You can’t tell, but I was pretty quick to return to American Horror Story after having a real BALL OF A GOOD TIME with Season 1. The timing felt right, too. I kicked the season off right at the Halloween weekend and finished just in time for Thanksgiving turkey. Gobble gobble, bitches. It just took me a while to write this! Like, 6 whole months! Sorry!

I decided not to go into these AHS seasons with knowledge of the theme. I like to treat myself to very low-investment surprises these days, you know me. Well, you don’t actually know me unless we know each other and you’re stalking me. You know who you are, Kyle.

This one is Asylum! I had heard excellent reviews of Asylum, and it did not disappoint. Well… it disappointed a little bit because I was like “hey, Zachary Quinto is NOT playing an evil psychopath for once” and the egg was on my face that day, my friends.

NO, I AM THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPION OF PARCHEESI! NOT YOU!

The Premise

It’s 1964 and there’s a whole mess of stuff going on. Jessica Lange is Sister Jude, a cruel, spiteful nun who works as an administrator for the Briarcliff mental facility. Evan Peters is Kit Walker, an inmate whose wife was taken by aliens and now he’s accused and admitted for skinning her (and with two other women) alive. Sarah Paulson is Lana Winters, a journalist investigating the serial murders of the so-called “Bloody Face” who gets forcibly admitted to the asylum. Zachary Quinto is the actual so-called “Bloody Face”, Dr. Oliver Thredson, a serial murderer who does a very mean kidnapping of Lana Winters with creepy results!

Ha ha! Bloody Face is adorable!

Meanwhile, James Cromwell is the dastardly Nazi criminal Dr. Arden who performs sinister human experiments at the asylum without a shred of moral fiber. You got Joseph Fiennes as Monsignor Timothy, a morally ambiguous priest who runs the asylum with Sister Jude. He’s gonna be Pope some day! Lily Rabe is a young, innocent nun at the facility named Sister Mary Eunice who gets possessed by the Devil after a botched exorcism. Lizzie Brocheré plays Grace, an inmate and a Kit Walker love interest who slaughtered her family with an axe. Allegedly.

It all sounds fucking bonkers because it is! Deliciously bonkers.

The patient appears to be experiencing a bout of “Bumpy Head Syndrome”.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

This season is absolutely nuts! While Season 1 dealt with haunted houses and mass shooters, Season 2 has serial killers, aliens, and demon possessions! There’s a lot going on here! To that end, I could’ve done without the alien angle completely. It felt out of place in Episode 1 and it continued to feel out of place each and every time aliens were discussed or an abduction took place.

As you may recall (ha, yeah right) with my analysis of Season 1 (which I link each time I mention it!), I wasn’t sold or invested until the reveal of Violet’s dead body. From that point forward I found the story intensely emotional. Not so much with this one. The closest I came to that cathartic click of total investment came from the definitive reveal that Dr. Thredson was Bloody Face, but even then it wasn’t enough to kickstart my interest into binge-mode. The scenes with Quinto and Paulson were undeniably the best in the season. Fantastic acting from both. I should know! I’m the greatest living actor you’ve never met!

Sarah Paulson for the win.

I thought Dylan McDermott’s portrayal of Thredson/Winters’ son was a little over-the-top. Maybe I can’t picture this fuckin’ guy being some sort of maniacal badass, but something didn’t land for me here. The only saving grace was the palpable tension at the end between he and Winters, culminating into her shooting him dead. I thought was hilarious!

So much was happening that I feel like there were many loose threads still lying around by the time the season wrapped up, but maybe a lot of that was just me not piecing the threads together adequately. The alien storyline was never fully explained, and on a surface level it felt tacked on to add a supernatural element to this serial killer / creepy asylum storyline. I suppose this was the only way to prove Kit’s innocence while also presenting him as a crazy person? Perhaps the aliens planned this? Maybe his purpose was to bust Grace out of the joint even though she did, in fact, murder her whole family and kinda deserved to be there? Maybe the aliens had a grander plan? If they were gonna talk about aliens, I wish they could’ve talked more about the aliens.

The Chloë Sevigny side story was easily the most fucked up part of the season, even with everything else going on. Dr. Arden catches her trying to escape and amputates her legs up to her knees. Then he performs experiments on her to turn her into one those cannibalistic subhumans that surround the asylum. Then the possessed Sister Mary Alice dumps on the side of a schoolyard where a bunch of children see her scambling on the steps full of weird growths and boils. The Joseph Fiennes strangles her with a rosary! Tragic!

Does anyone have any lotion?

I think I’ve said everything I had to say. I didn’t have much to say. Sorry!

Worth the Watch?

Sure. While not gripping, the whole season was greatly enjoyable and featured a well-stacked cast. Zachary Quinto, Sarah Paulson, and Jessica Lange all stole the show. There was also Detective Scully from Brooklyn 99. He stole the show too. Sure, why not?

What a low-effort post this turned out to be. My best work yet!