A question, critique, and compliment that’s been posed-slash-levied-slash-given to this season of American Horror Story: Does this really feel like a season of American Horror Story at all? I’d been hesitant to give it too much thought — after all, we’d only been four episodes in before this week, and the departure from the usual burnout method of AHS was refreshing. Now at the midpoint of NYC, however, it feels appropriate to ask. To approach it as a question alone — no, it does not feel like a usual season of American Horror Story, at least not entirely. But whether that should be seen as a critique or a compliment has yet to be determined.
While releasing two episodes per week is being presented as nothing more than a scheduling decision, it does encourage viewers to interpret the two episode pairs as one whole. Moreover, the two episodes together have tended to follow a pattern. The first of the two sets out more as a crime thriller, where something bad will happen (the gay club arson of episode three or the murder of Barbara in episode five) but it doesn’t feel all that scary until the very end of the episode. Considering how much drawn-out torture we’ve witnessed in AHS history, the montage-like quality of these scenes has made them relatively tame.
With Barbara’s death, for example, one might have expected a longer sequence where Big Daddy lurks around the house, Barbara is suspicious that she sees someone but brushes it off, and finally, there’s a protracted strangulation scene. Instead, all of this is brief, with more emphasis on Patrick’s sadness upon finding her. Really, there was nothing scary about it. But as the first of the two episodes end, we are given some little fright to carry us to the next episode which itself continues to be a bit scarier, too. Both this week and last, the second hour is where we saw far more of the Mai Tai Killer and where we had a better opportunity to understand his motives. This week, for example, we learn that he’s constructing a sort of Frankenstein’s monster composed of dead gay men, intended to be a message to the City of New York about its hypocrisy in saying it’s so open and accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. Even in this case, previous seasons of AHS might have given us a better view of this creation, but still. It’s scary enough. All this is to say, based on this drawn-out two-episode system alone, this season feels something like half-AHS, half a Ryan Murphy thriller mystery.
Even so, that doesn’t mean it’s bad! It isn’t always excellent though, either. Episode five, “Bad Fortune,†spent a good deal of time in a basement-level psychic’s studio. For whatever reason, on top of running the bathhouse as her personal cabaret, Kathy also runs this studio, too. She’s looking for new employees when Fran feels hypnotically drawn in and applies. Without any prior experience whatsoever, Fran begins her first shift the very next day when Hannah and Adam walk in. Hannah is pregnant, and it’s revealed that Adam is the sperm donor. They decide to go to the psychic on a whim to learn the sex of the baby, but after a few failed starts, Fran, Hannah, and Adam begin only pulling death cards from the tarot. A deck that should only contain one death card becomes composed exclusively of them. It’s a good little semi-frightening foreboding bit … until it basically just happens again and again — to Adam when he returns with Theo and later to Gino. Honestly, we get it. Everyone involved is dealing with some horrible omen, some curse challenging their fate and destiny. There is something profound to these themes: Is fate an uncontrollable force? Are they naïve to even try and fight it? Or is there some other evil at hand hoping to convince them that’s the case? Previous seasons — like Hotel, Coven, and Apocalypse — asked these questions, too, but with the repetition of the tarot scenes, there is little subtlety to how this season is presenting those themes.
Another repeated AHS theme playing out with a bit more gravity is that of inciting a cultural Zeitgeist. The Mai Tai Killer (Whitley) continues to be the most interesting element of the season, and now we see him as even more complex, even sympathetic. As mentioned, he reveals to the two young men who were trapped in the elevator with him in episode four that he’s now about to kill that he is crafting a body using the parts of several others. This creation is something he intends to display during the NYC Pride parade in order to highlight the struggles and pain of NYC’s queer community, despite the lip service they’re given. He wants to enact change with this creation and force the world to witness the truth. He hopes, it seems, that by murdering all of these gay men, the gay community writ large will benefit. Later, in episode six, we learn that the Mai Tai Killer has been forced to work for the mob to help dispose of bodies. If he doesn’t, Henry (played by Denis O’Hare), who we also learn works for the mob, will reveal Whitley’s sexuality to his family.
In the midst of all this, we get one of the biggest reveals of the season so far: Patrick and Sam do know each other because they both accidentally killed a young man on Fire Island two years prior. Wearing a gimp mask and chained to a pillory, this young man accidentally suffocated while both Patrick and Sam unknowingly rail his dead body. If there’s any scene most AHS-y so far, it’s this one. While both Patrick and Sam had previously been suggested to be sadistic sickos, it seems that, instead, it’s this dark secret they share coloring them. In any case, Sam calls up Henry to help dispose of the body, who brings in Whitley to manage the gory bits. It’s here that we understand a bit better what Whitley means about the city’s hypocrisy — he’s witnessed firsthand how innocent gay men are disposed of like they’re nothing, without the city as an institution ever batting an eye. Maybe this guy’s got a point! As the story between Patrick, Sam, Henry, and Whitley is unfolding, Gino discovers their horrible secret, too. Devastating as it is, it brings him closer to learning who exactly the Mai Tai Killer is. In fact, as the episode ends, he’s about to follow him back to his house (apartment?) of horrors.
Body Count
• There has to be more to Kathy’s second business running the psychic parlor. In the beginning of episode five, she mentions a “new†business, and this is seemingly it. Yet, there’s no explanation of why she’s pursued this venture, especially when she doesn’t even believe in any of it. Something else is going on!
• Hannah’s pregnancy seems like a potentially rich source of meaning. This season is hypermasculine, but as one of the tarot cards further suggests, the pregnancy emphasizes a sense of the divine feminine. She also mentions that she had a dream that the baby had tentacles, which is surely a reference to the previous season where women did actually give birth to alien babies with tentacles.
• Obviously, there’s still the whole disease thing going on … and whatever the hell Big Daddy is. I’m sure we’ll get more of that later, but right now, it’s Mai Tai heavy.