Well. if you don't mind some spoilers for Season 3, according to Tumblr racism has been solved forever by the casting of Angela Basset as an extremely vindictive Marie Laveau who's out to punish the modern descendents of white witches from back in the day for the entirety of slavery, or so I've gathered. I'm taking this with a pinch of salt because Tumblr but it does at least sound interesting. I've always been a fan of the woman in question and as such am considering skipping to Coven just to see if it's any more engaging than Season 1.
ETA: Zachary Quinto, you are so much better than this. What the hell are you doing.
TheCrawlingChaos, December 28, 2013, 02:19:18 pm
Luckily the focus of the second season has shifted off of racism. Unfortunately it now falls instead on homophobia in a lesbian-victims sort of sense. That is to say homophobia, Catholicism, rape, child abuse, and Nazi war crimes. I think maybe the writers don't actually know what horror is, so they're just putting in as many uncomfortable things as possible. Plus, due to it trying to be darker, the second season is more shitty Saw-ripoff and less hilariously dumb.
There's also this weird anti-psych theme that's running throughout it. In the first season, the psychiatrist slept with a student, did poorly at his job, and near the end had a breakdown where he said all psychiatrists were liars and that they were basically the same as psychopaths. In the second season
the psychiatrist is a serial murderer who tricks all the people who come to him for help, as well as taking a lot of time to show off old theories that have been debunked, like behavioral modification for curing homosexuality. Someone on the writing staff really doesn't like psychiatrists.
Plus, no spoilers, but while the first season had some vague focus (ghosts haunting a house that traps your spirit there) the second season is just random. Nazi medical experiments, serial killers, demonic possession, and fucking aliens all at once. Even Supernatural had more thematic consistency.
I have no idea how this show won awards.
I considered watching AHS, but I've been put off by the promotional posters I keep seeing. I mean, what the fuck is this even supposed to be?
Moriarty, December 28, 2013, 05:31:12 pm
You are supposed to be a heterosexual male and find that hot, because snakes and women's mouths and shit. Season 1 of AHS seemed to be trying for a simultaneous adult male/teenage girl demographic with the constant male-fantasy sex scenes alongside the Twilight-esque pretty boy/outcast girl romance, but with Season 2 it seems to be punching up the male fantasy stuff a lot more.
Also season 2 is set in the sixties which makes me guess the writers saw Mad Men and said "let's do that".