American Horror Story: Freak Show Thoughts? — Page 10

And I think it's safe to say that NPH could greatly benefit from going to an acting class or two.

Yes but, in order to accomplish that, he'd need to take a break from blowing smoke up his own a**.

Unlikely.

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How is it he was a better actor at 15 than he is at 41?

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I don't have a problem with Neil Patrick Harris' lack of versatility. I think some of the best actors are stars who bring a strong star presence to a given role, Harris is very funny and has an ease on screen that more highly regarded actors would envy. I think David Fincher used his persona brilliantly in GONE GIRL (and yes, I know that was a very polarizing performance), but AMERICAN HORROR STORY is no Fincher drama. A bolder version of this arc would have turned Harris' showman charm and turned it into something creepy, he'd have been great as Dandy actually. The whole "my puppet does crazy things but it's actually me" is so blah, and his storyline with Bette and Dot had no relevance, no nothing.
Where are the stakes? I think that's why even though I was defending the season till fairly late, I am now joining those of you who have called BS on the season from the beginning. I guess I thought something would eventually tie the season together but every storyline that has been introduced has been so easily squandered and disposed of. And I can't forgive Ryan Murphy for wasting Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, and Sarah Paulson in roles that went nowhere.

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And I know this show never has any follow through (I was shocked they even had Jimmy find out about his dad--but wouldn't Danny Houston have left his job when Elsa took off?) but it seems even more of a waste to introduce NPH as the Twins' dream man, have them off camera read the file they say they won't read, walk out and then never see any reaction to what he did or anything. It's little, obvious things like this that are constantly missing.

I liked this episode. First one I enjoyed completely since the demise of Twisty. I like that NPH had the one moment of true horror in this season. Oh when those entrails fell out!

I'm glad there's only one more episode, since until tonight it's only been so much treading water for so many weeks.

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Ryan Murphy always makes me question where the line between "bad art" and "different goals" is. It's evident that he is conscious that everyone is judging him by a conventional standard of storytelling, and that he disdains that kind of criticism. I don't think he's shooting for narrative anymore as much as he is for tableaux.

And now that Dandy has murdered and coerced his way into literally owning the freak show, I find it increasingly hard to read it as anything other than classic Ryan Murphy meta-commentary on the criticism of his author avatar Darren Criss essentially becoming the star of "Glee" despite mixed critical reviews.

I can't remember all the details but was she really a singer? I know there was the hallucination of The Name Game. If they said she actually had been a singer, Sister Jude should have been a great actress given how well she supprrrrrrrressed ze German accent vunce she moved to that town ovuh neah Bahstin.

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Really loved the nod to the scene from Freaks with all of the characters crawling under the car in the rain!

Hot garbage.

Tonight I wondered if the nihilism and the senselessness is the point. Nothing mattered. No stakes. Was Elsa in heaven at the end?

Disappointing, lackluster, but, ultimately, satisfying, finale. No one here predicted it. I believe the prediction was that all of the freaks would go after Dandy. And I still say it all works better when taken as a whole, rather than on an episode-by-episode basis. Didn't really expect for it to amount to anything earth-shattering. But, for me, it was still a fun ride.

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Disappointing, lackluster, but, ultimately, satisfying, finale.

ROTFL


Why did they go ahead and let Elsa do the Halloween show after they discovered she had violated her morals clause?

Updated On: 1/22/15 at 10:54 AM

All honesty, though, even though Angela Bassett is pushing 60 I totally buy she's still of childbearing age. I want to play a game where you're shown stills of her from What's Love Got to Do With It and stills from American Horror Story and guess which is which. I can't get over how little she's aged in 20 years.