American Horror Story: Winter of our Discontent
October 25, 2017 5:19 PM - Season 7, Episode 8 - Subscribe

The cult goes all Handmaid's Tale-meets-Fight Club, which is a real problem, since basically everyone in the cult who isn't a stone cold idiot is a woman. Meanwhile, an extended flashback to ramp up the gore and pad the runtime.
posted by kittens for breakfast (4 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Winter isn't the only one feeling a little discontent at this point. As usual with AHS, the season began with a lot of promise, but bullshit plotting and general laziness are fucking with the follow through...also as usual with AHS.

Let's look at the Jesus-y haunted house. Not a bad horror concept -- fundamentalist Christians really do stage haunted houses intended to "scare straight" their patrons. But it's maybe not a big enough idea for an entire season, so the writers must have filed it away with plans to shoehorn it in at some point when they had to add another act to a episode that ran short. Fair enough. But what the fuck, I ask you, do we make of it this deep into Cult? Do we believe Winter's story at all? Was Kai really an internet troll with a heart of gold who went insane trying to fight fire with fire? Was this story all a line of bullshit meant to keep Ivy and Beverly on board? Will we ever even revisit this storyline? I would be astonished if we did. Also: does Winter's character even kind of make sense? She "trolled the social justice warriors for fun," then supported Hillary, then co-founded the cult? Jesus Christ, girl, get a fucking ethos.

And that's not even addressing the main story, which is...I think calling it a hot mess is fair.

I'm still enjoying the performances and the vibe of the show, but this is about as close to walking out on AHS as I've ever been (well...Freakshow really sucked). Three more episodes.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:42 PM on October 25, 2017 [3 favorites]


Anyone that seriously holds out hope for an AHS season to not be spinning out of control at least this badly two-thirds of the way through has either never seen a Ryan Murphy production or is a complete fucking lunatic.

The ritual made me laugh so hard. And it’s really neither here nor there, but I thought it was interesting to discover via Wikipedia that six of the seven directors this season are women.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:15 PM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


The ritual was hilarious (although I am not so sure I'm comfortable, even in the absurd context of AHS, with sexual coercion played for laughs), but the tonal shift was so jarring that I don't think the story quite survived it. Cult has mostly done an admirable job of walking a line between horror and satire, but the ritual basically landed us in an episode of Scream Queens. Frankly, I wouldn't be shocked to learn this scene was originally written for Scream Queens. Which is a show I liked. But it's not this show.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:50 PM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


spinning out of control at least this badly

Yeah, but there were always interesting characters that I like, sometimes a whole bunch of them.

There's not one character that I like, except perhaps - remotely - Winter. But she isn't much of a character at all, more like a weathervane.

The themes of this season I find extremely stupid and annoying; feels like it's making light of the actually terrible things that are happening. Unlike most previous seasons, there's nothing endearing to be found.

I'm kind of glad, though, that I stuck with it. As it deviates further from current events it's gotten more palatable. They should have started with the Judgement House as the teaser, then started the season with Aly and Ivy's fast deteriorating relationship.

The 'Cult' didn't need to be political, shoehorning in current events as a symbol of relevancy was a mistake.

Freakshow really ...

Hey now! There were some incredible actors/characters. I found the themes fascinating, plot be damned.
posted by porpoise at 6:38 PM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


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