The first season of this show was awesome. As it moved through the subsequent seasons it lost me over and over with the turn toward perversion and vulgarity. It squandered a fantastic possibility with the Freakshow season when it wasted so much time on unnecessary sexual garbage. Hotel season started well but then bogged down in wanton scenes of sexual crudity. At every turn it abandoned the potential for horror and suspense for the cheap so-called "gratification" of shock sex. After slogging through season 2, I abandoned each subsequent season before it was over.
Season 6, though? It could still spiral off into gratuitous and worthless perversity but to this point it's hewing much closer to the horror-mystery story. It's better this way. The story so far is pretty good.
It's tying in America's first real mystery -- what happened to the colonists at Roanoke.
It's got mystery, disturbing imagery, some dark horror. It's lacking true scares, but that's largely because Cuba Gooding's acting is so horribly bad. Every time he's on the screen he takes me out of the story.
Biggest problem is the acting in general. It's always been good even in the terrible seasons, but this one falters badly with Cuba in the lead. He's awful. Lady Gaga isn't ever going to be an actress, but she's better than you'd expect. As a whole, the acting isn't as good as you'd want. Sarah Paulson is half assing it. So is Lilly Rabe. I'm really not looking forward to Evan Peters making his inevitable appearance. He's a terrible actor and will only drag it down further.
The best character to me so far is Cricket. That queer little fellow is amusing and interesting.
I'm going to stick with it until/unless it slides off into psycho sexual vulgarity. Hope it doesn't. May be hoping for too much. I don't think Murphy and Falchuk can help themselves.
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