This Stew is Fabulous!
It’s a testament to how great television is right now that it’s taken a few days for me to talk about the latest season of American Horror Story.
A little history on my relationship with AHS. I loved Murder House. Asylum was frightening. Coven celebrated our love for Stevie Nicks. I slipped in the middle and half-heartedly watched Freak Show. I skipped Hotel and came back with Roanoke which I binge-watched. A few weeks ago I binge-watched Hotel and was reminded of why I loved this show and Ryan Murphy so much.
From Nip/Tuck to AHS, Murphy explores the sordid details about each of us that makes us human. His characters are honest in that they are allowed to see each other at their very worst and choose to love the other person anyway.
I’m brought back continually to the characters played by Evan Peters. He plays the most deplorable characters on this show and there is a small part of you that always asks, there’s some good in there, right?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Peters is Murphy’s muse for this show. I look for his character as soon as a new season begins. What his character does helps me to figure out how the season will go.
For this latest season, in the first five minutes we learn that Mr. Gallant (Peters’ character) loves his grandma Evie very much. With the threat of a nuclear missile headed to Los Angeles, he gallantly grabs his grandmother and heads to the airport following his psychotically rich client that has an invite to an Apocalypse survival safe house.
One episode in and I have no idea what this season is about. The survivors from Los Angeles have spent 18 months holed up on a site where they are barely fed and are forced to listen to the same song on repeat all day. Their guardians or captors are played by Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates.
It’s explained to the survivors that they are in one of a few safe houses and that they are awaiting direction. After a year and a half, no one has reached out to them. Food rations drop so low that the guardians resort to making a stew that would have most protesting. The only one to enjoy it was Grandma Evie and that moment is when I knew I would love this wicked season.
An individual from headquarters arrives and we have no idea what he is about or if his purposes are for good or evil. After a year and a half listening to the same song and eating small cubed rations, I doubt the group would mind whatever he came at them with.
The safe house they reside in could possibly have been a male coven. I also don’t know how Murder House will play into this season, but it’s a post-apocalyptic Ryan Murphy world so anything is possible. Including stew.
