Earlier in the week I wrote a piece on whether or not my dearly beloved American Horror Story is sustainable . The show is moving forward at such a rapid pace that I can’t help be reminded of Lost in its early days.
The first season of Lost was incredible….plane crash, smoke monster, polar bears, crazy Rousseau, blood transfusions that would never be possible in real life…each week I hungered for the next episode. The break between seasons one and two was nearly unbearable. When it finally came back, boy was I excited!
But that excitement was soon replaced by disappointment. I won’t bore you with the details, but the second season was excruciatingly painful to the point where I almost gave up watching. But I knew it had to get better. It just had to! And I’m glad I stuck around for another 4 SEASONS even though the ending was so-so and they never told us Libby’s backstory.
Maybe I am just being dramatic, but I feel like after last night’s finale AHS is heading in that same direction. Yes, many burning questions were answered , but things are getting inconsistent. What is up with the Harmons acting so hunky dory in the afterlife? Um Viv…did you forget how much you hate Ben? Would human Violet have ever been caught dead (sorry…unintentional pun) decorating a Christmas tree and listening to cheesy holiday classics? The answer is no. These departures from the characters’ personalities are disappointing and frankly, annoying. Teaming up to prevent new families from experiencing the house’s horrors should not foster enough camaraderie for Vivien to forgive all of Ben’s past transgressions.
I was pleased to see that both babies did in fact make it out of Vivien alive, because I was not for one second going to believe that the baby was stillborn and that was that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from AHS and Lost, it’s that things are never what they seem. But do those few weak breaths of air that lead to Ben’s baby becoming a ghost rather than just a corpse mean that he will be a baby forever? That’s going to get old real quick. I can see it now… Why are you still crying? You’re 100 years old!! Can’t you eat anything other than formula? Here Ben, you take him….
And then there is little serial killer kiddie Michael. Constance’s unsurprised reaction to the nanny’s bloody demise implies that this is not a solitary incident. That or she was just patiently waiting for the first kill. “Now what am I going to do with you?” Script genius! Please hand Jessica Lange the Golden Globe now and spare all of the other nominees the trouble of preparing a speech in hopes of making it to the podium. It ain’t gonna happen Sofia Vergara!
Where they go from here is a mystery, but I really hope it’s somewhere good. Michael killing nannies and the Harmons putting on elaborate skits to scare away buyers won’t keep people entertained for very long. I like how they’ve positioned the place as a ghost house divided (Harmons vs. Hayden/Tate….smackdown!), but if they can’t exterminate each other than that’s also a plot dead end. And if Murder House is for sale in real life , should we be expecting a venue change? In that case, we’ll need a whole new set of tormented characters.
Guess I’ll be mulling over the possibilities until the show returns in the fall.