BEST OF AMERICAN HORROR STORY, PART TWO

5. The Two Sides of  Moria When women look at Moria, they see a kindly old woman in her 60s in a modest maid's outfit. Her hair is badly dyed a bright shade of red and she's missing one eye.  She offers advice, doesn't seem to think too highly of men, and is very loyal.

When men look at Moria, they see a sexy young redhead in a fetish french maid's outfit.  Her stalkings can be seen as she slinks around and when she bends to wash the floor or make the beds, her black panties are on display.  She seduces, she teases, she draws them in, giving them their every fantasy and leaving them guilty for falling prey to her charms.

At one point, she says that women see the truth of things and men see what they want to see.  Her dislike for men is understandable.  She was being raped when she was shot for what was mistaken as willing adultery. She was buried in the yard with no means for escape.  Her bitterness runs deep.

The best part about the two sides of Moria is that the perception can happen at the same time. At one point, Ben is yelling at her for tempting him to cheat, talking about how sexy she is and how she prances around the house in her little uniform trying to get him horny.  This makes total sense when you see it from his POV, the vixen maid is smirking back at him as he screams. But from Viv's POV, he's yelling at modestly dressed older woman.  To her, he looks completely insane.

4. Vivien As Rosemary A lot of people have issues with Vivien.  Then find her to be shrewish and needlessly dramatic.  Granted, she should have just walked away from Ben long ago. Of course, we wouldn't have a story then, would we?

The show plays with iconic images a lot and the faces of the feminine are well represented. Our three main female leads function as a warped mock up of the three faced goddess. Constance is the Hag, the former mother with  twisted offspring. Violet is the Maiden, only one with only the smallest shreds of innocence.

Viv is the Mother. The Broken Mother. The Bleeding Mother. When we first meet her, we find her at a doctor's appointment, a follow up from a miscarriage. She's still hurting and aching.  She's very lost about the whole thing. By the second episode, she's pregnant again. And her pregnancy becomes one of the central story points.

It also makes for one of the best moments of horror in the show. Constance and Moria decide that the baby will grow better if fed organ meat.  And some of it is given to Viv in raw form.

At one point, she is presented with a raw brain. It LOOKS like a human brain.  It's some of the best acting in the series as she begins eating it with a look of disgust but resignation and slowly begins to savor the taste, eating faster and faster with more satisfaction. It's like the monster baby inside her is in complete control.

Of all the things that happen to Viv, I think this eating scene is my favorite in terms of pure horror value.

3. Addie's repeated warning.  I will admit, I didn't like the first episode of the show. I found it to be clunky and gratuitous and lacking in almost all horrific charm. There was, however, one exception to that, and it was a big one.  In fact, it's the one thing that made me press on into the second episode.

We see two little ginger bastards sneaking into the house. Little Addie is standing outside, looking up into the house's windows. She informs the boys that they will die if they go in there.  They scoff at her and proceed in, all the while, we hear her repeating, "You're gonna regret it. You're gonna regret it."

Ahh, even now, just hearing it in my head, I marvel at how perfect it is.  Addie's little creepy kid voice, the cadence of the words, the knowledge that she's right all weave into the words, making their ominous message sink into your bones.

For days afterward, we walked around the house repeating "You're gonna regret it" to each other. We even do it now probably more than is healthy.

2. The Tragedy of Tate and Violet. Violet is every angry teenaged girl.  The Darlene Connor of her generation.  She smokes, she speaks her mind to her parents, she cuts herself, and feels the world is a shit place. In these ways, she's the stereotype and probably gets on many people's nerves.

At the same time, she does love her parents. She tries to protect them, honestly, quite often comes off as more of the adult than they are. She sees herself as strong and smart.  She wants to handle her problems without help.  And until her paradigm is smashed, this works out pretty well.

Tate is part Mick Travis, part Kurt Cobain. A fake eye lash and a bowler hat away from being Alex D'large. He is first seen as one of Ben's patients, speaking of death and confusion and violence.  Much to Ben's dismay, he takes a liking to Violet as soon as he sees her.

You don't want them together because you know it's a mistake. You know they'll hurt each other. It's the nature of who they are.  You know that as much as Tate is the more scary of the two, Violet is going to make him hurt more.

Yet, somehow, they slowly begin to make you love them, in the same way they love each other.  And by the time he's holding her in the bath tub and begging her not to die, you know it's true for him. It's changed him. He really does love her.

Of course, before he fell in love with Violet, Tate did some things that will be very, very hard for her to forgive.  Right now, she's banished him from her sight.

Of course, they have eternity to work out their issues.

1.  Constance. If Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers ever got drunk and decided to rewrite Sunset Boulevard,* Constance Langdon would be their Norma Desmond. Constance is a Southern belle who came to Hollywood to make her way as an actress. She knew she was destined for greatness.  We know this too because she talks about it a lot.

Instead, she's been given a life of tragedy and suffering. We know this as well, because she talks about that all the time too. Burdened by children who were far from perfect, a cheating husband, lovers who are never enough for her, money trouble, drinking problems, and the curse of being way too good looking, she languishes through her life, doing what she can to survive and cope. . . all of this is done with vast drama.

You don't have sympathy for Constance. She's a vainglorious bully who can't stay in her own house. She torments Addie. She had one of her sons killed.  She ruins the men who fall in love with her.  She's spiteful as hell to Moria, a woman she killed without justification and she browbeats the Harmons into doing what she wants.

However, even if you don't have sympathy for her, even if she's nasty and mean and unlikable, you still LIKE Constance . . .and for all of those reasons.  The woman is what she is and she is completely unapologetic about it.

It helps that Jessica Lange plays her brilliantly. She embraces this character, completely transforms into her. Even her body language is almost eerily perfect for a drunken Southern woman. Lange is sublime in this role and deserves every award she can get for it.  Hell, they should make up new ones for her.

Beyond that, Constance, as her name implies, is the human who survives despite the house's best efforts to kill everyone else. In fact, as she was evicted from the house once and then lost to it again, it's almost as if the house wants to keep her alive. She also has a lot of wisdom about how the house works. She understands how it can keep souls around, going so far as to make sure certain people don't die on the property so she doesn't have to see them again.

Selfish, vain, petty, vindictive, prone to long speeches and longer schemes, Constance is no one you would ever want to know, but someone who is damned fun to watch from a distance.

Well, there you have it.  The ten things I love best about the show.  I have to say, this post was a lot of fun to do.  It also kept me from morose posts about my birthday.  I'm sure we're all happy about that.

*In my imagination, dead writers always get together, get drunk, and write stuff.  Musicians do the same thing. Poets just snip at each other. Artists bitch about other artists while eating cheese and drinking expensive wine they stole from someone's house. And yes, in my imagination, this happens all the time.

BEST OF AMERICAN HORROR STORY, PART ONE

So American Horror Story's first season is coming to an end and I thought I would pay tribute to the show I disliked at first but totally grew to love. There are some things that I didn't put on the list that I DO believe are excellent. For instance, I love the theme music. It sets the tone so well. I also love how the history of the house is weaves into each episode. [Warning: full of spoilers and sarcasm.]

MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT AMERICAN HORROR STORY

10. Dr. Harmon's failed practice. Ben Harmon actually admits that his work as a therapist is all bullshit on the final episode. However, even before this, you're pretty sure that's how he feels. He uses therapy techniques instead of talking to his family and blunders into just about every mistake he can.

But the fun part is watching the constant failures with his patients. One woman kills herself. One may tries to confront his fear of urban legend only to become one.  One girl tricks him into seeing her so she can sneak through his house and unlock the doors so she and her friends can come back and recreate one of the home's previous murders.

The truly ironic thing about Ben's therapy is that the only person it seems to benefit is Tate.  Tate wants to continue working with Ben.  Not sure how well that will work out. We'll see.

9. Hayden.  One of the fun things about AHS is how it gives allusions to great horror themes.  Many of the characters function as icons of the horror genre.  Hayden is every Alex Forrest nightmare you could have. Bunnyboiler of the undead variety. She plagues Ben mercilessly  before she's killed and to the nth degree of that afterwards.

The great thing about Hayden though, is that she is a little more complex than just the scorned woman.  Unlike some people in the house, she's completely aware she's a ghost.  She helps some of them to accept this, even giving comfort to The Black Dahlia and Nora. She was even trying to warn Vivian that Ben was responsible for killing her (Hayden).

Hayden can play the villain, but is best when she's being a foil for Ben, Constance, or Tate.  She also has some of the best lines in the show.

8. The Very Unhappy Bliss of Chad and Patrick There is this almost PC need a lot of shows have to depict gay couples as happy and blissful, great, supportive, and wonderful.  That's not realistic though. Not for any couple.  And with Chad and Pat, we get two men who were once . . .possibly . . . in love, but who fell into hard times and eventually grew distance.  Left to their own devices, they would have separated and never spoken to each other again.

However, Nora and Tate decided they needed to die so a new family could move in.  And when Pat was on the verge of just walking away, Tate killed both of them, dooming them to an eternity in the house, with each other.

To their credit, Chad and Pat try to make the best of it.  They form what alliances they can.  They make agreements as to how to get along. This never lasts.  Almost any conversation can dip into bitter feelings and acid comments. They're now completely miserable with each other and it's damned fun to watch!

7. Marcy, the world's most frustrated real estate agent  and her war with the tour bus.  Marcy is horrible.  She's full of bias.  She's narrow minded, judgmental, and hates it when she has to show the house to "those kind of people," whomever she has decided that happens to be at the moment.

It's a nice bit of karma that this little snit of a person is stuck selling and reselling and reselling this house.  She gets someone in, only to have them drag her back into the house within weeks and demand she put it back on the market. I think for some people, this really would be Hell.

Of course, Marcy's efforts are constantly in peril due to the tour bus that drives by every day.  I mean, how would you feel if you were trying to sell a house and some guy was driving by telling the whole history of "Murder House" on his loudspeaker.

I have  feeling she'll end up killing that man.

6. The Montgomeries.  Dr. Montgomery came to LA to be a physician to the stars.  He built the house as an honor to his wife. The Tiffany glass, after all, has a color of blue that matches her eyes. Theirs should have been a fairy tale. It's what his wife Nora wanted, and certainly what she demanded. It did not, however, work out quite that way.

Dr. Montgomery is every "creepy evil doctor" rolled into one and given a nice big drug problem. Nora is a spoiled shrew.  And their son Thaddeus.....well......after he died and his father "fixed him," he was a far more scary monster than just about anything else that can be found in the house. It's still unclear WHAT he was, exactly, after his father sewed him back together, but it was enough to cause his mother to murder/suicide herself and the good doctor.

These days, Thaddeus keeps to the shadows, only coming out when someone needs the bejesus scared out of them or their throats ripped out.  Dr. Montgomery is oh so very helpful!  He chops up bodies so they can more easily be removed from the house.  He sees to all medical procedures (most of which end in someone's death), and gives the occasional piece of advice.

As for Nora, she still views herself as Mistress of the House. In fact, it was her want for a new baby that lead to the deaths of Patrick and Chad, as well as the rape of Vivien and her eventual death. Nora would have what Nora wanted, as always.

I think one of the best moments all season was how Nora's desire for a baby, the whole catalyst behind much of the drama happening, was brought to a climax with a bit of ironic self-realization. "I'm not really good with babies. Mother wasn't either. We always had nannies."  In the end, she just hands the ghost infant back to Vivien and walks away.  Nora, as always, is dissatisfied with everything.

And thus ends my part one of this post. I was going to do all ten, but it was getting way too long. Part two to be added tomorrow.