Wednesday, March 04, 2015

American Horror Story: Freak Show

American Horror Story Freak ShowThe fourth season of American Horror Story, subtitled Freak Show, did not, alas, match Coven in its greatness. 

I’m not saying it wasn’t good, since there’s still nothing like it out there and its originality is mind boggling, it’s just that at times I felt a little bored by it.  I just didn’t feel as invested in the storylines as in the previous seasons.

In spite of that, the characters were all fully fleshed out and the cast is always top notch, so if you enjoyed the show previously you won’t be disappointed, I just felt like this past season was the weakest to date.

Perhaps, the easiest way to explain what I mean is to just look at Kathy Bates’ and Angela Bassett’s characters.  In Coven the former was an infamous grand dame who tortured her slaves and who ends up cursed to immortality; the latter was a very powerful voodoo queen who dreams of taking over Jessica Lange’s position as Supreme, the leader of all witches.

In Freak Show, Bates is a bearded lady who befriends and does the heavy lifting for Lange’s character, who owns the freak show.  Bassett is a lady with three breasts that are barely shown and simply joins the show.  It’s not that the characters aren’t developed.  They are, especially Bates’, but they’re just not very impressive nor memorable.

Ultimately, I would recommend Freak Show to any fan of the series because (a) it’s not that bad and (b) there are some revelations that create links to the previous seasons.  This sets up the possibility that the producers’ ultimate goal might be to have a unifying arc in spite of the individual nature of each season.

Grade – Season 4: 6

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