuck...
I stopped watching AHS after Freak Show. As much as I enjoyed the cast and season set up, it was too frustrating to watch that season and the prior, Coven, go down the toilet by the finale...
rick gould, same is true for Glee...
On another note: holy shit! I saw Moonlight a couple of nights ago and just now realized that André Holland, who plays re-enactment Matt on AHS, is adult Kevin. I did not recognize him. And he's amazing.
Coven is the best AHS for simply being self-aware of its campness.
I've always liked AHS for the high camp more than the gore, and seeing as the former is completely gone from this season, I've found it disappointing. But (like seemingly everyone else) I'll stick with it to see if it goes anywhere, at least for a little while longer...
I have a theory that Murphy heard everyone's hollering about the crazy and meandering stories of past seasons and just went, "FINE! I'll just make it COMPLETELY BORING to spite them!"
I totally disagree with most of the opinions here. To my American Horror Story: Roanoke is one of the best seasons. The documentary style program is great, interesting and makes it distinguished from previous seasons. The cast is good especially Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett (her best performance since Coven), André Holland, Lily Rabe, Adina Porter, Cuba Gooding Jr., Frances Conroy.
Interestingly, André Holland, Lily Rabe, Adina Porter only look at the camera and talk but express so many emotions.
Very interested in what will happen in the next episode
The format was very off putting for me when I watched the pilot. If we know that the main characters survive intact (based on the interviews) then why invest if we know the outcome? I watched a few parts of episodes and I think Kathy Bates is the only saving grace of this season. She sounds the way I imagine a European immigrant would sound during this time. She still has a commanding presence, but outside of her, I don't consider anyone else awards worthy. Even Paulson, who as mentioned, came scream marvelously, but she isn't given anything else to do.
i've seen two episodes of Roanoke. It's enjoyable but nothing special. The series started going downhill after Asylum, Jessica Lange leaving was the nail in its coffin. What the hell was Hotel even about? How great Lady Gaga's ass is?
For me, Hotel was about finally giving Denis O'Hare a role worthier of his talent after Seasons 1, 3 and 4.
I'm quite enjoying it and not just because it reminds me of one of my secret shows Paranormal Witness. There's meant to be a big shift next episode and I suspect the re-enactment actors might be affected.
This season is a disaster - a huge embarrassment for everyone involved;
I feel really bad for Sarah Paulson. I love her so much, she's my girl, so I'm sad to say her acting is really bad this season. I love how Ryan Murphy just a year ago gave her such a gift of a role - in O.J. - and she returned the favor tenfold by delivering a mega-watt performance as Marcia Clark.
AND she won an Emmy, deservedly so
and to go from that career high - to be so good - directly to something as awful as this season and to be so bad, kinda blows my mind.
But ALL the the acting is bad - Cuba is bad, Kathy Bates is bad, Andre Holland is bad.
All the seasons are good. So many haters.... Yet you all admit to watch I g the show. Get outta here. Lol
All the seasons are good. So many haters.... Yet you all admit to watching the show. Get outta here. Lol
I'm not with this group and with the rest of the internet and love this season. Truly something different. And seriously, where is all this "terrible" acting cause I don't see it. It's cool for the snobs to hate AHS so this is what they'll do. I'm on board for the rest of the season
So much hate here for American Horror Story. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I still LOVE this show. Each season impresses me more and more and I think it's really great Ryan Murphy brought the anthology series back in a big way.
The connections he has created with everyone he hires for the show have been amazing to see grow throughout the years. Kudos to Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters and Lily Rabe for sticking around for all 6 seasons.
Regarding this season, I love how dark it's gotten. Hotel was pretty dark, but was also very colourful and bright. Roanoke has been pretty grim, but I like that they returned back to how Asylum felt. The true crime documentary was a good way to open the show, but I am happy they turned it around and decided to do a found footage show now and bring all the characters together.
The last episode in particular was crazy, all the carnage coming at an unexpectedly fast paced. We still have 3 episodes left and half the cast has already bitten the dust in extremely gory ways.
The actor who has stood out to me the most this season is Lily Rabe who I hope people don't forget come Emmy time. Her character is the one I have conjured the most sympathy for and Rabe is able to transition from sorrow to anger while expressing a ton of other emotions across her face so well. Runner up would be Kathy Bates, allowing us to hate The Butcher as much as we love her.
I can't wait to see what theme Murphy and Brad Falchuck have in store for us next year.