The three "scariest" shows on TV right now, not counting Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris [shudder], have to be Scream Queens on Fox, American Horror Story: Hotel on FX, and The Walking Dead on AMC.
I have to make an embarrassing admission: I don't watch that last one. I tried — I really did — but I quickly became uninterested. I lasted until the part where they meet up with that one dude in the laboratory, or something, and then my mind wandered. Sorry. Also, zombies bore me. I like my monsters to have a cerebral cortex.
"But it's not about the zombies!" you're thinking. "It's about the people struggling for survival and their relationships!" Well, I didn't particularly care about the people, either; I was rooting for the undead. When you hope the protagonists die a horrible death, that's not a good sign. It reminds me of that joke on The Golden Girls, when Dorothy says that the local theater's production of The Diary of Anne Frank was so bad that every time the Gestapo came onto the stage the audience would yell, "They're in the attic!"
I do give every spooky show a gander, though. Scream Queens had a spectacular pilot, opening with Bat For Lashes played over a '90s sorority party — okay, wrong decade for the music, but whatevs — as the camera pans to a well-coiffed twit covered in blood. "Did you just get your period all over yourself?" asks twit No. 2. No, a fellow sister had just given birth in a bathtub upstairs. Everyone panics because, like, there's a party going on and this means one fewer bathroom.
Main character and lead twit Chanel Oberlin is played by Emma Roberts (of American Horror Story fame), and she perfectly embodies the stuck-up, self-centered bitch who's needed for the role of head sorority wench. There are obvious nods to Cher from Clueless, complete with an aura of billowy feathers attached to nearly everything around her, but she's also likeable underneath it all. Her douchebag boyfriend Chad Radwell (Glen Powell) treats her like dirt, and we can't help but side with her when she quips gems like, "I'm as skinny as Karen Carpenter at the morgue and Chad Radwell still won't commit to me!"
The plot of Scream Queens is a bit murkier. Why is it that every Fox show has to start out strong and then drift off into a million aimless directions? The dean of the school, deftly played by that scream queen of yore, Jamie Lee Curtis, demands that the sorority be more inclusive. That means that nonwhite, possibly disabled, or totally-unfuckable-to-the-Chad-Radwells-of-the-world types have to be allowed to pledge. Then there's a maniac in a devil's costume who's going around killing people. After that, about 25 subplots emerge. The show wins for its witty writing and satire, but like a keg party where someone forgot the spigot, until a main vein is located and tapped, there ain't gonna be a party.
On to American Horror Story: Hotel. Wow, for a show that prides itself on pushing the gore and gnar-gnar envelope, they have really topped themselves with this one. The setting is the fictional — thank god! — Hotel Cortez in L.A. Vampires, ghouls, and strange wretches who live inside mattresses are the occupants; hapless guests are their dinner. Lady Gaga plays a gorgeous countess who owns the place, sustaining her beauty through vigorous bouts of sex and the blood of small children who have feasted on blood themselves. The depravity is pronounced: A heroin addict checks in, shoots up, and proceeds to be brutally raped by a demon. All of this is on film, which makes the grandma in me worry that someone small and unattended might watch this basic cable show and be forever scarred. But I can't save all the children of the world, alas.
AHS is known for its recurring actors, and in Season 5 we see Kathy Bates as the manager, Sarah Paulson as "Sally," and Mare Winningham in housekeeping — which is no easy job when bodies are repeatedly mutilated in 4B, and definitely deserving of a living wage. Chloë Sevigny also returns, this time as a doctor, and though I usually find her acting to be weak, she is quite good so far. But maybe I just liked watching an on-screen physician berate a mother who refused to inoculate her children and now has a kid with measles. "What's the treatment?" the mother asks, after a long, blistering lecture from Sevigny. "There is none!" she responds. That's scary.
So far, both shows are like those variety packages of Jelly Bellys. You pick through handfuls at a time for some tasty morsels, only to realize that half of the package is left and it contains the worst flavors: bubblegum, black licorice, coconut, and tutti frutti. Desperate, you eat the rest of them, pretending that you're enjoying the experience. Sure, you could've just gotten a nice big bag of juicy pear Jelly Bellys, but noooo.
So, Fox and FX, take this Halloween candy metaphor and run with it, will you? We want a solid bag of delicious plot next time.
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