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?