Good intentions or not, it does help to stick to a dramatic arc and follow through on characters and a storyline. While I deeply loved the AIDS Cabaret episode, I found it tonally a mess. It was typical of what Murphy does. Huge shifts in tone and choices that make no sense. Shoe horning Patti LuPone in so she could sing was IMO a complete fail. Her character's behavior made no sense, and it really ruined the episode. There was no reason she had to go to benefit to tie up Blanca. Blanca was there already. It was a head scratcher. Throwing in Pray's sexual abuser also seemed tangential.
I found Candy making yet another extended appearance exhausting. I'm also realizing that when you take all this time to highlight a dead character and LuPone you lose time with Angel, Papi, Elektra and others. Their arcs could be continued as well rather than having LuPone sing as LuPone. It stopped the episode cold for me. So at this point of the 10 episodes we lost an entire one with the Candy monologues and this one to a musical episode.
I'm hoping they get the focus back on the main players and stop with the after school special type episodes.
"The sexual energy between the mother and son really concerns me!"-random woman behind me at Next to Normal
"I want to meet him after and bang him!"-random woman who exposed her breasts at Rock of Ages, referring to James Carpinello