The show is too pretentious and sadistic
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — American Horror Story
nazcarfanatic24 — 9 years ago(October 07, 2016 01:33 AM)
I would go so far as to call Murphy a sadist. Every season of AHS starts off promising, but give it halfway or even less nowadays, and it will go completely off the rails, For instance Murphy will go through great lengths to sacrifice characterization for exploitation and sadism. Take Kit walker in Season 2 of AHS, one of the few decent characters, who will over come the odds.or so we think. It turns out even he couldn't have a happy ending, and had to have a completely out of character psychotic break and then die in his 40's in the epilogue.
Now take Kyle in Season 3 of AHS: Kyle is an all american kid with a promising future and completely righteous and making all the right moves, what could have worked well as a tragic story of a good person dying as a result of Madison's wrath and being reanimated into a cold blooded monster would have been just fine. But NO Murphy had to destroy any happiness and sense of good in a good person's life via a few flashback's later its revealed that, despite no previous indication, Kyle was sexually abused by his mother.
Another example in Season 4 of AHS: Freak-show would have worked incredibly well if they had just kept it as a social commentary like it originally started out as, but none the less it kept getting darker and darker especially with twisty the clown. NOW here again is where Murphy's sadism kicks in. It couldn't be that twisty was just this deranged deformed killer(which less is more worked with this guy) no, a horrible nihilistic backstory had to occur. It turns out that twisty was a mentally challenged clown who was framed for sexual abuse, OK, this could work with more elaboration, BUT they had to take it a step further and make it to not only he tries to kill himself and fails, he becomes a brutal sadistic killer. That kind of leap makes no sense, and I'm sorry but you cant make those transitions in one or two flashbacks. If you made a self contained season on twisty and built the progression slowly then it would have worked.
Also he has a rape fetish too which is sadistic in itself. Bottom line, he goes out of his way to destroy any sense of happiness and hope, and the few times there is a happy ending its usually short lived or comes with a catch.
Second point on Ryan Murphy's pretentiousness is his use of LGBT characters. Now before your trigger warnings go off, just let me elaborate. Murphy has a bad habit of creating LGBT characters for the PURPOSES OF: getting explicit exploitative sex scenes out of them, like he did in season 5, or for the sole purpose of putting them in a time period where they are oppressed, or putting them in a period where they are not only oppressed but their lover has to be savagely killed, have a psychotic break, have a psychotic desire for revenge, or go through incredibly brutal trials and tribulations with no payoff and no love or happiness with their significant other in the end.
Third. Predictable plots: We know what direction the plots are going to take, good characters are going to be either:revealed to be sociopathic sadists or defeated by the nihilistic world they live
Fourth and Final thought. He seems to not stick with an idea too long. Seasons 3 and five were notorious for their inconsistent writing, and season 2 was brought down by the Deus Sex Machina/MacGuffin of the Aliens. Overall his shows are good, but if his pattern continues they will remain good, but not great -
Fragelzrock — 9 years ago(October 07, 2016 07:44 AM)
The show is called American
Horror
Story. This is his take on modern horror, which in its self usually involves a lot of "shock" elements. As someone mentioned, bad things happen to everyone.
I do agree that there are past inconsistencies that make you wonder if there were too many hands in the pot when it came to writing, but so far this season seems to be getting back on track, sticking to a consistent plot. -
CelesteChere — 9 years ago(October 07, 2016 08:02 AM)
I kind of agree too, especially the part about 'shock' elements. This show is lousy with them and it seems like it's all about shock value over genuine horror and fear. I can only speak for myself here, but I've never found AHS to be 'scary', but maybe that's because I've become so desensitized by horror in general with all the scary movies I've watched growing up. The stuff on AHS is horrifying to watch and definitely disturbing but not scary and doesn't keep me up at night with the lights on. It's been a while since any movie or tv show has been able to have that effect on me. I'm sure this show scares
some
people though