I come to praise American Horror Story: Asylum, not to bury it. Well, maybe bury it a just a little. American Horror Story on FX is an odd show for me to write about objectively; I think it is currently the single most entertaining show on television, with possibly the best ensemble cast currently working on the small screen. The production values are top notch, and there is simply no more of an addicting show on television than this one. At the end of each week’s episode of American Horror Story, you just can’t wait for the next week’s installment. And yet…despite truly brilliant performances from everyone involved, there is the feeling that much of this series is plotted out on napkins and never given more than a first draft by the show’s creators. Last night’s episode concluded the season (actually, the series, as each season of American Horror Story is a self contained story) concluding some storylines in a satisfying fashion, while others… not as much.
American Horror Story: Asylum started this season with an alien abduction, a serial killer on the loose, a mad doctor, zombie like creatures, a feisty reporter, and a nun with a penchant for corporal punishment. And that’s all introduced the very first episode of the season; by the next few episodes we are introduced to Satanic possession, Nazi war criminals, murderous Santa Clauses and the Angel of Death herself. Oh, and Anne Frank. Because, ya know…at this point, why not? Toss in the proverbial kitchen sink while you’re at it. It started to become pretty clear early on that all these disparate plot elements were in no way tied together in any kind of cohesive fashion, aside from the fact that they all took place at Briarcliff Asylum at the same period in time. Ok, so in this way it’s like a standard soap opera, where there are tons of story lines going on at once only barely connected. While I can live with that, I still think all those plot elements deserve a satisfactory resolution, and only a few of them receive that on this show. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
But now that the season is all over and done with, I’m here to talk about the good, the bad, and the “somewhere in between” of American Horror Story: Asylum. Warning, there are big time SPOILERS in this article, so if you’re not caught up on the show yet, or plan to watch it on Netflix sometime down the road, then please wait to read this article. You have been warned. Still here? Ok then, let us start first with….
The Good
The Cast On This Show Is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G
As I said, the cast on this series is simply amazing. But none more so than Jessica Lange. Lange gives a performance for the ages here as the strict Sister Jude, caretaker of Briarcliff Asylum, a character we begin the series with despising, then feeling sympathy toward, then outright rooting for and finally, relieved when she finds a small measure of peace. And all of this character growth happens over the course of just thirteen episodes. Even though Lange won the Emmy last year for her performance on the first season of American Horror Story, she really deserved it for this one. Some of the credit here has to go to the series’ writers (who are better at character development than plot development) but the lion’s share goes to Lange, as fearless an actress as we have currently still working. She hasn’t been given too many high profile movie roles of late, but the movie’s loss is television’s gain. Jessica Lange simply rocks here, and American Horror Story is an incredible showcase for her talents.
It’s Jessica Lange’s world, and we just live in it.
But it’s not just Lange, Sarah Paulson as would be journalist Lana Winters is incredible here as well. Her part is equally multi-layered, as we see her go from closeted lesbian of the early 1960’s to the classic “survivor girl” of horror film lore, to sell-out media whore, and finally, the hard hitting journalist she always wanted to be. It’s an amazing, perfectly executed character journey, the kind of well rounded female character that movies and television don’t provide nearly enough of. Having only barely been a part of the season one ensemble, I didn’t know what to expect from Paulson, but she more than acquitted herself here.
And I would easily say the third most important player has to be relative newcomer Lily Rabe, who plays the innocent Sister Mary Eunice, but spends most of her time on the series possessed by Satan and giving a deliciously evil performance. Her storyline ultimately ends very anticlimactically, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that her performance is so much fun to watch. It has gotta be hard to be a young actress and hold your own in a performance with an acting legend like Jessica Lange, but Rabe does so here, and just about steals every scene she’s in.
Lily Rabe might not be a household word yet, but she deserves to be.
Truth is, there really is no weak link among the actors here, everyone is great. Zachary Quinto, James Cromwell, Evan Peters, Chloe Sevigny, every single member of the cast is giving it their 100%, and everyone seems to be having a blast being their characters. Even the guest stars, like Ian McShane who plays a murderous Santa Claus, are giving it all they’ve got. The ensemble on this show sometimes is far better than the material they are given, but this is to their credit.
The Bad
All The Blatant Rip-Offs
As much as I love this show, the one thing that drives me nuts when talking to other fans is hearing so many of them say “oh, that American Horror Story is such an original show.” That’s the moment I know that the fan is not really a horror movie fan, because AHS gleefully rips off just about every horror film from the past four decades. This series is like a collage of stolen elements from classic horror films that the producers of the show just seem to like, and then pretty much just steal outright. A serial killer who uses the skin of his victims to make a gruesome mask? Sounds like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw right? Well, here he’s called Bloodyface instead. (it’s such an obvious rip, that the rights holders to Texas Chainsaw could probably sue the producers and win if they so desired.) The alien abduction scene is straight out of 90’s abduction flick Fire in the Sky. Killer Santa Claus? Ever see Silent Night, Deadly Night? And the show is a continuous list of elements straight up stolen from classic horror movies.
And it’s not just visual elements, they like to use music from famous horror films too; the premiere episode extensively used the prom scene music from Brian de Palma’s Carrie, and Phillip Glass’ haunting score from Candyman is used as well. While one can argue that taking all these tropes from horror cinema and putting them into a serialized narrative is itself an original concept, I kind of wanted to see at least one element that wasn’t derived from something else. Having said all that, guessing which classic horror flick the show would rip off this week was kind of part of the fun, one example of how on this show, many of the negatives became positives, if only by accident.
Nope, it’s not Leatherface, it’s BLOODYface. Get it right.
Plotlines With No Real Resolutions
Certain plotlines that run throughout the whole season are never fully resolved, or just unceremoniously dropped. In the second episode of the season, Satan itself possesses the innocent Sister Mary Eunice, played by the brilliant Lily Rabe, who eventually deposes Sister Jude and takes over Briarcliff Asylum for her own nefarious purposes. We just never find out what those purposes are. She seems to have big plans set in motion, but her character is killed off before we can ever find out just what the Hell Satan would want with an insane asylum anyways. Then there is Dr. Arden, our ex-Nazi mad scientist who is doing experiments on the inmates to create a syphillitic zombie like race enabled to survive a nuclear war (yeah, it makes even less sense as I type it.) But that plot line is ultimately just kind of dropped too. And just why are all these disparate elements like aliens and the Devil and Nazis all drawn to this one Asylum in Massachusetts anyway? The writers seem to have zero interest in answering those questions. It’s like they like just got bored and were hoping the audience would forget.
The whole alien plotline is just one of several that just kind of fizzled out on American Horror Story this season.
The Good/Bad (I Can’t Really Decide)
All The Cheap Shock Value
Man, do producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk love their trashiness for trashiness’ sake. On this season, we had Zachary Quinto begging for breast feeding from a captive Sarah Paulson, (and later raping the frozen corpse of her ex lover Clea DuVall) Oscar nominee James Cromwell refer to a hooker’s vagina as her “mossy bank,” a Satan possessed nun raping a priest, an attempted coat hanger induced abortion, not to mention Dylan McDermott drinking the breast milk from a sex worker. While all of this cheap shock value kept the proceedings from ever being taken too seriously by the audience (and actually pretty damn funny in a campy John Waters kind of way) it also made this the kind of “water cooler” show you just had to talk about with your friends the next day. So while I say the shock value is a good/bad sort of thing…I’m actually leaning towards good here. If only for giving me the term “mossy bank” to us to use forever.
In the end it may seem like I have more complaints about American Horror Story than praise, but the truth is that at the end of the day the cast of actors are so damn enjoyable to watch, and the show such addictive, good trash (in the very best sense of the word) that I can’t help but love it. All my complaints ultimately are just minor quibbles that don’t really get in the way of my enjoyment of the show in any substantial way, because the show is just that much damn fun to watch. All I know is that It’ll be a long wait until season three of this series, and I can’t wait to find out just who will come back and what the setting will be. But season two has certainly raised the bar pretty damn high in terms of craziness. And good luck topping “The Name Game” Ryan Murphy. I think that little musical number might remain the series’ highlight.