American Horror Story

AHS may no longer have the element of surprise on its side, but it remains, to quote the lyrics of a certain David Bowie tune performed by Lange, the freakiest show. One of us? Count me in.

Whom to vote for--Dot or Bette? Or will Paulson end up splitting the vote? The special effects are so seamless and Paulson's performance so memorable that it's not a completely incidental question. Then, of course, there's Lange.

Humor, terror, sex, death, camp, karaoke: No show on television has all these ingredients but American Horror Story.

There’s enough talent and intensity here for me to step behind the tent flap, to see if all this can cohere into something super freaky.

It's magisterially trashy: sweet, glorious madness.

Homicidal clown Twisty (John Carroll Lynch puts the horror back in Horror Story, and runs neck and neck (and neck) with Paulson’s Tattler twins as “Freak Show’s” most intriguing breakout character.... Elsa initially comes off as more cartoonish and less complex than Lange’s previous turns. That changes for the better once Lange lays bare the vulnerability beneath Elsa’s hardened exterior in a few poignant scene.

Freak Show starts off strong, offering more than just a taste of the spooky, bloody, quirky season to come.

The balance of story potential is more evenly spread this time out [compared to Coven].

It’s hardly [his crowning achievement], lacking the aggressive whimsy and emboldened storytelling that’s made him the pied piper to a nation of TV-watching weirdos, mocked and ignored. But there’s a seriousness with which he’s given this first Freak Show outing that actually piques more of a curiosity than trotting out the expected onslaught of spooks, one-liners, and cheekiness could’ve possibly be done at this point in the American Horror Story run.

Based solely on the premiere, American Horror Story: Freak Show might rate a rave, or at least a "great if you like this sort of thing." But since the first season, I've learned that Murphy and Falchuk don't reliably follow the path they start down, often seeming to prefer to gross viewers out than tell a coherent story.

The overall narrative is a bit lacking, just as you don’t go to a circus show in the hope of seeing all the various acts tied together through storytelling. Yes, there’s a murder to hide, a few secrets for each of the major characters, and Murphy’s overall arc of the outcast who holds more humanity than the “normal people,” but I hope the actual storytelling of American Horror Story: Freak Show improves in subsequent episodes.

Even when Freak Show collapses under its undiluted excess, it does remember at least one essential truth of terror: Nothing's scarier than a mean, ugly clown.

It still has plenty of clever touches in word and picture.... But it’s not particularly scary, and doesn’t even feel that creepy or freakish, despite the sideshow setting and the obvious attempt to emulate one of the eeriest of American movies, Tod Browning’s “Freaks,” from 1932.

It boasts strong performances, largely from actors you've already seen, in material that's as over-the-top as ever.

The over-long season premiere--it's 63 minutes without commercials, so expect it to run close to 90 minutes on air; set yoru DVR accordingly--feels disjointed and the characters seem underdeveloped.

Freak Show is certainly telling a weird story, but it’s not all that scary and, worse yet, the characters are already launching into tedious monologues about civil rights for geeks.

This new AHS iteration of is, as always, a gorgeous-looking production featuring many excellent performances.... The fundamental problem in the opening hours is the lack of an original storyline to move the show beyond a series of gaudy shock reveals.