AHS: What happened?

[COOOK 76,405]

I'm halfway through Season 11 and it's pretty much meh, just like the last... 5 seasons?

The best American Horror Story seasons are 1-5... the 6th (Roanoke) being middle of the road to me: it was good, but not like its predecessors, it marked the beginning of the series' decay. After that, seasons became a non-event, nothing memorable whatsoever. I believe season 7 was about politics and cults, 8 was Apocalypse- which I don't remember anything from the plot other than the Coven girls returning for some reason, and 9 I have zero memory. 10 was a bit of a resurgence with the first half but faded like the others nonetheless.

Like, what's going on Mr. Murphy? My guess is he's been juggling a lot of projects at the same time since he got bigger, therefore the focus not being there anymore. The scrapped concepts are still promising but probably won't see the light of day like that concept for a new Feud season that I forgot what it was about, or the much talked about AHS season about a ghost ship...

The first 5 seasons were iconic not only because they're miles ahead in storyline quality than the others, but it's the setting that makes them as memorable. You could pinpoint each season like "yeah, the one in the hotel, the circus one", etc. Now they're just a mess of things going on, that don't really reflect the level of horror that the first seasons had  Do you guys feel the same way?

Edit: not acknowledging American Horror Stories mini(?) series since I haven't seen it yet 

[bpmMonkey 2,758]

I think it is what you said, he's juggling too many projects at once. Furthermore he goes straight to the "big bang", the meme-able moment and doesn't let them occur naturally anymore. He's like Michelle Visage at the end of every video "do you want more gay sh!t?!" and he just piles them on without thinking twice about it. 

I personally don't see the huge problem with changing actors, i know a lot of people saw the downfall ever since Jessica left, but i feel there would have been an over saturation if she'd stayed much longer. But he was left with two choices, either find grand actors who can fill the roles, of write grand roles for good-ish actors, and in my opinion he failed in both. AHS 5 still worked for me, because Gaga just had such a presence. But by the time season 6 came around we were borderline bored by Kathy, Sarah and Evan (which all of them have a decent amount of charisma) and after that it just went downhill kinda, for one reason or another. They should have made Bassett a regular, but Murphy went with the "more gay sh!t" idea and just piled them pretty boys on and on and on

[Lanadelduck 1,870]

Moved the resources to other projects and it made him a lot of money. 
 

he also signed a huge deal with Netflix which AHS was not included in 

[A D A M 464]

Definitely older seasons had a solid concepts behind them and identity, you just took a peek and already know the setting. It is harder to realize what is going with newer season, you have to watch closely and try to make it sense and this is the moment you realize that idea just falls apart and is not as prominent as Murphy probably thought so. You can also notice that teasers for recent seasons got even more disconnected with the real content, it looks like the company they asked for visuals also has no idea what is going on lol. Another thing is that the show got a little too much queer, I do love representation, but so much stereotypes are shoved in current iteration of AHS that just makes me roll my eyes and makes the story less serious. The last seasons was the absolute pinnacle of it, all the unnatural stuff was just sexy looking guys. Next offender is putting sassy characters and one-liners for memes and twitter which just breaks the immersion, Ryan please stop forcing that stuff. He probably cares less since he already made a breakthrough, gets a lot of good deals and just wants to explore other stuff, but yeah we noticed that the quality dropped off.

[rinasawachanta 2,088]

The only real good season is Asylum, and maybe the first one. 3, 4, 5 and 6 are just ok. The rest are pure sh*t. 1984 is possibly the worst audiovisual piece I have ever seen in my life.

[Max 18,581]

Season 1-3 were the best tbh and after that it slowly started to fade. S4 was meh & S5 mediocre. I enjoyed Apocalypse and the 80s season but other than that it lost its momentum to me

[thierryrreiht 19,967]

The Gaga Curse strikes again 

[COOOK 76,405]

39 minutes ago, Max said:

S5 mediocre.

[MelbHawker 6,190]

The show died after Freakshow / Jessica left. Unpopular opinion, but Hotel was a hot mess. 

[TEANUS 11,175]

He found a formula that works to just keep it from getting cancelled and refuses to push boundaries anymore it feels like. And too many things are put in there purely for shock value. 

At least NYC broke the cycle of killing everyone off and calling it a season. Part 1 of season 10 started off SO GOOD in my opinion, but they lost it and then for whatever reason decided to try to cram a whole other story into four episodes

[RAMROD 96,170]

It's Murphy habit to do that, look what happened to Glee, Nip/Tuck, Popular. Seems he rather the series to die a slow painful death than cancel it outright once the magic dissipates 

[djBuffoon 11,638]

Creating one terrifying, unique, and timely story with identifiable characters is difficult enough, let alone a new one each season. The creators really did themselves dirty from the concept alone. 

Now add to that Murphy's propensity for resting on his laurels, getting too comfortable, and not seeing these stories through to the very end, and you've got a lackluster season of television.

[Galvon 1,857]

It should have ended a long time ago imo

I think the first 2 seasons are the best, then season 3 also had something very special. S4 was a little less but still nice. Season 5 and onward feels like a different show. Though I think Season 5 was the last good season.

Season 6 is disgusting. I've watched some episodes of Season 7 and little bits of later seasons, and I just can't stand them lol

Also I wish they didn't try to connect the seasons as much, and I don't like it when the actors play more than 1 character each season, because it makes it less believable

[Oriane 18,984]

All of his projects are like this. They start great but it quickly becomes sh*t and he doesn't know when to stop.

I really liked the first 4 seasons. 5 was meh. 6 was absolutely terrible. 7 was fine but didn't have the spark of the first seasons, and didn't encourage me to continue any further.

[LaFama 3,733]

I think there's a lot of reasons. I was a very big fan since it premiered and I could see how it was getting weaker every season. I'm gonna let it all out, so sorry for the long text lol. 

Writing 

The only seasons that had solid writing were Murder House and Asylum. I know it's probably the most popular, but at the time Coven got a lot of **** especially from fans since the writing started to be not as strong, random things happening, changes that were made last minute (Zoe and Kyle were supossed to be a big love story, but then Kyle didn't really click and they just left him . . . there). Then Freakshow was worse, the whole season felt pointless. Hotel could've been better if they focused in only one story, but they had two plots happening at the same time and I don't think either got the time they needed to actually work. 

Since Coven It's become a very common thing on the show: strong first episodes/first half of the season, then random things start happening, some shock value for the sake of it and suddenly, an ending. 

 

Characters

They are struggling to write compelling characters. The first few seasons had more fleshed out characters (Vivien, Constance, Sister Jude, Lana, Madison, etc.), now most of them feel very flat and forgettable. Besides, a lot of the times the dialogue feels very unnatural and come off as cringy.

Like someone mentioned before, they seem to be forcing stuff, they try to have camp and sassy characters, but they don't really work, they feel very out of place. 

And I'll add that sometimes they waste great actors. I'm still very salty about how dirty they did Chloe Sevigny, she was amazing in Asylum, but then they brought her back in Hotel for that? After that she even said that she's not interested in coming back lmao. 

 

Visuals/Production 

I think one of the reasons the show was so appealing was how unique it felt visually, there was nothing like it on TV at the time. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and Michael Goi did wonders to give the show an identity, the downgrade was very noticeable after Hotel. Watch any scene of any epsiode from Coven, and then watch the flashbacks and scenes with the witches on Apocalypse and you'll see what I'm talking about. 

The production value was insane during seasons 1 -5. Even if it started to decay, it was very pleasant to watch; costumes, locations, the way it was filmed was amazing. After Cult it feels like any other show, very generic and shallow. 

 

I think they've been trying to get on their feet with the last few seasons tho, Red Tide was a step in the right direction, even with a lackluster ending. NYC felt like they actually took it seriously even if it lacked puch. 

 

And one final complaint. They reeeeally, reeeeeeeeeeally suck at doing sci-fi, every single time they try it's a cringefest. 

Spoiler

 

Apocalypse really was a pile of hot burning garbage