AHS look back: Pilot
Let’s go with the first episode of season 1, the famous Pilot!
Of course SPOILERS AHEAD. HUGE SPOILERS
Note that I will make notes along as I rewatch the episode.
# 1978. The house is in a state of advanced disrepair, but young Addie is already here fascinated by the house - and knowing its deadly power. There is the morbid hanging of animal bones (I wonder who created it?). I am mostly leaving these notes because I want later to look back at the chronology of the house.
# Ah yes, the twins. Some of the most hated ghosts and characters of this season. I think it was Ryan Murphy that explained that they were born out of two of his personal obsessions: red-haired people, and twins. I personally perfectly see the reason of their presence - they serve as the typical “mischievious/troublemaker” kind of spirits and ghosts. They provide the easy jumpscares, and the classical scenes of weird stuff happening around (like when they open up all of the doors in the kitchen). This is classic ghost stuff, and there needs to be more “classical” ghosts here.
# The use of the song “Tonight you belong to me” has been noted in the audio commentary to be very significant. It signifies how the house itself (which as we know, has a form of sentience) takes possession, literaly, of its owners and residents (especially the double-meaning lyrics “You belong to somebody new / But tonight you belong to me”).
# At least we know what the Infantata survives on when he doesn’t have someone to eat - possums and other urban vermin.
# I presume all the jars found in the basement are belonging to Doctor Montgomery... I am actually wondering why all of this is back in the basement in the 1970s despite the house having numerous previous owners. I wonder if it is related to some of the deleted storylines, such as Constance’s fourth child or the hedge clipper man.
# “Today”, which is 2011. The comparison the doctor makes between the human body and a house is of course VERY obvious. However it gets deeper when you realize Vivien says she wants to “take back control” over her body after “all that blood” - which parallels how the Harmon family is trying to take control over the house after all the murders.
# The introduction of the Harmon family presents the two defining events that started breaking them, but that also foreshadow the entire themes of the season: Vivien’s miscarriage, which starts the themes of motherhood and the death of children ; and Ben’s cheating - unfaithfulness and infidelity being also a major recurring theme of the season.
# The wide shots of the family’s arrival at Los Angeles highlights so well what is also explained in the audio commentary: the house was designed to be as claustrophobic as possible, with a lot of dark colors, tainted glass that prevents a natural flow of the light, windows that do not open... You really feel trapped in there.
# Another common theme of this season is dysfunctional families, and I love how you already see in their first scenes that despite the Harmons attempt at acting and looking like a normal, happy family, they can’t truly hide the cracks, the darkness and the bitterness that is slowly breaking them apart.
# The fact the house is presented as “LA Victorian” seems to me like no luck. A big part of this first season is that they tried to modernize a bit the Gothic genre, and the “Victorian” nod seems to fit in this idea.
# “The previous owners loved this place like a child” - oh good one I missed this one! Yet another subtle comparison and foreshadowing.
# Dogs sense evil, and it comes from the basement... I guess Hailey is sensing the Infantata more than anything, since she doesn’t bark so much for ghosts in my memory... wait... as far as I can recall the dog is absent for most of the season. They only use her for the pilot, the microwave scene and the end... How come I never noticed it before? Silly me.
# The murals were probably covered by the last owners. I’ll keep this for chronology check. I love how they also subverted the haunted house trope of the hidden history by having the real estate agent directly telling them about the previous deaths (before we realize that they actually played the trop straigth because she didn’t tell them of EVERY death, just the more recent). The “murder-suicide” presentation of the previous owners death also reminded me of how many times the deaths of the house are presented as a “murder-suicide”... Think of it, the Montgomeries... the previous owners. The Harmon didn’t went murder suicide but it was still seen as an external death-suicide ; and Tate’s was massacre followed by suicide by cops... We know that the house loves repeating its history and inflicting patterns on its residents, and it might be one of them.
# I love how the bully’s behavior was so excentric and over-the-top at the time, but in modern days it looks like something that could happen in real life.
# I love how Constance describes Adelaide as a monster obsessed with the house, and does not realize this portrait also perfectly fits herself... The same way a first time viewer thinks her entering the house regularly and stealing stuff is just her being a creepy and noisy neighbor, and it takes an entirely different turn once you realize she used to live in the house and still hasn’t gotten over the fact she is not the mistress of the place anymore. Another irony is how she describes her love for “pure-breds” in terms of dogs, despite her admitting her own bloodline is cursed with “monstrosity”.
# If I remember correctly from the audio commentary, Constance’s character was inspired by the Southern Gothic genre, and more specifically how Jessica Lange played in “A Tramway named Desire” - they wanted with Constance to depict a Blanche DuBois turned bad.
# Adelaide is the first of Constance’s children. Oh yes, the beginning of the sage joke.
# Of course Constance is happy that Vivien gets rid of the wallpaper covering the murals - since she visibly painted them herself.
# I love how the music is so reminiscent of The Shining - I am thinking of the discorded cues whenever something disturbing happens. And oh yes, the Rubber Suit itself... I am pretty sure they took the idea from Level 26 and its heritage. I think Level 26 came before this season, but I might be uncorrect (though to be fair Level 26 was based on a previous television episode, so...)
# Ah, Tate appears and the heart of hundreds of girls (and probably some boys) are robbed. The whistling music of Tate, before going to Kill Bill or being used in car commercials, comes from “Twisted Nerve”, a movie about a stalker obsessed with a young girl and that kills all of her suitors. Pretty fitting. Tate’s makeup in this scene got the AHS team into legal actions, since the man who originally made those tattooes on his body (Rick Genest/Zombie Boy) didn’t appreciate his property being reproduced.
# Fun fact, there was a deleted scene from Tate’s dream sequence that was supposed to be an homage to Shining, to the scenes of the elevator pouring blood - except here the highschool staircases would have poured blood. The scene can still be seen in bonus content on the DVDs. Here they replaced it with Tate’s “drowning in blood” being compared to Violet’s self harm (which is really clever for me).
# The apparition of Tate’s bloody double has produced an entire range of theories on the fandom, especially since it apparently led nowhere. I personally believe that it is a leftover of a deleted storyline. You see, as I explained in my talks about the deleted scene with the albino brother, it seems that back when Constance’s fourth child was in Tate would sincerely be unaware of his ghostly condition or in denial of the existence of other spirits around him - hitting his head while screaming for whatever he saw to “get out”. As a result I do believe that in early storylines he was sincere upon saying he didn’t remember anything, and this vision of a double might be part of his denial/psychosis.
# Oh boy the foreshadowing in Tate’s words... Everything takes such a different meaning when you know who he is talking about.
# Another foreshadowing of the house’s sentience, with Moira’s comments about the house having feelings and mistreating it resulting in regrets. You might think it is just Moira trying to lure her way in, but then you realize it is also much more.
# The second outfit of Tate is the one that fits with the deleted albino man scene if you are wondering.
# Of course Tate would ask for some Kurt Cobain.
# It is very funny how they play with your mind and make you believe some of the living people are actually ghosts - like Larry’s introduction.
# One can wonder how much of Moira’s behavior is out of her personal bitterness and desire for revenge over men, and how much is the house influencing her... We know the house has a nasty habit of influencing people into committing adultery and giving up to their lust, and we also know the house can use ghosts as tools to enact its desires.
# Ah yes, the famous murals. There are entire articles and blog articles online dedicated to analyzing these murals and identifying here all the elements it foreshadows or reveal about the house - because indeed there are numerous, numerous elements that parallel what either happened or is going to happen (history in the Murder House is one big endless loop). You already have the woman giving birth surrounded by demons and creepy spirits ; or the demons whispering to a man’s ear, the deads raising up to dance, creepy mothers carrying monstrous children...
# What actually differentiates the Harmons from the other dysfunctional and broken families of the House is that, despite their flaws, their secrets, their fights, their mistakes, they still love each other, they still try to be honest and to help each other when they can, and they also try to still stay together and come back together as a family no matter how broken they got. Of course one of their other flaws is that they have bad ways of holding up and going over their past mistakes, but at least they acknowledge it - Ben recognizes it already in the episode, and it truly mirrors how in the end, even in death and as ghosts they try to form a loving and protective family instead of giving in to their inner darkness and resentmen like the other spirits.
# The fact Tate has links/ a control over the Infantata is actually explained in several interiews and behind-the-scenes content, where it is noted that when it comes to the ghosts of the house, Tate is one of the two “masterminds” and “manipulators” with a certain control over the forces haunting the place (which makes a lot of sense when you realize he was probably yet another one of the tools enacting or embodying the house’s desires). The other one being Hayden but I’ll come to her later.
# Again, knowing the rest of the season puts everything in perspective - especially with Larry’s story. You are so sad for him, but then you realize he is a pathological liar and he just looks so awful.
# A very interesting detail is revealed in the audio commentary when it comes to how they created the ghosts. They explain they did not just avoid the typical “otherwordly inhuman ghost” look simply to get away from horror conventions, but also because upon looking back at real-life cases of hauntings, they all described the ghosts as looking as if they were alive, as perfect humans, that you couldn’t mistake for a dead. So they decided to play with this idea by creating a confusion as to who is alive and who is dead.
# If you remember at the end of pilot episode there are flashes, pictures in between the credits. Well, these pictures contain shots of the deleted scenes from the pilot - one shows the Rubber Man trying to touch Vivien’s hair as she is looking at something ; and the other is a shot of the deleted “albino brother” scene, where we see the headless dolls hanging over the baby cradle. But I’ll probably talk more about this in a different post entirely dedicated to this scene.
