This past season, for the first time ever, I had no real desire to watch it. I absolutely loathed the Death Valley portion of Double Feature. I will never, ever watch that again unless I, for some reason, need to get myself into a very bad mood. Seeing something like that put out into the world of AHS almost made me want to stop watching entirely...I don't even know if I would have done the Stories season had it not been for Denis O'Hare's involvement in the first episode and the promise of the revival of one of his previous characters.
But I did, and it was perfectly fine for what it was, much better than most of the first season. However, when NYC premiered, all I kept hearing about was how it didn't feel like AHS, and it honestly sounded far too reality-based for my tastes. A couple of weeks went by and no one's opinion on it seemed to be changing, so I kind of started thinking about it as an "I'll get to it when I get to it" type of thing. Though I will admit there was a part of me that didn't know if I wanted to get to it. My time has become more and more precious as things in my life have continued to change, and watching my favorite show go further into a downward spiral is not exactly high on my list of priorities.
About three weeks ago now, though, I finally decided to give it a try. I don't remember my reasoning, other than boredom and possibly a need to just busy my mind with something I hadn't seen before, rather than opting for a comfort film or series. (This is also how I wound up watching Wednesday, if you're curious.) I honestly thought I'd be bored out of my mind with it after maybe two episodes and "deep six it", as my parents used to say when they got bored with a movie and quit in the middle.
But I surprised myself by not being able to look away from it.
I will say, the earlier episodes felt more like a crime drama that just happened to have some of the recurring AHS cast in it than an actual season of AHS. I can definitely understand people feeling like the tone of the show changed, especially in the first few episodes.
However, it both surprises and pleases me to say that NYC is now one of my favorite seasons. I am so happy that I finally decided to watch it and allowed myself to be my own judge of the season, because honestly, say what you want, but, people have been far too critical of all things AHS since Jessica Lange's departure. Though I have my issues with certain seasons (we all have our favorites and least favorites), I have always found the beauty in a show like AHS to be in the way that it changes from season to season. Even if you hate one season, there's a chance you'll end up loving the next. And with an ensemble cast, I've always failed to see why it truly matters who sticks around and who doesn't. It's not like there's one specific character the entire show centers around, when the theme and cast changes every year. Honestly I'm a little angry with myself for letting in such negative influence from the naysayers on this one.
While I'm obviously not going to do episode-by-episode reviews at this point, I'd like to just take some time to talk about what I thought made NYC one of the best seasons in a long while.
NYC is a story about terrifying things happening within the gay community of New York City in the early 1980s. Gay men start disappearing, seemingly without a trace in some cases, and people aren't as terrified, or as angry, as they should be, save for a reporter named Gino Barelli, and a young man named Adam Carpenter, who swears he watched his roommate die at the hands of a man in leather known only as "Big Daddy"...though one of the other characters, a dark and sinister rich man with some secrets of his own, named Sam, swears Big Daddy died a long time ago.
The story follows Gino, Adam, and several more characters, including Gino's closeted partner Patrick who just happens to be a member of the NYPD, Patrick's ex-wife Barbara, Adam's newfound love interest Theo Graves, who's just trying to get himself on a better path, and a bathhouse singer who calls herself Kathy Pizzazz, to name a few, as they attempt to figure out what is causing all these deaths and disappearances within the gay community in their city.
Along the way, they meet up with other threats, including who I think is one of the scariest AHS villains of all time, the "Mai Tai Killer". The Mai Tai Killer is actually a Vietnam veteran who goes by only his last name, Whitely, who lures gay men to their deaths after buying them drugged Mai Tais at local bars. The twist of it is, though, that Whitely himself is a gay man and he feels the only way to draw attention to the happenings in the city, is to rip apart other gay men and basically Frankenstein them into what he refers to as "The Sentinel"...a monster of sorts made up of different body parts of gay men, who he plans to somehow unleash at the next Pride parade. His motives, I suppose, are admirable in their way, but it's definitely one of the most terrifying things to come out of the AHS universe in a long while.
Also along for the ride is a doctor named Hannah Wells, who begins seeing a pattern between certain patients of hers and a herd of deer on Fire Island. She’s also carrying Adam’s child through sperm donation, and is beginning to question whether or not this virus is a product of the US government, thanks to an outspoken lesbian, who may or may not be a little bit psychic, named Fran.
There are a lot of characters in this one, but the way they all connect is very interesting. It’s truly an ensemble cast and while Gino is most likely the one set up to be the “main” character, just about everyone else gets fleshed out enough to be cared about as well. There’s really nothing at all here that feels like filler, and honestly very little comic relief/levity to be found, save for a few moments in the bathhouse and some fun one-liners from Denis O’Hare’s character, Henry, who turns out to be an aging gay hitman. If you’re looking for darkness, this is the season. I don’t feel like AHS has done anything this deep and dark since Asylum.
If I had watched as the episodes aired and attempted to review them one by one, I can tell you the reviews would not have been funny/snarky, like they were for parts of Red Tide. This season was extremely heavy and, ultimately, that’s what made it so horrific. I can understand being disappointed by how reality-based it was…I mean, I usually prefer supernatural AHS and I did think a few times in the beginning of NYC that perhaps the subject matter would have been better suited to a different series, but it delivered in the end. I, personally, feel like there’s a heart to the show that’s been, mostly, missing since Hotel ended. The certain character-driven situations I’ve come to crave from AHS have only really popped up here and there since then. NYC gave that back to us in spades. I truly don’t think I’ve felt more for a group of characters since Hotel. And the inevitability of their demises, based on the metaphors for the AIDS epidemic and all of that, made it that much more gut-wrenching. The end of episode eight in particular, with Theo’s death more or less at the hands of his sadistic former lover Sam, hit me hard. And the final two episodes were definitely some of the saddest ever. You can say what you want about the subject matter of the season, but it really doesn’t get any more horrifying than what these characters dealt with. What is more frightening than watching the people in your community die, one by one, knowing that so few people care? And knowing that you are, most likely, next? (The final episode, while some people might argue was a drawn-out music video hallucination, was actually a beautiful metaphor for the inevitability of death.)
I will say, yes, there are a couple of things that didn’t always make sense, like Big Daddy not actually existing and just being a symbolization of the AIDS virus before anyone knew what it was. Most of the time it works, when you look back knowing that, but the one instance I question is the fire at the Ascension Bar. The fire definitely happened…but if Big Daddy didn’t start the fire, then how? Also, is Big Daddy’s similar look to a person that did actually exist, meant to imply that perhaps he was Patient Zero with the AIDS virus and the first one to die of it? Though that sort of gets implied with Sam later on, or perhaps, since he was always the one throwing the wild parties and stuff, maybe that was just meant to imply that he was one of the reasons it was spreading so quickly? Perhaps Big Daddy just represents violence and death within the gay community in general. Regardless, if these are the only real questions we’re left with, we’re doing infinitely better with plot holes than some previous seasons.
This season, in my opinion, spoke volumes on humanity and the horrors of simply being human at times. There was not a single character that didn’t make me feel something for them…Even the terrifying Whitely had his heart in the right place. And Sam, while his sadistic, selfish ways were sometimes difficult to watch or forgive, still got to me in the end when his past traumas were revealed. The deaths in this one pretty much all hit me hard, and they were all done in heavy, poetic ways, similar to Karen's death in Red Tide, which is easily one of the saddest death scenes that AHS has given us.
Gino was by far the standout of the season, though, and I was happy he stuck around on this journey with us from start to finish. I found him incredibly inspiring, and have found myself wanting to be both the kind of writer and the kind of good human being that he was, since finishing the season. Gino is definitely one of my top favorite AHS characters of all time, and I hope that even those that hated the season at least can see how well-written and well-acted his character was. I am, as of right now, not thrilled about the casting choices for season twelve (and it seems Patti LuPone and I have that in common), but I truly hope we sell Joe Mantello again in the future. He'd be an asset to the AHS universe. (This monologue is what really solidified him for me. Can I call him my favorite reporter in the AHS universe? Because honestly he is... Sorry not sorry?)
Honestly, all of the actors in this season did an amazing job. I certainly was not expecting to be moved to tears by Isaac Powell's performance as Theo, after how annoying I found his character in Death Valley!
In short, NYC turned out to be the most pleasant of surprises. While I understand that it may not have been what people expect out of an AHS season (Though I personally think it started feeling like AHS again somewhere around episode four, when Whitely really got going.), I truly don't understand the outright hate. I don't really get how anyone could watch this season all the way through and not be moved in some way, or at least be able to appreciate the writing and acting, along with the fact that much of it was based on real, true, American horror.
Also, with Adam as our main survivor of the season, still alive as of 1991 and young enough that he could potentially still be alive today, wherever he is, if he's still out there, I hope he's thriving.
Does anyone else have anything positive or insightful to say about this season? I would love to discuss it with others who actually enjoyed it. But if you're just going to hate on it, I ask you to please do it somewhere else. I've never taken kindly to people spewing hate over each other's favorite seasons.
Other than that, stay spooky, my friends.
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