The Cutprice Guignol

When American Horror Story first came out, helmed by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, I really, truly loved it.

It was mainstream horror, attracting great actors, taken seriously by critics and given the budget and space to really shine in an era when the genre was still seen as somewhat of a sideshow – those first couple of seasons in particular, I still hold in pretty high regard, despite some of their obvious problems.

But the show has had, at least as far as I’m concerned, a downright generational drop-off. Falchuk and Murphy seemed incapable of seeing a single story through even a short season run, and what had started as a fun wander through various horror settings and sub-genres turned into frustrating, indulgent slop. Though the show now has a dozen seasons in its back catalogue, it never really developed past its origins; it peaked with Asylum, and since then, seems to have been reasonably satisfied trundling between average and awful, with moments of rare excellence, usually from the inexplicably-brilliant cast it somehow continues to attract.

In the years since American Horror Story hit our screens, it really set the stage for anthology horror shows to dominate the genre in the following decade – only problem is, it’s been overtaken by most of them and then some. Slasher, THEM, Channel Zero – all of them leave AHS in the dust. So it has some serious ground to make up, especially after the dreadful, Kim Kardashian-starring Delicate of season twelve.

Which brings me to the eponymously-titled season thirteen. It’s been touted as a real season for the fans, bringing back virtually all of the show’s major stars from over the years, many of whom are picking up multiple iconic roles to reflect back on its long-running history. Which is not necessarily a terrible idea on paper; a bit of self-reference can serve a show, especially one that’s been as culturally-impactful as American Horror Story and has run for more than a decade and a half. But AHS has consistently shown itself to be virtually incapable of handling its own in-universe stories without fucking them up in some profound way – at least, as far as I’m concerned. But I figured I would give these first few episodes a try, and, after my AHS hiatus, figure out if the show has managed to pick up on some of the quality that made it such a hit in the first place. And…

It’d be remiss of me to say that there was nothing consistently good about this season so far, because there is, and it’s Jessica Lange. Returning as her iconic season one character Constance Langdon (at least, for now), she’s by far the best thing about the opening salvo of this thirteenth season, pitch-perfect and just immaculately-performed even when Murphy and the writer’s room as a whole seem intent on throwing nonsense at her. You could make this woman talk her way through a urethral sounding, and she would make it work; I know, because they did. The only giggle the show got out of me was Constance telling the hapless survivor of a plane crash that she read about it on Yahoo News; Lange works magic in this role and will no doubt continue to over the course of the season.

But as for the rest of the cast…well, they’re not so lucky. With the ridiculously short episode runtimes (with none stretching past thirty-five minutes so far), the crammed-in cameos from whoever they could convince to come back hardly get time to breathe – Evan Peters, returning as Tate and Kai, really feels like he’s sleepwalking through these scenes, while the insufferable (both on and off-screen) Emma Roberts delivers a gay slur and a by-now hopelessly dated reference to her original turn in Coven within the first thirteen (heh) seconds of screentime. Billie Lourd – whose best moment on the show, as far as I’m concerned, was her weeping with joy while a man with a huge penis was sealed to her for an eternity in the afterlife – seems pretty much here to lampshade the season’s more grating gimmicks, and Sarah Paulson is wasted as little more than a mannequin for this season’s collection of fetching griege lipstick. Joey Pollari, one of the few new additions to the cast, feels like little more than a conduit for returning characters to be dangled in front of the audience like a set of plastic keys in front of a toddler, and whose constant counting to thirteen only serves to pad truncated episodes even further.

It’s just all so strikingly, gallingly bad – we’re talking literal ChatGPT exposition, hopelessly over-the-top direction that comes across more seasick than stylish, a tone that leans too far into the absurd with little to nothing to ground it. Murphy couldn’t even resist digging up Elizabeth Short all over again, after the show’s grotesque usage of her in the first season – they’re running through AHS’s greatest hits here, and it just so happens that most of them have dated terribly.

It’s ugly and boring and disjointed, and seems uninterested in addressing any of the issues that have plagued the series for so long. But hey – as long as it clings to its moderate popularity and keeps eating its own tail to refer back to its glory days, why would it need to change? The real American Horror Story is the potential we flubbed along the way. Well, that, and Ryan Murphy threatening a Glee reboot.

Where does 13 stack up for you, so far, in the grand scheme of all things American Horror Story? Are you going to stick with it to find out where this all comes together (if it does at all), or have you given up? Let me know in the comments, and, should you be so inclined, check out my increasingly – furious recaps of the show’s earlier seasons here. If you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me by buying my books or dropping me a tip via my Support page.

(header image via Wikipedia)