S10.E06: Winter Kills

[Terrafamilia]

Um, Alma, those talentless folks are not useless. They're the ones who fork over the dinero that allows you to live in the style to which you have become accustomed.

[Madding crowd]

Very disappointed in the last half of this. Nothing made sense. Sure Alma could tour and people might be intrigued because she mastered the piece no else did but that intrigue won’t last forever and then what does she do? Unlike writing or painting, violin playing only goes so far and then you are just playing the same pieces. In regard to the policemen, adding them in makes no sense since the pill is about artistic talent.

Even within the explanations given the pill never made sense. Is it really about talent or opportunity? It made Harry more prolific and solved his writers block but Belle did seem very talented so did it give her talent? And of course we all know that being talented doesn’t mean you will be published or discovered and plenty of people with little talent are very successful due to contacts, money, being in the right place etc. Hope the second half is better. And finally, some things can be learned like interior design and even writing. People also have differing levels of talent. 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Madding crowd

[Black Knight]

22 minutes ago, Madding crowd said:

Sure Alma could tour and people might be intrigued because she mastered the piece no else did but that intrigue won’t last forever and then what does she do?

It doesn't have to last forever, just until she becomes an adult, which is only a few years.

The talent question is a good one. I think what the pill tended to do was help people who had everything in their heads but couldn't quite get it down on paper (canvas, etc.). We've all mostly probably had the experience of having something wonderful in our heads that sort of evaporated once we sat down and tried to manifest it in a form others could see and/or hear. Though I grant Alma is different in that we didn't hear about her composing anything; she just wanted to play the already-composed masterworks. But maybe that is partly down to her youth; she might look to do her own original compositions as she grows older, and she could build a career out of that as well.

One thing I am sorry about with this half-season is that we didn't see what Sarah Paulson's character painted as her masterwork. I know the dialogue indicated that it was the beach/ocean she'd been looking at, but wouldn't it have been interesting if it turned out that Mickey's dead body was a key part of that? When the episode started out on the ocean surface, I was hopeful that maybe Paulson's character would resurface, that maybe her story wasn't quite over. Oh well.

[iMonrey]

Quote

But even within the confines of the storyline, this new addition to the plot didn't make a lot of sense. So the Chemist roots out the bad cops by searching their disciplinary records, then gets (or forces?) them to take the black pill. Since they are not "talented" at what they do, they don't ascend to greatness, and instead become even worse cops, i.e., murderous pale people.

And unlike Provincetown, I doubt the LA city council will try to cover this up. At some point someone's going to do an autopsy on these bad cops and find out why they lose their hair, skin tone and rage control. 

[Primal Slayer]

This season started with such promise but it stayed true to AHS style where it went downhill except this one managed to do it in 6 episodes as opposed to a full 13+. They really got rid of any substance the show/season had.

I cant buy that the kid was able to kill someone and drag them outback. She isnt a vampire, all she does is bite your neck, throw her off. Everything just comes down to "they dont agree so we'll kill them and get away with it"

[For Cereals]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:10 PM, Dobian said:

Did she have time to send her dress to the dry cleaners and wash up?

The only thing I can think of is that she lured him out, killed him (don’t know how) and had an exact same change of clothes in her violin case because she was always planning to kill her competition.  I like the ending better upthread where she gets rejected.

[tennisgurl]

I have mostly really enjoyed this season, as more of a Twilight Zone style morality play than a story that makes sense or takes place in anything close to the real world, but this episode really fumbled that ending. In classic Murphy style, we get a ton of interesting ideas in a glossy package with no substance, ending on absolute nonsense. The episode threw out so many totally concepts like this was a midseason finale and not the end of the story, with the cop who wants to solve the chiefs murder and the town council being in it with the vampires and Ursula and The Chemist going to LA, it all felt so weirdly unfinished. The episode was a major letdown after what has been a solid season. When stacked against the rest of the AHS seasons I will still probably rank it pretty high, if only because it was more competent than a lot of other seasons, but its being knocked down quite a bit with this disappointing ending. I am also still rather disappointed that the season wasn't actually about sea monsters or murderous merpeople like the advertisements told me they would be, that sounds a lot more interesting than more vampires and an overtaught metaphor for talent and how much Hollywood sucks. Will the next feature even have aliens, or is the advertising a lie again and the season will actually be about ghosts again? 

Of course Ursula, the sociopath who is the worst even without a pill, The Chemist, the woman who caused all of this, and devil spawn Alma survive while all of the likable characters die, and even when Evan Peters and Frances Conroy die its anticlimactic. The "LA overrun by Pale Pale Ones" feels especially tacked on, like the show really just wanted to beat that message in to us one last time (because this wasn't unsubtle enough) and they wanted a "shocking" ending. The one part I liked was when the other pretentious prodigy gave Alma that smack down about how just because she's talented that doesn't mean that she is going to have everything handed to her, which was awesome, even though it was ruined when somehow a tiny nine year old girl was able to lug a grown man down an entire building after killing him and then make it back to the waiting room in about three seconds, which is really pushing that suspension of disbelief even by this shows standards. And at least baby Eli survived. 

I am hoping that the next feature ends on a stronger note. Maybe its time for RM to take that pill... 

[Dobian]

On 9/24/2021 at 7:59 PM, Madding crowd said:

Very disappointed in the last half of this. Nothing made sense. Sure Alma could tour and people might be intrigued because she mastered the piece no else did but that intrigue won’t last forever and then what does she do? Unlike writing or painting, violin playing only goes so far and then you are just playing the same pieces.

She could be the next Lindsey Stirling.  :)

[Bali]

Again-art is subjective. One person's art is someone else's garbage. Anyone else remember that expensive painting that hurled itself into a shredder?

My guess is that the pill also lets them know exactly what to write/say to get an agent? 

Alma is a flash in the pan who has apparently learned how to rip someone's throat out without getting blood on her. She is good. When she told them she doesn't like being watched when she eats, my husband paused it and asked, Is there something wrong with us? Lol.  Probably. 

A bunch of pale people killing in LA? Eh, LA just gotta LA

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 9/27/2021 at 8:07 PM, Dobian said:

She could be the next Lindsey Stirling.  :)

Maybe she can write new pieces.

[DancinCat]

I want to see the full "Story Prism" slide shown at the screenwriting seminar. Ryan must have had a lot of fun putting that together. We learned that, like a diamond, screenwriting is hard! But what IS the difference between the primal defense cotagonist and the shadow trickster pretagonist?

[Genius]

Yeah they really lost me when Alma somehow managed to kill her competition and no one noticed her dragging a grown man out back and got not a drop of blood on herself.  It's really hard to suspend disbelief that getting away with murder is so easy.  It would have been perfect karmic justice if she was actually caught, arrested, tried as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison for murder, where all the violin talent in the world means nothing.

In the meantime, the diminishing returns of this show tells me it's time to maybe retire it.  I mean, "1984" was abysmal.  *I* could have written that season - just a bunch of people running around the woods back and forth.  It was dumb.  And to me, this mini-season wasn't much better.

[Red Bridey]

I thought the "grown man" Alma killed was a skinny 15 or 16 yr old boy.  Maybe she distracted him to go backstage somehow. Her face was pretty bloody, but that's easily washed off. As a committed bloodsucker for her art, I presumed she had become adept at killing neatly and efficiently. 

[Peanut6711]

I've come to the conclusion that Ryan Murphy took the black pills before he wrote season 1/Murder House and then he detoxed. Maybe relapsed and took a quarter pill for Coven and Hotel but was definitely clean when he wrote this season.