Quote of the Day

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Unless it was an appreciation of Dylan McDermott's not-quite-often-enough nakedness (a one and a two and a three), I really haven't given American Horror Story its due here at the blog - that's probably because I was always watching the episodes a couple of days late and felt the conversation had moved on by the time I got around to it each week. I didn't even see the finale until a week or two after it aired. So let it be said - and I will keep this entirely spoiler-free - that I enjoyed the show thoroughly for its balls to the wall everything including the deranged kitchen sink storytelling aesthetic, and give or take a Diane Ladd in Enlightened I need Jessica Lange to have an Emmy come Emmy-time deep in my bones. Lange's performance was an insanely hypnotic utterly original tight-wire act - from hairdo to toenails, that character was bursting out of her in brilliant strokes, both broad (what a broad broad) and infinitesimally precise. (And oh, that epic final speech!)

Anyway, if you want to leap head-first into spoilers I recommend you go check out EW's look-ahead at what might be to come for the series' second season by former-Lost-obsessive Doc Jensen, who knows his way around a clue or two. Jensen also gives his thoughts on what we've already seen though, and I agree with most of his criticisms but especially like his praise:

"Still, in the moment, American Horror Story 1.0 was – for me – one of the most purely entertaining TV shows of 2011. Great performances. Unique tone. Often really, really funny. Season 1 actually may have been a better at dark comedy than horror. The greater whole may have been flawed, but the individual installments routinely delivered on what the title promises – creepshow thrills; subversive riffs on uniquely American fears; winky wallowing in horror stories of all kinds, true and imagined. The show often tapped the cold, maddening terror of eternity, wherever it may be spent. Such intellectual chill is always valuable, because it begs an always-useful question: How are we living life now? The season covered or touched on many big, provocative themes — divorce, abortion, guilt, religion, cultural fixations with youth and beauty and fame and darkness, cultural violence against women and homosexuals and children. It made for a murky mess of meanings, but I like murky mess, and anyway, I think attitude was the point: This show had some seriously angry cheek, furiously snarky at The Way Things Are, pissy protest pulp for The Year of The Protester."

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