American Horror Story: A Freakshow of Writing

Another year, another Sloppy Spectacle!
"Even a parrot can be taught to mimic. But did they give you the capacity to think? I sincerely doubt it." - Dr. Arthur Arden, American Horror Story, S02E10


American Horror Story is a very strange show. There are few other entities on television that dare to be as graphic and bold as it, yet at the same time, there are few other entities (on Cable) that have such sloppy writing. From an outside look, the show has everything: a high budget, great directors, fantastic actors on each season, and a premise that keeps on giving. However, it's the ultimate example of how just scripts and story alone can kill a creation. At the end of AHS's fourth season: Freakshow, audiences were left with a spectacle of unfinished story-lines, underutilized actors, and confusing decisions.

We start off the episode with Dandy, the season's resident "big bad" throwing a hissy fit at his newly purchased freaks. Ticket sales aren't happening, the show isn't coming together, and the not-at-all level headed Dandy is not pleased. After taking his verbal shit for a minute, Paul, Amazon Eve, and several other freaks knock him over and say that they quit "his" show. Upon our return after the opening credits, Dandy is ready for his first and last performance. He puts on a white suit, dons his ridiculously fun shoes, and loads up his golden gun with a seemingly endless amount of bullets. The following was one of the best scenes of American Horror Story. Dandy walks through the sunlit Freakshow, smile on his face, tune in his head, and guns down every single freak in the encampment, save for Desiree who hides in her closet. The scene is shocking, beautifully shot, and unique. Most shows aren't willing to have their entire supporting cast killed in one scene. Most shows aren't willing to show deformed men and women brutally gunned down. However, most shows also don't fall apart like Horror Story.
The Sweater-ed Psycho
After the Culling of Freakshow, Jimmy stumbles back to the camp, finding all of his friends dead. Desiree finds him and they plan their revenge. Dandy has taken Bette and Dot, the twins back to his house to marry them. With the twins, Desiree and Jimmy plot out a revenge, eventually poisoning Dandy's wine before putting him in a glass cage and letting him drown to death. As Dandy shouted, "I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU" before becoming fully submerged and dying, the three (four?) remaining freaks watched him die, observing the dead Dandy like those at the Museum of Oddities Museum observed the dead Ma Petite.
For the next half of the episode, we see Elsa Mars's end. She has finally made it big in Tinseltown, getting a star paved in Hollywood and being crowned "Queen of Friday Night." However, because of the recovery of footage from her time in Germany, she is going to be taken off the air. Thus, she declares that she will perform on Halloween, "going out with a bang." As expected, the haunting Edward Mordrake shows up but for some reason does not take her away to Freak Hell with our old friend Twisty. No, instead Elsa goes to a kind of Freak Heaven, going back to perform at the old Freakshow with all of our deceased freaks to accompany. During the final montage, we see that Jimmy married Bette/Dot and Desiree got married to that random Angus guy.

This was all well and good for an end result to the season. However, I couldn't help but be dissatisfied with how we got here.

Starting in Episode 11, when AHS returned from the December break, we were introduced to Neal Patrick Harris's Chester, a magician with an evil doll who told him to kill. He purchased the Freakshow, seduced Bette/Dot, cut Maggie in half, and then killed his evil doll. Then he basically just disappeared. What the fuck was the point of his character?
Love the actor, but what was the point
of that character?
Speaking of Maggie, what was her character arc? In the beginning of the season, she was working with the evil Stanley, played to perfection by Denis O'Hare. Then, she fell in love with Jimmy and began to love the Freakshow as well. When she was found out, Jimmy and her split apart until Jimmy lost his hands and Maggie volunteered to help with his wounds. She outed Stanley, getting him killed, and pledged herself to the Freakshow. Then, instead of either finding redemption or being cast out by the very freaks she had deceived, she was randomly cut in half by the aforementioned Chester. Again I ask, what was the point of the character?

This seemed to be a trend. Michael Chiklis's Dell Toledo started out with a lot of promise: a secretly gay strongman in a sham of a marriage with a son whom he did not know belonged to him. After some major character development and a blackmailing, Toledo lost all relevancy as he floundered around with no major plot. Then, his murder of another freak was outed (due to blackmail) and he was shot.

I could go on and on with these descriptions, but I think you get the idea. What this all brings out is that while American Horror Story is expert at exposition, they are very bad at following through. The idea for each character is strong, but when the plot has to develop, the show rarely follows through. Character arcs are cut short without a proper finish to their narrative, plotlines are created and dropped in the same episode, and actors are underutilized obnoxiously. The show is good, don't get me wrong. It is bold, it is beautiful, and it is a fanfare of fun character actors. However, it is forever held back from being "great" because of shoddy writing. Freakshow was promising at first, but much like previous seasons, fell to shambles toward the end.

All in all, this season outdid the horrid third season (Coven) and came together a bit better than the first season (Murder House) but was unable to top season two (Asylum).

It'll be interesting to see where the show heads in its fifth season. Will it increase quality? Drop off completely? Will Jessica Lange return? Time to play the waiting game again.

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