[yasr_overall_rating]
Hoping to begin a peaceful new life in a rustic North Carolina farmhouse, Shelby and Matt Miller (Emmy® winner Sarah Paulson and OSCAR® Winner Cuba Gooding Jr.) flee Los Angeles, only to find murder, mayhem, and madness!
There were three distinct phases to “American Horror Story.” Season 1 (Murder House) and Season 2 (Asylum) were the first phases, in which the setting and concepts were secondary to the story. Season 3 (Coven), Season 4 (Freakshow), and Season 5 (Hotel) relied on the theme to drive the story. And Season 6 (Roanoke) would best be described as a good faith attempt to return to a season in which the story drove the strange concepts and story. Roanoke was not marketed through images or taglines that told the story like seasons 4 and 5 did. The series was marketed as a bunch of strange teasers.
The problem became that even though Roanoke relied on mystery and a good story, it uses elements that we’ve already seen before. (A haunted house like in season 1 and plenty of asylum throw-ins, which feel strained at best.)
The season also relies on the idea of TV show re-enactment/real life which is something that we’ve already seen many times before in many other places. This type of structure leads to a great reduction in terror because the audience is aware that we’re not watching real (or real to the world of the show) events, but rather staged events.
I like Cuba Gooding Jr. as an addition to the series and he appears to have crept over from another Ryan Murphy Show, “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” Sarah Paulson is in a starring role in this season and she’s my favorite working TV actress. I’ve been following her since she was doing “Crimes of the Heart” in Williamstown.
I want to give a review of this season without revealing any type of spoilers. Suffice it to say, there are a couple very interesting structure changes and fakeouts that are located halfway through these series. Some of these work very well and others are much less successful.
The show also feels like a hodgepodge of different elements at times, which is not unusual to “American Horror Story.” Many people were unhappy about the alien subplot in Season 2 (Asylum) because of how jumbled it felt, but Roanoke has places where it feels like it’s both run out of tension and ideas so it begins randomly trying to throw in whatever the writers think might work.
Ultimately, Roanoke is very erratic in terms of quality. When it works, it works amazingly well. When it doesn’t work, it’s hard to sit through an episode. This season appears to have been essential for “American Horror Story” to move forward and continue making seasons that are as good as its early days. That said, the most current season (Season 7: Cult) is even more of a step in the right direction.
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