S10.E01: Cape Fear

[ShadowHunter]

Episode 1 of S10 was actually good. A few decent creepy moments. Lily as more of a lead is refreshing though she is crying which is usual for her lol. 

Evan and Frances singing was all I needed lol. Nice seeing the old actors back after S9. Congrats to Evan and Sarah on producers credit for the show. 

I can't stand the daughter Alma though. 

Loved the intro hearing the old theme music again.

 

[TipseyGirl]

I thought it got off to a pretty good start. Is it just me, or does there seem to be a little passive aggressiveness between Alma and her father? I like the creepy Cape Cod atmosphere. And that first appearance of the pointy-toothed guy in the cemetery? Wow!

[sashayshante]

I liked it. Finn Wittrock never disappoints. 1984 was a shit show but his appearance in the finale made it the best of the season.

It struck me as I was watching it that every scene was so empty and bleak. Then I remembered they were filiming just as restrictions were being lifted. That probably leant to each scene needing to be really tight and not full of multiple actors, half of which have no real purpose. Limited Sarah Paulson, Leslie Grossman and Billie Lourde definitely helped, too.

This show thrives when the focus is on a core set of actors and isn't just a showcase for Murphy's personal favorites or pets. Rabe, Wittrock, Conroy and Peters are all perfectly cast.

The daughter bugs, though.

[absnow54]

I've only been a casual viewer of AHS, and sort of stumbled upon the premiere. We used to vacation in Provincetown every summer growing up, so watching this was mostly for the nostalgic location porn. I thought the story was kind of weak compared to the earlier seasons I watched. There seemed to be very clear "Let's GTFO here" moments, and their reasoning for staying never made sense. I just couldn't get past them STAYING IN THE HOUSE after he murdered the intruder. At least have them leave for a hotel in Boston that night and have Harry pulled back into the chaos when he returns to give his statement the next day and pack up the house.

Edited August 26, 2021 by absnow54

[gesundheit]

This was my favorite AHS premiere in ages. Taut storytelling, familiar actors getting to have campy fun. I'm into it. (I hope Lily Rabe's character gets to graduate from the "pregnant, panicking, crying wife" role quickly this season and join the fun, though)

 

I'm unclear on the structure, though. Is this a normal-length AHS season but the second half is a whole new (alien) storyline? Or is this just two seasons back to back?

[PurpleFishHead]

1 hour ago, gesundheit said:

second half is a whole new (alien) storyline?

The back half is a new story. 

[ShadowHunter]

1 hour ago, gesundheit said:

This was my favorite AHS premiere in ages. Taut storytelling, familiar actors getting to have campy fun. I'm into it. (I hope Lily Rabe's character gets to graduate from the "pregnant, panicking, crying wife" role quickly this season and join the fun, though)

 

I'm unclear on the structure, though. Is this a normal-length AHS season but the second half is a whole new (alien) storyline? Or is this just two seasons back to back?

This is the first half Red Tide. 6 episodes and we already got 2 of them. Second half has 4 episodes.  

[gesundheit]

6 minutes ago, ShadowHunter said:

This is the first half Red Tide. 6 episodes and we already got 2 of them. Second half has 4 episodes.  

Good. Maybe shorter arcs will keep a story that started well on the rails!

[Terrafamilia]

Hmmm, a little bit of Salem's Lot, a little bit of Limitless, maybe a teeny bit of The Shadow Over Innsmouth (those shark-toothed mimes need to get their jackets from somewhere). We need to find out exactly what those red lights on some of the houses signify.

[iMonrey]

Quote

There seemed to be very clear "Let's GTFO here" moments, and their reasoning for staying never made sense.

Agreed. Once a pale, pointy-toothed, black-clad, bald monster starts chasing you down the street, to your house and banging on your windows, it's time to go. If that isn't enough, one of them breaking into your house and nearly killing you until you kill it in self defense should be enough to push you over the edge. 

Another thing that kind of makes me roll my eyes:

This is a common trope on genre shows where people are turning into vampires or other animal-type creatures: they go to the grocery store (or just to their refrigerator) and pull out packaged meat - usually steak - that is simply swimming in blood/red meat juice. I have never once seen packaged meat look like that in a grocery store. It would be so unappealing and unappetizing nobody would buy it. There's no reason for it, either. The meat is packaged there in the meat department, there's no way the butcher would just pour a crap ton of juice into the tray with the meat before they wrap it.

[CrazyDog]

I really enjoyed this, and found the monsters and the sparse, isolated atmosphere overwhelmingly creepy. I actually really liked 1984, but so many of these seasons just get so over the top that I tend to check out in the latter half of the seasons. 

I'm slightly disappointed in this being just 6 episodes for the first story, but it's true that this should lead to a tighter storyline.

Finn and Lily are great, as always. 

Everyone should totally take label-less black pills from a bizarre character that won't give you a straight answer on what it is, where it's from, and what the side effects will be. Lol. I get that Finn's character is supposed to be desperate, but wow.

What are those red lights signifying? That was a great touch.

[AnimeMania]

Everything about the show is drab. It is like they filmed it in Black & White and added back in some splotches of color.

Really a bag with a baby in it for a tiny bag of drugs, it would have been better if she handed her a bag filled with rats in it, in exchange of the drugs. It would have been way more scary and way more believable.

The part I thought was realistic was when he wanted to throw his cellphone and at the last second changed his mind.

So what are we working with here: Vampires and Zombies?

[sashayshante]

1 hour ago, AnimeMania said:

Everything about the show is drab.

 

It really is. I think Doris' comment about all the different shades of beige was an acknowledgement of the monochramatic color scheme of the show.

[Anela]

The vampires in the street, looked like a boy band.

When he took the pills, it reminded me of The Lost Boys, and "they're only noodles, Michael" before they get him to drink their blood out of a wine bottle. 

A bit of The Shining, a bit of Salem's Lot. 

If the wife is suddenly craving red meat, why would that be? They've only just arrived, and I didn't see her take anything like those pills. 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Anela

[Glade]

I really like the sparse vibe to this (and it does remind me of an account I once read of a different writer spending a desolate, lonely winter in P-town.)  But it was Evan Peters who really brought this episode to life to me; his dreamy visage can take me anywhere, sell me anything.  This is so much better then the spinoff, I'm so glad it's back.  That said, Sarah Paulson's character strikes me as manic and one-note so thus far.

[sashayshante]

4 hours ago, Glade said:

Sarah Paulson's character strikes me as manic and one-note so thus far.

I think they may have been filming AHS and Impeachment at the same time. Paulson is inexplicably cast as Linda Tripp (thnks to Murphy's fatphobia) and so I think she may have been doing some double duty.

 

[bilgistic]

I thought Sarah Paulson was Cynthia Nixon. She looked SO MUCH like her. I was so confused why Cynthia Nixon was on AHS, but then I thought, well, she did Ratched so she's a part of the Murphyverse now.

[Dobian]

The zombies were all sporting Joan Collins Dynasty shoulder pads.

[Dobian]

21 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

So what are we working with here: Vampires and Zombies?

Zompires.

AHS has always borrowed old horror tropes each season, but this first story from this season is off the tropes charts.  I called it a soon as Finn took out the ziploc bag with the black pills that he would go all Jack Nicholson and that the daughter would follow suit.  This show is once again more carnival than horror.  Lots of weird and freaky people doing weird and freaky things.  Good to see Frances Conroy, she is always fun.  Sarah Paulson is at least doing a character that is not so annoyingly Sarah Paulson.  Evan Peters hamming it up as always. Not the best role for Lily Rabe.  She might be the female lead, but she has played so many fun roles in past seasons, while this one where she is the put-upon pregnant wife is kind of a drag.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Dobian

[bilgistic]

I still have "Islands in the Stream" in my head. It was a fantastically campy duet.

[Mr. Sparkle]

4 hours ago, bilgistic said:

I still have "Islands in the Stream" in my head. It was a fantastically campy duet.

I was hooked the second they cut to them singing. I usually love the first 3 or so episodes of AHS, then I'm like WTF?, then I can't wait for it to be over. Hopefully the 6+4 format will help craft some actual story out of this, and it won't just be cool sets and costumes. 

[Wicked]

cinematography was beautiful

[tennisgurl]

They did a really good job here using the sparseness of what I can guess were COVID restrictions to create this very creepy lonely atmosphere, it works really well. Everything is so isolated and grey, it makes the blood and violence stand out even more. This is a really promising start to the season, Finn Wittrock is great as always, and they have a really strong supporting cast made of a lot of the best performers in the AHS stable. I think that the Double Feature gimmick could really work in the seasons benefit, a shorter season means that it might go as far off the rails as the show usually does near the end...although I thought the same thing about American Horror Stories and some of those still managed to become padded messes within only an hour. 

The cinematography of the almost empty town in winter was very haunting, especially with the creepy vampire monsters running around as this sharp contrast to the quiet emptiness. This has some of The Shining and Salems Lot already, and I thought they were going to end up doing a Shadow Over Innsmouth thing with it being a ton of fish people, especially with one one seemingly crazy addict who is trying to warn the protagonist off, but now it looks like they are going in a different direction. 

So now Islands in the Stream is going to be stuck in my head all day...

[txhorns79]

On 8/28/2021 at 12:52 PM, tennisgurl said:

They did a really good job here using the sparseness of what I can guess were COVID restrictions to create this very creepy lonely atmosphere, it works really well. Everything is so isolated and grey, it makes the blood and violence stand out even more. This is a really promising start to the season,

I'll also say if you've visited some of these summer towns in the winter, this is really what they are like in terms of feeling isolated and empty.  Though I still think a bunch of quasi-vampires running around all in black would probably be noticed.  From what we've seen, they aren't shy about terrorizing people and are very hard to miss.   

[Black Knight]

On 8/30/2021 at 8:09 AM, txhorns79 said:

Though I still think a bunch of quasi-vampires running around all in black would probably be noticed.  From what we've seen, they aren't shy about terrorizing people and are very hard to miss.   

I just watched the premiere, and my working assumption is that the locals all know perfectly well about the quasi-vampires. They just pretend not to so any newcomers who show up can be fed to them, thus sparing the locals. Crazy-sounding lady is the only one honest enough to try to warn the newcomers away.

Even the sheriff is obviously in on it. She accepted "great white" as the answer to who killed those guys? Great whites don't come out on land to attack people. This isn't Sharknado. Those guys were fully dressed. They sure didn't go swimming out where the great whites are!

I too hope Lily Rabe's character turns more interesting for her to play. Roanoke started out similarly for her and she had awesome batshit moments in the back half, so there's hope.

I loved 1984 - one of my top five seasons - and so it was a little hard for me to get into this off that high. But on to the second episode!

[Bali]

I wish I had chosen Belle Noir as my pen name.

On 8/26/2021 at 5:14 PM, CrazyDog said:

Finn and Lily are great, as always. 

Everyone should totally take label-less black pills from a bizarre character that won't give you a straight answer on what it is, where it's from, and what the side effects will be. Lol. I get that Finn's character is supposed to be desperate, but wow.l

Yes, they are. As was Evan Peters and Francis Conroy. (Conrad?) 

I kept screaming, "It's a black jelly bean. Don't eat black jelly beans!! IT'S GONNA TASTE LIKE LICORICE!!"

I needed the duet to restore my faith in AHS

[LoveLeigh]

I never understood the "because of (Lily) I am in" or "because of (Finn) I am in."  I have to find the episodes interesting regardless of who is in it. I have to feel i am not watching a Master class in acting but watching a story unfold. 

This seems OK. I actually was not aware it even was back, so I am new to this season. Vampires and zombies. I missed this show. Glad it is back. 

[EllaWycliffe]

Oh I have some actors who I like so much that I will sit thru a lot of garbage to watch them. None of those are on AHS but I will admit that Finn Witrock actually has impressed me this season with NOT playing a completely arrogant psychopath with delusions of grandeur and instead played Average Guy Harry in a compelling way.