The thing about Ryan Murphy, co-creator of Glee and American Horror Story, is that he's great at beginnings. Look at the first seasons of Glee and Nip/Tuck, excellent and edgy shows that quickly spiraled out of control. What's genius about American Horror Story, Murphy's anthology franchise (co-created with Brad Falchuk), is that it restarts every year with a new story and new characters. Murphy gets to 'begin' over and over, and over.
But the unfortunate reality of the show's fourth iteration, American Horror Story: Freak Show, which starts on FX Wednesday, 8 October, at 10pm ET (and airs in the UK on 21 October), is that is starting to feel a little bit paint by the numbers if the paint is blood and eye shadow and the numbers are all on Jessica Lange's face. Find a big monster, a collection of people that are on the fringes of society, and a setting that is plucked out of any high school gymnasium haunted house. Then add some sexual perversion, a whole lot of murder, a significant dose of camp, and some of the worst accents this side of an acting school in Glasgow and you have yourself a show.
This time around the setting is 1952 in Jupiter, Florida, and Lange's washed-up dame du jour is Elsa Mars, the leader of a troupe of circus freaks that has fallen on hard times and needs a new act to pack the theater. Elsa recruits conjoined twins (calling them Siamese must be politically incorrect by now, right?) Bette and Dot (both played by ensemble regular Sarah Paulson) who are implicated in the murder of their mother. Or was it Twisty the Clown, the demonic-looking killer who is slaughtering every townsperson he comes across except for the few youngsters he holds captive in his trailer in the woods?
There are definitely some delights in Freak Show. The show is more concerned with composition this season, offering up tableaux that are as vivid as they are certifiably horrifying. In an early scene two teens have an idyllic picnic by a lake. In a wide shot we see the clown stoically lurking in the background, sullying their perfect day with the spectre of depravity. David Lynch couldn't do better.
That seems to be the major subversion in this season. All the Norman Rockwell icons of an idealized America are twisted and made grotesque. A milkman stumbles upon a murder. The surprise at a Tupperware party is one of the freaks getting freaky with housewives in the bedroom. A candy striper (played by one of Meryl Streep's daughters, no less) joins an orgy of deformed lovers.
The other theme is the perverting nature of fame and single-minded lust for it. Lange's Elsa wants nothing more than to be a star and sort of fancies herself one in her own mind. In one memorable scene she walks out of a diner without paying her check whispering, 'It's on the house. Stars never pay!' Lange, even with the histrionics she usually brings to the show, is especially vulnerable this season, allowing herself to look ugly - the creases in her face increased by bad makeup and lighting. Still, in her mirror, she sees something flawless and gorgeous, deserving of adoration.
There is no better display of this then an off-kilter performance in the premiere where Elsa sings a cover of David Bowie's Life on Mars while dressed in the same costume he wears in the 1971 music video. This seems to be a thing that Murphy is doing this season. The second episode features one of the characters performing a Fiona Apple song. It has finally come to this, the outlandish, overproduced covers of Gleehave transmogrified themselves over to American Horror Story.
Both numbers are highlights of their episode, at least visually and based on ballsiness, but they are so out of touch with the rest of the episode and so jarringly anachronistic that they raise more questions than increase pleasure.
American Horror Story has always felt like Halloween, but without the haunted houses and the witches. The show is like stuffing your face with every different conceivable kind of candy all at once: Snickers, Mounds, Junior Mints, Sour Patch Kids, those chalky wafers that no one wants and those chewy nut clusters that your mother has to always remind you what they're called but you forget anyway. The show is like shoving them all in your mouth at once and then trying to make sense of the flavor. What you're left with is a sugar buzz and a stomach ache.
Some of the elements, as always, are better than others. Lange is great, as always, and Frances Conroy as a overindulgent serial mom is wonderful. Everything about Twisty the Clown will scare the pants off of you and visually arrest you at the same time. The rendition of what perception is like for the twins is also spectacular and could lead to some great narrative tricks in future episodes.
Still, with all that, it seems like the show is missing a center. Maybe it just isn't far enough along yet to have it congeal as a whole. This thing is, after all, paint by numbers. We'll have to see if blends in to a whole masterpiece or just ends up being a bunch of pretty colors sitting next to each other, trying to be something more than a smudge.
Post By http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/oct/09/american-horror-story-freak-show-clown-creep-absurd
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