TV Review- American Horror Story 1.01: "Pilot"
Note: Spoilers through Episode 1.01.
I’ve never been a fan of Ryan Murphy’s shows. Yes, his many, many shows. It’s weird for one man to have three different shows on cable, almost all at the same time, and all having at least three full seasons to work with (yes, FX has greenlit a third season of American Horror Story). All of his shows have a habit of favoring really bombastic, showy storytelling over anything with real quality. Think of Nip/Tuck, with its bloody plastic surgery scenes and soapy story and Glee with its…well, just being Glee. American Horror Story is no different; at its core, it’s an exercise in style and shock over any real substance.
It’s tough to know how to grade something like this because it’s SUPPOSED to be shitty. It’s SUPPOSED to be a caricature of a horror story and it’s SUPPOSED to be campy. But there are some serious storytelling issues with it, seriously detracting from the quality that it could have if it decided to pace out some of their ideas instead of cramming all of them into one episode to see what sticks. There are some glaring shifts in tone that simply don’t work because of exaggeration and a huge lack in balance. Not to mention how completely absurd some of the character and story elements are.
It’s not that the plot isn’t interesting. There’s just so many plot elements and ideas that they completely overload the episode. There’s an odd girl with Down’s Syndrome, a spooky house, a black version of the “Greendale Human Being”, a spirit that makes people obsessed with fire, sexual addiction, weird demons attacking people, a dude that has half of his face burnt off, a kid who wants to shoot up a school, a two-faced demon maid, infidelity, pregnancy, etc, etc. This is enough content to sustain an entire season of television, let alone fifty minutes. And none of it goes past the show’s desire to unsettle. All of this potentially interesting material is just used in a VERY superficial manner, visceral and shocking instead of taking the audience’s emotional core and shaking it. Maybe the season will do something with all of this content as the episodes go on, but right now it’s incredibly superficial, shaky at best, sometimes outright goofy.
And that’s one of the things that makes this episode of television hard to review and especially hard to gauge: its goofy/serious/unsettling tone. It’s unbelievably ambitious, trying very hard to balance all of these various things, but pushes “goofy” FAR more than the others. As a society, we’re far more accustomed to seeing unsettling and serious material that what we do see in this episode honestly isn’t that unsettling or serious. The most whole-hearted attempt at being serious came when Ben and Vivien fought about their relationship, but since we’ve only seen a miniscule section of their relationship, the scene felt out of place and I felt more like an awkward bystander than anything else. That scene felt SO odd in contrast to the rest of the episode that it was probably the most unsettling thing in the entire episode. There’s a way to master the balance of these different tones in a way that brings the best out of both of them, but American Horror Story just doesn’t seem to know how to master it, or even get close to that mastery. It just seems more stupid and mindless than anything else. Some of the stupid elements like the dialogue are somewhat forgiven by the goofy tone of the show, but still are bad enough to detract from the overall quality of the show.
Aside from the tone, the characters and their motivations didn’t do much to impress me. In fact, most of them were completely ridiculous. From Tate’s repeatedly saying different variations of “the world sucks” to Violet’s unexplained and unfounded depressive cutting to the simplistic depiction of Vivian and Ben’s marriage, it was rudimentary at best, completely convoluted at worst. Simplicity is the name of the game in this pilot; take the ridiculous depiction of the high school for example. It’s there simply to exist as something flashy and outrageous. And that’s probably my biggest problem with this show: how flashy and outrageous it is. Sure, it’s fun, but it ends up giving the episode a sort of tunnel-vision that will likely grow more boring if the show doesn’t change soon.
The one thing that I’m most torn about is the obvious homage to the horror genre. I love that it pays tribute to a great deal of horror movies and genre conventions, but it seems to throw those bits so haphazardly into the mix instead of doing something more profound with them. They’re there as something pretty to look at, not necessarily something that adds much to the mix. While they’re fun and interesting, they share that same flash, that same tunnel-vision that everything else seems to have.
There’s a compelling story hidden under everything that the pilot’s thrown at us, but it’s certainly not apparent at this point. At the very least, I want to see what the show decides to throw at us next. In that respect, I guess this show’s done its job. But if the show doesn’t either: 1.) Tonally shift itself a little bit, or 2.) Give us some answers about the cluster-fuck of questions we’re posed with, or 3.) Make us care in some way about anything that’s going on aside from the show’s shaky mythology, then this show will quickly become unwatchable. American Horror Story just tries so hard to do so many things that most of them end up going badly. All in all, it’s standard Murphy fare. Nothing special. Just a lot of “ooh”s and “aah”s and some eye-rolling at weird shit.
Also: I know that it was supposed to be unsettling when the dude in the gimp suit fucked Vivien, but all I could see was a black version of the “Greendale Human Being” from Community fucking Coach Taylor’s wife from Friday Night Lights. Needless to say, I was laughing.
Also also: One of the reasons for the jarring tonal shifts could be to further unsettle the audience, but honestly, the way they superficially use the elements of the episode to unsettle doesn’t really lead me to believe that the show could operate on such a intricate level. Though that could be an explanation for a lot of the dumb bullshit in the episode, such as the strong sexist overtones that the show has. But, like I said, probably not.
Also also also: It’s very possible that Ryan Murphy has more than three shows; that man is everywhere on TV. Let me know if I missed one.
Final Thoughts: While some of the elements in this story have the potential to be interesting, the overload of ridiculous and bizarre paranormal characters and ideas convolutes instead of thrills. Not to mention how its tone tries to ambitiously shift between different modes and fails to do so with any semblance of virtuosity.
I don’t know if I’ll be reviewing more of this show. It honestly depends on if I actually want to watch all 12 episodes of the first season. It’s a lot of shitty TV to watch, though who knows. Maybe it’ll be better than I think it will. Anyway, this week I’m going to push through the first three episodes of Season 2 of The Walking Dead. I’ve never watched past “What Lies Ahead”, so it’ll be a lot of fun. There’s a couple other extraneous things that I want to review, such as Season 1 of Mad Men, Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie, and True Grit (I promise, I will review this). So, yeah, get ready for The Walking Dead tomorrow. I’ll be sure to catch up through “Made to Suffer” by the time it comes back on February 10th next year. Until tomorrow, loyal followers.
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