A NEW BLOODY SEXY THING

Yesterday was a particularly boring day: not that the last few weeks had been any more exciting but, yesterday was indeed strikingly boring.
Hence, deprived of any emotions I threw myself in the unknown and picked a new series I had never heard of (I am very bold – I know) and decided to give it a try. Not before checking a few things about it first obviously… I am sorry, but I am not one of those people that use a machine without reading the manual first. Don’t get me wrong I am neither one of those who actually read the manual; more likely I get somebody to read the manual back to me.

You could say I am lazy and most certainly you’d be very accurate.

Anyway, in the loneliness of my room I had to make an effort and research some information about my pick: American Horror Story.
Let’s see, the series was created by Ryan Murphy… noooooooooooo! Not him! I mean, I love the man – he brings the sugary, glittery gay world to the masses but as good as he is at coming up with extravagant ideas, the man cannot write for shit. More importantly he is completely unable at keeping you interested in his characters – look at what he has done with Glee – or maybe I should say what he hasn’t done. (Secretly I dearly miss that show – when it first came out it was able to awake that 13-year-old girl in me, which I thought it had died years ago when I decided to fit in and be a real man – yes Stefano I did try!)

So ok, that meant I probably wouldn’t have to pay much attention to the plot – which was exactly what I needed yesterday. I was too bored to think.
But what really caught my attention was the cast list: Jessica Lange as the nosy, kleptomaniac neighbour and the gifted, wonderful Dylan McDermott, playing the always-naked-husband (thank you Ryan). The promise of an always-naked-Dylan-McDermott was enough for me – so I put it on and dear me, I was not a happy bunny by the end of it.

Now, some people might say that I scare easily and they’d be right but I don’t believe in spirits and ghosts. I fear crazies, weirdos – real people that are a tiny bitsy nuts and one day go completely bonkers and decide to slaughter you. They do exist, hopefully they exist somewhere very far away from me.

American Horror Story is set in a hunted house in Los Angeles where Vivien and Ben Harmon, along with their teenage daughter Violet, have just moved. Spirits and ghosts, I’ll be all right – me thinks!

The gruesome opening sequence where two young ginger twins are brutally assassinated (rightly so, if you ask me) by whatever-that-thing-in-the-house-was sets me right in and sends shivers down my spine – I could hear them shivers talking: “You shouldn’t be watching this all alone, you shouldn’t be watching this all alone”. Damn right but I didn’t dare to move. I was so scared I kept jumping out of my chair at each change of scene, fearing the worst.
My first ray of light was a shot of a half-naked Ben – however that didn’t last too long, just enough to allow me to understand what had happened so far: Vivien had given birth to a dead baby months before and had been unable to recover yet. Ben thought he would find the comfort he needed to get over his loss between the legs of one of his pupils (Ben is a psychiatrist who teaches at the local university) and got caught during the act by Vivien.

Cut to a few months later – Ben, Vivien and Violet are still a family and have decided to move from Boston to LA, to the hunted house. Away from the chaos of the city, ready to start over in a beautiful, quiet suburban lane: they should have watched Desperate Housewives first, I say!

And here comes the neighbors: Constance (Jessica Lange) a 60-something who can be a little nosy sometimes, occasionally kleptomaniac, and just a tiny inappropriate and her intellectually disabled daughter, Adelaide, whose favourite line is “You will die” – how very charming.

Then there’s the nymphomaniac glass-eyed old maid, Moira – played by a very wrinkly Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) – who tries it on with Ben and leaves him battling with his testosterone (not because he is a gerontophiliac with a glass-eye fetish but because to his eyes, and HIS eyes only, she is a very sexy, young woman with beautiful eyes - I really want to learn that enchantment by the way). So the poor Ben cannot help but pleasure himself to release the tension – in front of a window (?!) while somebody that looked an awful lot like Judge Doom looked in - because Vivien is still angry at him and won’t give IT to him – well at least not until he forcefully takes her.

Then she wanted more. But that’s another story…

And, as if the crazies around the house were not enough, here comes Ben’s patient – Tate, a teenage sociopath who gets a crush on Violet who, however, is busy cutting herself as she is having a hard time at the new school with this other girl who bullies her (OMG).

On the other hand, the dog seems normal so far.

American Horror Story is indeed a real freak show but a sexy, hot, dangerous one. There is a great mix of mistery, sex, kitch and gore which will most certainly appeal to the new generation and to us gays.

However with Ryan Murphy as the executive producer (God I wish Alan Ball came up with this!) there is a danger that this show will not fulfill his potential and eventually become repetitive and predictable.

So I have decided that I am not VERY excited about this just yet – just a little bit – I really could not stand another big disappointment like Glee in my current fragile state of mind.