I’m all for fun time-wasters (like this blog). I’ll watch a
stupid movie. I’ll take a quiz and post the results on Facebook. But every
week, I increasingly feel like American
Horror Story: Freak Show is God’s weekly signal that I really do need to
make a change in my life because I’m wasting so much of it by watching this
kind of shit on TV.
I liked the first season (except for that sad sack actress
whose name I’m too lazy to Google) and through some mental gymnastics was able
to justify the ridiculousness of Asylum.
Except for Frances Conroy, I didn’t care for Coven. But this season (Shit
Show, as we subtitle it) with the carnies takes the cake. It’s repetitive,
incoherent and just plain stupid. I really can’t think of another, more elegant
word for it than stupid. Ryan Murphy is just throwing a bunch of crap at the
wall and very little of it is sticking.
Last week I had really had enough. It was a boring episode
that ended with something awful: the murder of Ma Petite. I suppose the character
is an adult but her size and temperament make the viewers think of a child so
basically, a guy broke a little girl’s neck on screen. The strong man killed
the most defenseless character. I would rather not have seen that.
I don’t even know why the strong man had to kill Ma Petite.
I’m kind of in and out of the show but didn’t he only do that because Stanley
blackmailed him for seeing him in that gay bar? They were both at the gay bar
so couldn’t the strong man just blackmail Stanley back? Isn’t killing a person
the size of a toddler too high a price to pay no matter what the alternative?
Anyway, at least I got a few laughs out of seeing the Amazon kick his ass.
Lobster Boy also doesn’t make sense to me. Having four
fingers fused into two really isn’t that bad a deformity (especially compared
to people like Paul with the seal arms) and even though some people in the ‘50s
weren’t the most enlightened, some of those people were and would not have run
screaming from him. Wearing oven mitts in a dark bar just draws more attention
to his hands than just walking around like normal. At least he dropped the
attitude about Meep dying after realizing that Lobster Boy effectively killed
him by not surrendering after he killed a cop.
I couldn’t stand that killer clown. I didn’t find him scary
whatsoever. I think Murphy just figured, “Hey, clowns are scary so there’s no
need for me to write a script. Just stand there and glower and the audience
will scream.” I had zero sympathy upon learning his backstory. Yeah, it was sad
that the other carnies falsely accused him of being a pedophile. But you know
what, a lot of awful things happen to people and the real test of character is
how we deal with them. Twisty the Clown dealt with his tragedy by kidnapping a
bunch of kids and killing their parents. I just can’t bring myself, even in
fiction, to think a sad past mitigates serial murder, either morally or
legally.
This season should be subtitled Poor Coping Skills because no matter how outsiders treat them, some
of these carnies are awful people who have done the most damage to their own
community. We could also subtitle it Assholes
With Disabilities.
Frances Conroy was by far the best thing about Coven but she’s the one of the worst
things about Freak Show. She just
stands around and shrieks at her son across the dining room table. I have no
use for the son and only enjoyed his performance because it facilitated Matt
Bomer getting near-naked on camera. That was far and away the highlight of the season
for me.
Kathy Bates is abysmal in this. Her Baltimore grand mal
seizure accent is impenetrable and I can’t even hear what she says anymore. I
can only hear the accent so it makes me laugh even when she’s trying to say
something serious. She should be embarrassed by her performance.
And yet I have watched half a season of this bullshit,
complaining the whole time, like a diner who eats half a steak and then wants
to send it back to the kitchen for being overcooked. We watch because there’s
nothing else on Thursday nights when we catch this on-demand. I’ll probably
give in and keep watching just because I need a laugh or a hate watch.
But I’ll feel terrible the whole time. I really need to
figure out why I’m wasting my life like this. I really need some kind of change
to make my life, or at least Thursday nights, more meaningful. Maybe while American Horror Story is on downstairs,
I’ll go to the bedroom and sing “Man in the Mirror” into the mirror. Make that
change.
No comments:
Post a Comment