First Impressions: American Horror Story

Were Nip/Tuck and Glee not awful enough? Ryan Murphy proves again without American Horror Story that he is – despite all the attempts this fall by NBC executives to prove otherwise – the worst creative mind working on broadcast television today. AHS is offensive to women, mentally challenged people, and anyone who thinks captivating television is an art form. There is no inherent value to AHS: like NBC’s The Playboy Club and ABC’s Charlie’s Angels, AHS spends most of its time ripping off the past (here, it’s every single classic horror movie from the 1970s).

But what can you expect from a show that proudly states it stars Dylan McDermott? He challenges that asshole cop on Law and Order: Criminal Intent for Worst Performance by a Male with his turn as Ben, a psychiatrist who is trying to win back his wife Vivien, after a bad family experience (long story short: she miscarriages, he fucks someone in their bathroom). Like any male character from the mind of Murphy, Ben is only concerned with one thing in his life: getting laid. His wife Vivien (wasting the talents of the still beautiful Connie Britton) is struggling with her husband’s infedility, and suggests they move across the country to Los Angeles so she can pout and talk about how she’s not ready to forgive yet (in about six scenes while Ben attempts to fondle her at any given moment). It’s a sad, tired story, and when you add in the “I don’t fit in with the cool crowd, but I’m different and unique” daughter Violet, their family and its supposed ‘drama’ is certainly nothing interesting.

Surrounding this family drama is an incoherent horror story, with creepy neighbors, dead fetuses in the basement, and a haunted house that likes to have sex with the inhabitants (in the form of a strange, bondage-wearing  person of course). It’s idiocy, and Jessica Lange should be ashamed of herself in her role as creepy neighbor. Not only is she over acting the part, but she partakes in some of the most offensive behavior I’ve ever seen on television. Her Downs syndrome afflicted daughter (who of course, takes the role of creepster) is such an annoyance to Lange’s character, she refers to her numerous times as a ‘monster’ and ‘mongoloid’. How can this shit be on TV?

There isn’t much to say about the show: it’s kinky and violent, because that’s what draws people in. It doesn’t do it to explore the weird side of people or to tell a convincing, layered horror story. It’s all popcorn dreck, and bad at that. I could talk more about the non-sensical plot, the horrible, beyond typical presentation of high school (especially high school girls), but it’s all been said before, about terrible shows that were still somehow much better than this steaming pile of shit.

How this fuckbag Ryan Murphy has a job in Hollywood is beyond me: he is a very, very poor man’s Uwe Boll (and that’s saying something), who does nothing but alienate entire factions of society to sell some DVD’s and get his name in TV commercials. His shows are garbage, with nothing beneath the thin dermis of shock value. There is no depth to his characters, there are no intelligent attempts at storytelling, and there is certainly no point to any of his television shows. We all should’ve learned that when the incestual, cockless Mangler took over a season and a half of Nip/Tuck, but we didn’t. Or else this asshole would be stuck somewhere, writing novelizations of big budget action movies.

There’s no point in watching American Horror Story: in fact by doing it, you are helping degenerate television as a medium of art. And yes, I’m talking to the fans of Glee. SKIP IT!