Monday, December 26, 2011 - Tuesday, December 27, 2011

American Horror Story Season 1- The first season, completed in a 24 hour period. Saw the first 4 one night, and spent the next day finishing the 12 episode season. Yes. This is an accomplishment. A perfectly fine day wasted on some mindless television. Worth it. Sure, the show essentially is horror cliches molded in a 'Dark Shadows' formula with not so unique ideas, then pop in all the sexual and violent nature that Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk brought to 'Nip/Tuck' (Not 'Glee', silly!) and there was season one of 'AHS'. While the show didn't hook me from the pilot episode, I was hooked by the series' best episode 4 and 5 'Halloween, Part 1 and 2'. If you don't enjoy the show at that point, I would give you free range to quit watching.


The performances where all quite good, with the most notable ones being from Jessica Lange (the crafty and nefarious neighbor),


Kate Mara (the crazed ex-lover),

-She's usually so much hotter.

Evan Peters (the psychopath boyfriend)… I'm noticing that the most memorable performances came from the show's villains.

- I saw never back down, and lets just say, this is different.

Not to say that it isn't nice seeing Dylan McDermott again (since I haven't seen him in anything since Bobby Donnell in 'The Practice'),


or Denis O'Hare (who is slowly winning me over in the unknown character actor category with his performances on this and 'True Blood' as Russell Edgington),


or how about the edgy and emotional performance by Taissa Farmiga (this is the first most, including myself have seen of her, and I can tell she has talent),


and Connie Britton (I haven't watched 'Friday Night Lights', I know that's her claim to fame, but I have been meaning to and will certainly get to it faster now).


Jeez, all the performances were great so I want to just go over them all. How about the altered perception thing they did with Frances Conroy/ Alexandra Breckenridge (hot or not?). Either way it was effective and shocking.



But I'll stop now.

On the note that the series will be continuing season 2 with a different story completely, I'm actually glad. Not that this story was bad… just completed. It ended. I don't need to watch some of supposed "To Be Continued…" type stories they set up. Those sound boring to me. I think the season ended fantastically, going from it's typical overbearing soap opera drama, to a lighter tone with a slight homage to the movie 'Beetlejuice'. If you watch the season, which you should in my opinion, you will know what I mean. No, it's not the greatest thing on television. No, it's not unique. But yes, it is consistently interesting.



- Jeff Bassin