Freakshow, Anthology Escape Clauses, and Forgotten Endings
Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 11:46AM a belated goodbye
Here's how you know a show has lost you: when you forget that you didn't finish watching it. I was faithfully tuning into American Horror Story this past season, and just like every season, I lost interest without realizing I'd lost interest before the finale. It's rather like a tire slowly deflating rather than blowing flat with that horrible disorienting noise.
In the case of Freakshow my attentions were interrupted by Oscar nominations and then awards shows and then Sundance. When I got done with all of that it took me a full two weeks to remember that Freakshow was still sitting there on the DVR waiting. In many ways Freakshow was the best looking season of AHS with the most promising first chapters. But it suffers as Vulture correctly observed from a horrifically ill advised finale, particularly its entire final sequence on Elsa's post-Freakshow career. That was the worst kind of television writing, really: nonsensical, unearned, aggravatingly ignorant of what came before it and beholden to an agenda (Jessica Lange Worship) that the text can't support or in this case actively fought against for an entire season.
Even Dandy Mott (the brilliant Finn Wittrock), by far Season's 4 best and most successful character invention (Sarah Paulson's Bette & Dott could have been but the show lost interest in her... as it does... to cede the spotlight to Lange each year) was defeated at the end. And I don't mean literally though he was that, too. His final murder spree was less tense and cleverly mounted than rotely grim and nihilistic. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Will I tune in to Season 5 with an amnesiac's ignorance of this show's absurdly predictable patterns? Each season starts with an intriguing premise, populates it with fun actresses, and then soon derails narratively redeemed only by occasionally brilliant acting and batshit crazy unmissable moments. Ultimately it fails because ithas no discipline around the two things that TV arguably does best: long form character arcs and narrative nomentum.
I probably will tune in again. But why?
I never finished Murder House (quit 1/3rd through) or Asylum (quit 3/4th through) and neither time did I regret it. I did finish Coven, my favorite season. But it was not my favorite because it was "good." In fact that season got progressively worse as it went -- as nearly all seasons seem to. But I loved it because it was a) about witches and b) gave great Angela Bassett and Frances Conroy and Kathy Bates in (mostly) that order A-C-T-I-N-G in all caps on their every line in their every scene and all three were hilarious and c) the Stevie Nicks jokes were damn fun.
Perhaps the TV anthology, which this series revitalized, is the perfect form for modern television? Much has been written about TV's new golden age and while there is indisputably great work being done on television, there's also a LOT of audience generosity that's helping TV shows be perceived as great even when they aren't. TV is easy, convenient, and also easy to forgive when it fails. If people had the patience for movies that they do with television, imagine how much more subtle movies could be and which films would suddenly be big hits. When movies go off the rails the audience spreads bad word of mouth. When TV shows go off the rails, the audience says "maybe the next episode / next season will be better? I'll give it three or four more hours to see..."
With anthologies and cable series the limited length also promotes amnesia about how frustrating some shows routinely are. By the time American Horrror Story Season 5 arrives nearly everyone who bitched about Freakshow (including probably me) will be excited about being disappointed all over again. Anthologies may well be TV's version of the big studio's "Reboots". The creative teams always gets to hit the reset button and the audience always gets to tune in again, with naive hope that this time things will be different, ready to forgive and devote precious hours again.
AHS, Finn Wittrock, Horror, Jessica Lange, Ryan Murphy, TV
Reader Comments (25)
I agree at was the most promising & the least successful season. I will never forgive them for killed Frances Conroy so early on. She & her son were the best thing about this season. For me that is the moment it all went down. But I will be excited about season five. AHS is like the nightcap you know you shouldn't drink but can't resist.
Asylum is the only season where I didn't hate myself for sticking with it to the very end so that probably makes it my favorite. Still haven't seen Murder House though I really have no desire to.
Out of 4 seasons, only one can claim to be consistently good and that was Asylum. I'm surprised to hear you haven't seen the final episodes of that season because it contains the best acting Sarah Paulson has ever done (in the finale, especially). I abandoned Murder House but when I got back to it I felt it got better towards the end. The Coven I could not bring myself to finish - the acting was so uneven with Emma Roberts and Sidibe as the MIP (most invaluable players). I thought Freakshow was such a waste in many respects, most notably a waste of a good idea and potentially memorable characters (Finn's and Sarah's).
I will probably tune in for the next season and would be very glad if Lange were gone. She's two for two (great in Murder House and Asylum, awful in Coven and Freak Show) and it should be left that way..it's just going downhill for her and showing her weaknesses as an actress more and more.
Murder House was fun because we didn't know at the time that it was going to be an anthology series-it likely has a different impact in retrospect when you don't know that it will all be ending with that finale. Asylum was wonderful, if a bit bloated, while I couldn't get through Coven. This season didn't seem to realize that the Motts were the only thing going for it and got distracted by stories involving Michael Chiklis and Jessica Lange.
Mr. Goodbar, have to disagree about Jessica Lange in Coven. She was the best part of the whole fiasco and deserved her second Emmy for this series. She got to play an outrageous evil biatch with great relish and flair, all the while coloring within the lines with touching nuance and impressive emotional detail. She understood the tricky balance between camp and calm. But mostly, it was just wondrously entertaining. As problematic as this show is, it will only fall off the cliff once she leaves.
Murder House and Asylum had the most satisfying endings, I would say. The last two installments have went off the rails.
Ryan Murphy should study what Lee Daniels is doing at Empire -- creating crazy TV, but pulling it together to make sense. Giving each character a fair assessment.
A shorter season and Ryan Murphy moving to just a story consultant position would benefit the show. He gave away so many plot points this season in intrerviews.
On the plus side, it did give us the opportunity to enjoy Finn Wittrock in various states of undress. There's always a silver lining!
At its best, AHS is a show that can do literally anything and everything. It was figuring this out in Murder House (which could never quite get over some bad early narrative decisions despite getting better as it went on), testing the boundaries in Asylum (by far the best season because of the thrilling sense of not knowing what would come next), and blew far past those boundaries in Coven (the worst, most diffuse season). I have no idea WTF it was doing in Freakshow, but that's mostly because I stopped watching after the Halloween two-parter from sheer lack of interest. (I also stopped getting FX, but I could have found ways to watch the show if I was really interested, like I'm doing now with The Americans. I wasn't.) They somehow took the best setting they've chosen yet and turned it deadly dull.
I think part of what happened is that Ryan Murphy, as usual, learned all the wrong lessons from the show's success. After the incredible response to Asylum, he thought that what people responded to was the social commentary (probably because that's what he was most interested in), and decided to focus more there as opposed to blowing up storytelling conventions, which is really what made Asylum such can't-miss fun. He saw the rapturous response to Jessica Lange and decided to double down, making her more of an indisputable lead AND adding other great underused actresses in strong, memorable supporting roles. As always, his shows become victims of their own success in damning ways.
I look back on the season and shudder at how badly it all went, pretty much sliding downhill after episode 4. It was a schizoid, mess and I only watched the final installments because, well, Closure. Wondering if there's any point in starting season 5 at all.
How funny that I too last night finally finished the finale that had been sitting in my DVR for what seemed like months only to feel super disappointed at the Elsa premise. I'm glad that Jessica Lange is leaving the show because she has played the same character throughout all four seasons. here's to hoping that next season will keep my interest
I had almost erased this season finale from my memory, so I'm just going to pretend this post is a "Yes No Maybe So" about the Man from UNCLE trailer...hello, Felicity Jones!
I've only seen Coven and Freakshow. I hate watched every episode of Coven.
I thought this season started with wonderful promise, but it completely derailed. Twisty the Clown was the greatest character, and once he was dead, the season unraveled. When it seemed like Dandy was going to emulate Twisty, that was exciting, but then he just did whatever killing he felt like, randomly and without horror, with his clown-worship exhausted. He became, in fact, so dull that Neil Patrick Harris was introduced as a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT serial killer in order to spice things up.
There is something very wrong with a show that has THREE SEPARATE SERIAL KILLERS, as well as a large assortment of non-serial murderers, and yet cannot maintain excitement.
I really liked Murder House, LOVED Asylum (definitely the best season so far), and liked both Coven and Freak Show.
Sarah Paulson deserved every award imaginable for her devastating and extraordinary work in the second season!
I will definitely be back for Season 5 because I think AHS is still a great show all around and nothing else is like it on TV. I love me some crazy, funny, titillating psycho sexual horror. It seems everyone is fine with Jessica Lange leaving, but I digress. She needs to come back! I think she's knocked it out of the park every season so far given that she has received some of the same material each time.
Oh! And they need to bring back someone as deliciously scary and horrifying, but also quite mournful and sad, as "Twisty the Clown."
Those first 4 episodes were so scary because his presence was always lingering right around the corner.
Bring back a character almost as scary as him, or bring back John Carroll Lynch altogether and give him another terrifying role.
More than any show I consistently watch, AHS seems to be the most bashed by recappers (not here, but elsewhere). I found myself being confused and swayed by what I read - did I not actually enjoy it how I thought? is my love for these actresses clouding my judgment? am I putting more stock in the show's potential than in it's execution? Frankly, I don't know if the internet should make me feel this bad about my mostly inconsequential choices. I enjoyed Freak Show and I'm not ashamed! - while I agree that Asylum was still definitely the show's best (everyone's obsession with Murder House/ the idea that it's the pinnacle of the show's quality is so beyond my frame of understanding). I always found myself turning to Price Peterson's recaps for comfort, because while he can admit an episode's faults, there's always an undercurrent of enjoyment, like he's not watching a show that he fundamentally is against enjoying.
Also, let it be known that a lot of the internet/fandom was PISSED about the end, and kind of the entirety, of Coven while it was happening. There were similar cries of "not scary enough" and even "too camp." And yet now, people seem to forget how much they hated it at the time? Because I'm hearing a lot of "Freakshow was no Coven," which may be true....but.....who knows. My memory of Coven (which I also enjoyed) is aided by thinking of it's one-liners, while the fact that there wasn't much in between them somewhat slips away. Mark my word there will be cries of "this is no Freakshow" from many during season 5. The internet, with all it's archival mechanisms, has a maddening short-term memory.
Olivia:
1. Asylum
2. Murder House
.
.
3, Freak Show (tie)
3. Coven (tie)
Paul: I'd agree that Coven and Freakshow are about equal for me, but I'd put Murder House below them. Blame the romanticization of Tate Langdon's grossness, I guess. We've all got our things we just can't stomach.
I get that, Olivia. Murder House ranks above them for me because a) Ryan Murphy is always best at beginnings, b) Frances Conroy and c) the "tearjerking" anti-brilliance of Dylan McDermott.
I get that too, Paul. And "You get the shovel, I'll get the bleach" will always be iconic. Agreeing to disagree on the internet has never gone this well for me. Thanks for being a pal, Paul #alliteration
The headline: "American Horror Story Less Controversial than Beyoncé and Boyhood."
I never finished "Murder House" because it was TOO disturbing, which is probably a testament to it. So with that out of the running, "Asylum" will probably always be this show's strongest. I watched it through my fingers. And the best episode of Season 4 was the one that was devoted to Pepper and tied it together to Season 2. It was nuanced and calm and horrifying in a completely different way.
The problems I had with Seasons 3 and 4 is that characters disappear altogether and then come back in a few episodes. There is no consistency or clear map. It reminds me of when Nip/Tuck started to decline -- you felt as a viewer that the writers didn't really have any idea where they wanted things to go.
Paul - LOL.
I haven't watched either Freakshow or Coven, but Asylum was amazing. It meandered a lot in the first half, but then it reached a point at...I want to say episode 10? where it tied off several critical plotlines, to the point I was like, okay, the season's over, right? BUT IT WASN'T. And then the last few episodes happened and I knew I had watched one of the single greatest TV seasons of ALL TIME.
Nat, I seriously encourage you to go back and watch Asylum all the way through. The last few episodes are masterful, but they're only so brilliant because of what came before. And your whole complaint about Paulson losing the spotlight is not actually what happens, as the last episode makes it clear the entire season's arc is Lana's. Lana Winters is a fucking awesome character, but to really understand why, you have to watch Asylum all the way through.
^I second everything he said!