(This is a SPOILER-FREE discussion of “American Horror Stories”)
There’s a pattern we’ve seen play out with “American Horror Story” during each of the past several seasons: A compelling start, followed by a steady decline into incoherence. The process has been speeding up — “AHS: 1984,” the most recent season, was off the rails by the midway point.
This is the double-edged sword of the Ryan Murphy brand. The shows under his umbrella are loud, boisterous, audacious, hilarious, intense — and generally just not like other shows. While that uniqueness and that tonally erratic signature is the reason we watch this stuff, it also makes it easier for things to get out of control because it’s really tough to balance all those moods.