Scream Queens (No Spoilers) — Page 7

But that's an element that Murphy is VERY proud of. In every interview I've read he seems to think it's a first that he is involved in a show where anyone could die at any moment...*rolls eyes* I will admit I am liking Nasim Pedrad and her charcter--who initially I thought would be yet another one-joke existence (her love of the 90s.) Maybe it's just the actress, but they have actually made her oddly appealing. I also thought the bizzarro scene with her and Jamie Lee and the white noise machine with slasher sounds was funny but that *was* because of the actors (although it did remind me of an ex of mine who always needed the tv on to fall asleep and often it was left on to some grizzly slasher movie.)

Yeah, well, maybe someday the call outs will reach critical mass and the industry will leave the two toilet freckle shouldered small gentaliaed lace curtain mick potato eater behind.

And this is a good summation as any:

obtuse, obvious, and outdated ideas masked as satire

I think the class meets once a week, so it's conceivable it would be three hours long. That's actually some of the most solid plotting in this.

I think the arm guy was a different guy.

Yes, it was. They're all too old, but that's the least of the show's problems.

OK WTF was up with the random evil sorority girls stand up to random guys asking them to smile and whistling at them and have a drawn out fight scene with them? Was that meant to be some sort of commentary?

Was that meant to be some sort of commentary?

I think it was. It was hamfisted as hell, but I'm sure it was supposed to be a revenge fantasy for women who are constantly told to smile by strange men.

EricMontreal22 said: "I admit I didn't get the Taylor Swift thing at all simply cuz I somehow missed her Christmas thing. It didn't really make sense since they have never implied that Chanel is all that well known outside the sorority but oh well. "

They did say it was a special event for her tens of fans. I don't tend to like Ryan Murphy shows, but I do love Heathers, so I think my Heathers love keeps wanting this show to work... we'll see how long before I give up on that, heh.

AVClub nailed the awfulness of the episode in their ridiculously long review which makes my posts about garbage shows look short. https://www.avclub.com/tvclub/weeks-scream-queens-all-out-treats-very-little-tri-226426

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Scream Queens

"Haunted House"

Season 1 , Episode 4

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It took four episodes, but Scream Queens has finally made its first real trip to the land of “What am I watching?” and “Who is this show even for?”—territory that comes as a bonus with Ryan Murphy shows. The disjointed results of Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk (who wrote this episode), and Ian Brennan’s different approaches to writing and storytelling really rear their ugly head here, with episode reading like one that belongs two or three episodes after last week’s Brennan-penned “Chainsaw.” Despite the day within the episode starting only moments after the previous episode, the way characters behave in this episode is like they have moved on so far past what happened just before. To say it all goes from zero to 60 would ignore how manic Scream Queens already is; instead, it goes from 60 to 120 with absolutely no rhyme or reason.

Even without being a leap (or descent) from Brennan’s script to Falchuk’s, “Haunted House” is all over the place from the very beginning. The Chanel-O-Ween segment sets the scattered tone of the entire episode, and it’s not Emma Roberts’ fault at all. A lot of “Haunted House” has characters or the show itself make message statements—which peaks with the entire cafeteria scene—that speak for the writers (or, at the very least here, Falchuk) and try to get a point across. The best (and genuinely good) version of that is Earl Grey’s comment on the Greek system, and the most bizarre version is Chad Radwell’s speech on millennials.

The Chanel-O-Ween segment, however, has too many frustrating points that it wants to get across and instead, instantly gets the ball rolling on the “Who is this show even for?” train. Chanel Oberlin is an awful person. That’s not even slightly called into question until the episode’s cafeteria scene. She says terrible things, and that’s the joke. (It’s actually at its easiest to accept in most of this episode, because she’s not really in as prominent of a role here as one would assume.) Her being this way and saying these things is still sort of the joke here, but there’s the added factor of having Chanel fans also be their own shade of “terrible.” The segment—which identifies the Chanel fans by “Frumpy Girl” label in the end credits—has Chanel say horrible things barely disguised as charitable and sweet, while she gives them actual dead body parts, rotten pumpkins, and blood, and they lap it all up like the Taylor Swift (and her Swiftmas) this segment is parodying. But that’s not all the show is mocking, as there’s also the frumpy girls, who are considered the most pathetic people. One could maybe argue that Chanel Oberlin is being mocked too, for being so delusional and seeing herself as bigger than she is, but that’s only briefly part of the joke. One moment, the segment considers Chanel Oberlin Taylor Swift status, the next, it’s Regina George at the very least, then the next, it’s just her as the sort of big fish in a small pond that she really is:

The rare times the segment is self-aware of how ridiculous Chanel herself is, like with that GREEK Lady magazine cover or the mini-car, there is something good there. Plus, the one-two punch of the Chanel fan screaming “Ahh, this box is just filled with blood!” with the quick cut to the girl with her hands covered in blood makes for a funny sight gag. But for the most part, this segment is the mean-spirited nature of the show popping back up after its delightful absence in last week’s superior episode. The main joke boils down to Chanel’s fans being pathetic for being so overzealous, just like Taylor Swift’s fans (as Deaf Taylor Swift already made abundantly clear in the first two episodes). But you know who else could fall into such a category of fanaticism? Hardcore Glee fans (Gleeks, if you will), the types who went to the concerts, the types who attended those mall tours.

Last week, I called the Chad/Chanel scenes something akin to “a Glee relationship on even more speed,” and this segment follows a pattern that might be a major part of Scream Queens’ DNA: It feels very much like the showrunners’ attempts to bury Glee and throw it under the bus as this show moves forward. I’m not even trying to call Glee perfect, but it feels even more like low-hanging fruit when the people who created it make sure to kick it, just to prove that their current show is not the same show. It’s upsettingly cynical, and it also make the comments (of which there are many) comparing watching Ryan Murphy shows to embarking on an abusive relationship take on a new meaning.

Starting off-kilter is barely the only problem with the episode though, as this is one episode where there’s not even a fun kill to keep the audience intrigued while boring nonsense happens on screen. The kill of Jennifer Aspen’s Mandy is played as a straight-up horror kill, aiming for suspense, but wildly missing the mark simply because the audience expects a fun twist to the kill… and never receives it. The other shoe never drops, and by the time the kill’s over, as is the audience’s interest in Mandy. Her ultimately ending up hanging outside the haunted house towards the end doesn’t retroactively add fun to that kill.

Then, with the exception of their running scared scene in the haunted house, the Hester/Chad scenes are especially terrible and the biggest example of the show just movie from 60 to 120 (or point A to point Q) with its characters. On a basic level, if you’re a person who’s only watched this episode, you’d probably have no idea that Chad or any of his fraternity brothers (besides the one who lost his arms) was attacked by two Red Devils and lived to tell the tale. Instead, the episode decides to double down on his morbid sex kinks (that, based on Chanel’s reactions to them, supposedly never existed prior to the serial killings) and paint Hester as single entendre-spewing succubus with plans of usurping both Chanel and Zayday and taking over KKT. Last week’s explanatory joke about Hester being in complete and utter pain without her brace was apparently enough to hand-wave any thing the character does and plans to do, whether it’s fighting off catcalling men or having anal sex with Chad Radwell. Why? Because that’s what the script needs, and that’s all that drives this episode.

By the way, this episode has a fight sequence in the name of feminism and sisterhood—from the Chanels—and it’s actually the most out-of-nowhere thing to happen in all four of these episodes. Chanel talks about how women being treated like meat is just as bad as women being murdered; Chanel No. 3 calls out Tommy, the default misogynist in a show that has Chad Radwell and the other Dicky Dollar Scholars (besides Earl Grey), with the question, “You’re gonna tell us to smile now?” If this moment is supposed to give these characters dimension, it misses the mark greatly, especially by doing it with the characters on this show who contribute the most to a culture of woman-hating. This isn’t Grace and Zayday calling out the status quo—this is the most hateful character on the show and her lapdogs (even though No. 3 spends a good portion of the episode undercutting Oberlin, a role No. 5 has been responsible for previously—because they’re ultimately interchangeable, it would seem).

From the moment Chanel concedes to Hester’s minor point about eating real food to the end of the fight (scored to Belinda Carlisle’s “Mad About You&rdquo, it’s a whirlwind of moments that don’t feel like they belong anywhere in Scream Queens, at least not this early on and not from these characters. Nothing has been earned, especially since this is a scene that begins with written, blatant racism from those same characters"

Aside from being for the three main writers, I do wonder like the recapper who they think they're writing the show for. (And sorry, I'm on my cell phone which I still haven't figured out how to properly use on here--didn't mean to post the entire review...)

I can't believe I even sat through today's episode, It didn't even seem like Ryan and Co were doing their usual thing of having at least one scene they personally found hysterical--Brad Falchuk wrote the episode and I'm gonna guess that this episode marks when he became distracted by the prettier cast over at American Horror Story.

I can't see it getting a second season honestly--does it even have any momentum left? But the plan apparently was to move the setting but keep the surviving characters.

Couldn't make it through the hour, beyond awful..Poor Jamie Lee, she's way better than this ****!

been busy...I still have to watch last week and last night too. Good god I hope it hasn't crashed already?