The grades for these things, obviously, don’t really matter, but I’ve never met a show I’ve had less idea how to grade than American Horror Story. By virtually any rubric you want to apply to it, it is a terrible, messed-up television show. And yet by doing virtually everything horribly, it becomes preposterously entertaining. I giggle more watching this show than most new comedies, and though a few of those giggles are earned—like Hayden talking about how she was not going back to that Norm’s—most of them are entirely unintentional—like the sad music starting to play as Larry the Burn-Faced Man buried Hayden, whom he’d just killed with a shovel, in the backyard, followed by Ben putting up a gazebo on that exact spot, seemingly in the space of 30 minutes, no sweat. The show is wildly flailing, trying to do so much and failing, that it sometimes seems that laughing at it is like pointing at a kid who’s drowning in the deep end and letting out a guffaw. But is there any other response to this sort of thing?
Tonight’s episode was interrupted by a short vignette in which the murder of Sal Mineo was portrayed for no apparent reason. It came out of nowhere, it was connected to the plot only tangentially (Vivien was on one of those murder tours where the guide was telling the story of how he was killed), and it seemed to be trying all at once to be a serious portrayal of a hate crime against a gay man—stabbed for trying to hook up with the wrong man—and a weird parody of a ‘70s gay porn, complete with bow-chicka-wow-wow soundtrack. This was almost immediately followed by a lengthy flashback into the history of the house itself, including its first occupants, a young couple known as Charles and Noreen. Charles was played by Matt Ross, better known as Alby from Big Love, and if you thought his character on that show was weird and repressed, this new one spends his free time sewing what appear to be oversized bat wings onto pig corpses. Fun for all!
I mean, how do you even approach that? On some level, the people behind this show are aware of how batshit insane it is, and they seem to be taking some of this on with an arch sensibility. I’m pretty sure Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk and their writers (including Jennifer Salt, credited with tonight’s episode’s script) are aware that the sad story of Charles and Noreen is inherently ridiculous and are having fun with these sorts of horror tales. (There’s a lot of H.H. Holmes in this story, and I enjoy our continuing guided tour through the history of American serial killers and mass murderers.) I kind of think if the show was just its mythology—if the main characters were Moira and Constance somehow—I would like the show more. I can even imagine a show where Moira and Constance battle over the family living in the house, and the family’s just a sideshow in the background whom we barely ever see. But, alas, it’s too late for that now.
Instead, we’re stuck with the crazy, histrionic Harmons. Ben’s slipping under thanks to the laudanum somebody’s slipping him. (He thinks it’s Moira.) He finally lets slip that he finds Moira very attractive, even as it really puzzles his wife. He apparently pushes a patient to attempt suicide in the midst of a session, and he’s just surrounded by crazy chicks on all sides. (The rampant sexism of this show would be offensive were it not so goddamn ridiculous.) Vivien wants to move out of the house—quite sensibly—but she’s talked out of it by her husband, who admits that they don’t have any money, thanks to a bad investment he made in the Plot Contrivance Factory, and her daughter, who says she must stay in the house because that’s what the plot needs her to do. The episode also has a doctor tell Vivien that her baby could be harmed by the stress of moving, instead of just the stress of, y’know, living in a house haunted by evil spirits and worst and murderous kooks at best. Yeah, I’m guessing the baby was just peachy keen with that home invasion last week! (Actually, knowing this show, it probably was.) Anyway, the fetus apparently likes the house, too, because when Vivien goes on the tour and the guide launches into the Charles/Noreen story, her body discharges a little blood right in her special area, causing her white pants to go crimson red. She runs inside the house, told by the guide that she can’t, only to tell him that she can because, “It’s my house.” Right.