American Horror Story: Winter Kills
September 23, 2021 7:22 AM - Season 10, Episode 6 - Subscribe

Ursula launches a desperate plan to keep herself and her clients alive. Conclusion of Red Tide.
posted by kittens for breakfast (6 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Random Notes:

*Normally, a season of AHS drops subplots due to hazy editorial oversight, but this one seems like it just lost interest in a few things. Why the long intro with the state trooper? No idea; it led noplace. I guess it might have seemed like a dropped plotline if they'd just never mentioned the dead police chief again, but...you know...bodies never get found, right? Apparently the threatened investigation didn't add up to much. Whatevs!

*I'm not sure we needed the detail about the Chemist targeting racist cops; I was more amused when I thought the cop was just another asshole who wanted to be an actor or a writer, like everyone else in Hollywood. I imagine the Chemist had worked with all kinds of scumbags in her prior life, so I'm not sure why she suddenly felt the need to go vigilante on these guys in particular. I also think racist cops should be turned into zombies, of course, as all right-thinking people do. Okay!

*After Alma's weird twitches last week, I was expected her virtuoso performance to climax with a full-on vampire freakout; we don't really know how the black pill affects kids, and I thought the show was foreshadowing a dire outcome. I was a little disappointed that it all just ended with her eating a snotty kid, but I certainly don't mind seeing snotty kids become Baby Vampire Chow. It's cool!

*The author of the "failed Stallone from 1988" is pretty obviously Blake Snyder, screenwriter of Sylvester Stallone vehicle Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (actually from 1992), and more famously the author of Save the Cat!, an inexplicably popular guide to screenwriting. (But the character also seems to take inspiration from Robert McKee, as wonderfully portrayed in Adaptation.) Personally, I think Save the Cat! takes a lot of shit it doesn't deserve -- there is some good stuff in there! -- but I laughed to see the Blake Snyder guy get eaten by zombies anyway, because I am a complex person with many layers.

*And that's that, I guess, for AHS: Red Tide. I felt like this was a slight letdown -- somehow both too long and too short an ending -- and I was crushed that Billie Lourd must have been too busy filing teeth to put in an appearance, but overall, I dug it. Onward!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:55 AM on September 23, 2021 [2 favorites]


After what I felt was the strongest consistent series of episodes, this was a huge let down to me. The Chemist going along with Ursula long enough for her to burn down Hollywood after living quietly in P town for years?

While I enjoyed Denis O'Hare as always, it seems like that whole board situation was brought in to give Belle And Austin enough reason to go after Harry. But they had threatened him before so I don't think it was necessary at all or something that should have been introduced far sooner.

Basically I'm just pissed that Belle and Austin didn't make it because I found them the most likable characters. I'm not sure what that says about me as a person.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:02 PM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


So I had a migraine which meant I had a lot of time to think about why I didn't like this finale. The entire season utilized quiet restrained creepiness so well and then this episode was the complete opposite. We have the introduced and dropped trooper, the complete change of setting, and the vampire apocalypse ending all at odds with what has been leading to this episode. I get the joke of hollywood people destroying hollywood, that a writer would be unable to see the absolutely OBVIOUS PLOT POINTS leading to his own death, but it...just fell entirely flat for me especially since how many times do I have to watch the apocalypse on this show? It threw away all the creepiness it had built up to make the last episode essentially a joke.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:12 PM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


I really enjoyed the abbreviated storytelling of this half season, and the accelerated pace. For the first part of it.

But the finale felt like a rushed editing job and that there was supposed to be an episode or three missing before this finale.

Or that ending was a real ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ lets just close it off and call it a day - there's another half season that has to get made.
posted by porpoise at 12:21 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


I thought the city council meeting was the highlight of the season. And I am looking forward to next season, American Horror Story: Homeowners Association.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 4:39 PM on September 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


<shudder>
posted by porpoise at 5:09 PM on September 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


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