Horror stories are made to engage your whole body. They make the hairs on the back of your neck perk up. They force you to wince or close your eyes. They trigger grimaces and gags.
FX's American Horror Story might make you laugh … and cry, vomit, twitch and run maniacally from the living room.
The show's title is about two-thirds right. American Horror Story is American. And it is horrible. But the story part? Well, let's just say that any sort of understandable plot or narrative is now lying in state and unlikely to haunt this series anytime soon.
The rest of the dead—that's another matter.
FX's wacky freak-out show retains the same vibe and some of its players from season to season, but everything else changes. During Season One it focused on a sweet-but-struggling family living in America's most haunted old Victorian. Season Two brought with it the subtitle Asylum and a ludicrously bedlam-ridden insanity ward filled with sex-starved nuns, mad scientists, ravenous beasts, serial killers and, of course, we can't forget the alien abductors. There are some time warps involved too, with present-day peril spliced into retro terror.
In truth, American Horror Story would be perfect fodder for the snarky riff-meisters on the dearly departed Mystery Science Theater 3000. Or it would be if Tom Servo and Crow could manage to crack jokes between the gasps of horror and disgust they'd surely utter. There's more sex and gore per scene here than you'll see this side of, well, pert near anything—on TV or at the movies. In a sentence, Season Two earned its TV-MA rating in the first four minutes.
Slate's Troy Patterson calls the show "deliberately unhinged" and "a showcase for scenery chewing and giddy blasphemy, an exploitation chamber piece." Had Edgar Allan Poe seen the script for just one of these episodes, he would've laughed himself silly … then buried the whole mess under the floorboards. Not that we'd expect much sanity from creator Ryan Murphy, the mind behind the despicably gregarious Nip/Tuck, and who also created Fox's very different (but equally implausible and problematic) Glee.
When interviewed for New York magazine, Murphy defended his new nightmare by saying the show's spooky-sexual ethos was cribbed from Dark Shadows, ABC's supernatural daytime soap from the 1970s.
"My grandmother used to force me to watch Dark Shadows," he said. "Even when I was sobbing, she made me watch, to toughen me up."
Now, Murphy's grandmother's lack of entertainment discernment has come back to haunt us all. Where was Plugged In in 1971 anyway?
"There is nothing—repeat, nothing—subtle about this series," writes salon.com's Matt Zoller Seitz. "It's a jumble of pathology and mayhem—horror for the YouTube generation. … If it were possible to take a classic early '60s camp horror movie, feed it massive amounts of cocaine, then turn it into a basic cable drama, the result might look like this."
It's a slow episode that doesn't feature some sort of murder, mutilation or scene of torture before every commercial break, most featuring R-level blood and gore. And when the violence wanes, it's often replaced with sexual deviancy and enough anti-religious, often blasphemous messages to make marble statues openly weep.
Morality? That's about the only thing truly dead and buried in American Horror Story.
Episode Reviews
"Welcome to Briarcliff"
Newlyweds step into the asylum as part of their "haunted honeymoon tour." Sex on an examination/torture table involves him undressing her and lots of sexual movements and sounds. A few minutes later, as she's performing oral sex on him, he reaches his arm through a door—where it's promptly yanked off. (We see the bloody, bleeding stump and appendage.)
Another man and woman also have heated sex. They disrobe, kiss and moan. We see her bare back and the side of her breast. We see another man's bare bum. And a nun exposes her backside for "punishment" at the hands of head nun Sister Jude. Sister Jude, meanwhile, fantasizes about having sex with the asylum's monsignor, visually imagining herself taking off her habit (revealing a red negligee) and straddling the priest. A patient throws semen on a nun, and we later see him working his hand wildly in his pants.
A reporter snuggles with and professes her affection for her lesbian lover. Sister Jude later captures the reporter and blackmails her lover to remand the woman into the asylum's care—ostensibly to force a change in her sexual orientation. It's no surprise, then, that in general organized religion is portrayed as corrupt, clueless and terrible.
The opening sequence features disconnected scenes of blood and gore, as well as a nun threatening a helpless patient. A man holding a bloody weapon wears what appears to be a mask of human skin. Another man apparently has his eye punctured by a needle, his anus probed and a chip inserted into, then (bloodily) removed from his neck. Brains float in jars. Gruesome stories are told about what killers did to their victims.
Characters smoke, drink wine and say the s-word (once), "p‑‑‑y" (once), "pr‑‑k," "b‑‑ch" and "a‑‑." God's and Jesus' name are abused.
"Smoldering Children"
After learning that Violet's been skipping school, Ben makes her promise to return. Instead, she spends the day with boyfriend Tate, which culminates in Tate asking Violet to commit suicide with him. Violet runs downstairs to wake up Ben, but finds that he's been knocked unconscious (by Tate, as the Rubber Man). She then discovers that she can't leave the house. Why? Well, 'cause she's already dead, that's why. Tate shows her her own corpse, with flies filling the gaping mouth. (We see a flashback to her suicide.)
In flashback we see Tate set his father-in-law, Larry, on fire. (He survives but is horribly disfigured.) We also see neighbor Constance shoot her cheating husband and housemaid. (Blood spatters the wall, and the housemaid's face is mangled.) Constance then grinds up her husband and feeds him to the dogs. Larry sees his dead daughters and speaks with his dead wife, who immolated themselves when they learned he was having an affair. (They're covered with horrific burns.)
Tate kills an exterminator and fights with Ben. Constance threatens to cut off Larry's privates, brandishing a knife near his groin. A newly dead murder victim (we hear he was cut in half and see horrific scars on his face in photos) seems thrilled at his posthumous notoriety. A mocking prayer is offered up. As are three s-words along with "a‑‑," "p‑‑‑ed," "h‑‑‑" and "b‑‑ch." God's name is misused about 10 times.