S06.E10: Chapter 10

[ZoloftBlob]

Christ, I am sorry, I was posting fast on my work break. It's Lana Winters, Lana Winters! LANA WINTERS! And I don't believe it was a real reality show. I'm sorry I didn't like it. Clearly I was wrong.

[Timetoread]

47 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

It's Lana Winters.  

Also I think we are getting to the argument stage at this point.  I personally loved the season and had zero effort with anyone's reason going and returning to the house.  Lee was always there for her daughter.  Shelby for Matt.  Matt's return was for the witch.  The actors because they didn't believe in ghosts.  Everyone else because they were either fans of the show, crazy or yes even plain morons.  

And yes the point of the show was that modern times does disconnect us from reality to an extent.  We don't see what is in front of us.  The show was in a lot of ways as much about our modern ways of watching tv as it was about the people on our tv.

Exactly!

[llewis823]

13 hours ago, rubinia said:

The biggest shock for me is seeing that so many people here liked Coven! That season was beyond pointless to me :)

I agree - Coven was my least favorite season as well. Although I love her dad Eric and aunt Julia as actors, Emma Roberts has no acting abilities of which to speak. 

[Timetoread]

58 minutes ago, ZoloftBlob said:

Yes, I have watched all seasons of the fictional show American Horror Story but thanks for reminding me that the fictional show about murderous demons in the woods was fake. I was actually getting into how my disconnect was that while they were clearly satirizing the reality show docudrama trends, the main disconnect I have is that the basic concept was too unbelievable to ever think anyone would be idiot enough to participate. I am willing to suspend disbelief for ghosts etc, but I know too much about the entertainment business and about human psychology to suspend my disbelief that a bunch of people would participate in a reality show where everyone was well aware of the murderous cannibal clan in the woods with no one hiding a cell phone. I don't mind disconnecting a little from reality - Freakshow had some "no reasonable person would make that decision" moments but the actual setting was somewhat fantastical to begin with. Roanoke's problem is that they set it in modern times with modern, familiar things like reality tv shows and cell phones and the story fails because the audience, me for example, can't buy it. I actually really liked Lana Turner and Asylum - I just didn't see how throwing her in at the end did anything for the story.

Well hey, you can't please everybody.  To each his own.  I guess for me the absolute joy of this was that I didn't bother to suspend disbelief,  there was NOTHING that was realistic- that's what made it funny.  I think I'm laughing the hardest that Matt and the Blair Witch became an item.  And the Uber driver!  And lastly "I played Shelby.  Shelby is too self centered to kill herself!" LOL.  My favorite season so far.

[Chaos Theory]

4 minutes ago, Timetoread said:

Well hey, you can't please everybody.  To each his own.  I guess for me the absolute joy of this was that I didn't bother to suspend disbelief,  there was NOTHING that was realistic- that's what made it funny.  I think I'm laughing the hardest that Matt and the Blair Witch became an item.  And the Uber driver!  And lastly "I played Shelby.  Shelby is too self centered to kill herself!" LOL.  My favorite season so far.

Forget Audrey and Rory my OTP is Matt and The Roanoke Witch.  

[ZoloftBlob]

Whereas while I love good dark jokes and humor (Freakshow had a lot of that) I started watching the show because along with being darkly funny, Murder House, Asylum etc had some genuine scares. If I just want to watch witless reality whores, there's plenty out there to laugh at.

[WhosThatGirl]

I didn't like the finale much but I loved parts of this season. I loved Sarah Paulson and her terrible accent. My favorite moment will be when she found Shelby dead and talked about how parts of her had died now too or when she videotaped a death video about how she still had so much acting to do and roles to play. To me Sarah can do wrong. Did her accent grate? Yes but I think that's the point. It's not a secret why RM keeps using her. 

I would go for my favorites murder house, Roanoke, Asylum, coven, hotel and freak show tie at the bottom for me. Both have characters I really really like and a few episodes I really enjoy but the whole them I can't really enjoy.  There were parts I really loved about hotel, I just hated that the bulk of the season had to do with vampires. 

Edited November 18, 2016 by WhosThatGirl

[Dobian]

The finale would have been far better if after they did the whole catch-up with Lee's trial they simply had Flora run away and Lee followed her back to Roanoke.  Leave out the "Ghost Facers" rip-offs and the cameos from every scary thing we saw this season,  and have her confront Billy Bob and finally the real Butcher to save her daughter.  It would have actually been scary and not cheesy the way they did it.

[Mattipoo]

Wow I was pleasantly surprised but Adina Porter's great performance as Lee this season, as I only previously knew her in a small role as Tara's crazy mom in "True Blood". It's nice that Ryan Murphy recognized her talent and promoted her to the lead role this season of AHS. Speaking of "True Blood", Murphy needs to cast the actress who played Tara (Rutina Wesley) in the next season. Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) would also be great additions to the AHS cast.

Edited November 18, 2016 by Mattipoo

[LoneHaranguer]

18 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

Yeah, they kind of did a poor job making her look older.

Or different from her other character, so that my first thought wouldn't have been "didn't she die?".

9 hours ago, RedheadZombie said:

I think RM thinks Saw and Hostel are the best horror has to offer.  I wish he'd bring in someone like Steven King to map out a coherent season.

You'd have to at least double the airtime. Brevity isn't in SK's wheelhouse. :-)

[Chaos Theory]

There are different brands of horror and I actually do like all of them.  Roanoke took aspects of most of them which is probably why a lot of people didn't like it.   Horror comedy,  Slasher Horror,  supernatural horror, psychological horror.  I know a lot of people might like one or two of them but not all and might actually hate one of them.   Roanoke for better and worse took and interesting tactic and blended them all.  For me it worked.

For some it didn't.

Edited November 18, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[sugarbaker design]

1 hour ago, Mattipoo said:

Murphy needs to cast the actress who played Tara (Rutina Wesley) in the next season. Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) would also be great additions to the AHS cast.

Wesley is currently on Queen Sugar on OWN, a second season has been green-lighted.  Ellis is on this season of Elementary.  I have no idea what Kwanten is doing, but if he's shirtless it's worth watching.

[RedheadZombie]

2 hours ago, Mattipoo said:

Wow I was pleasantly surprised but Adina Porter's great performance as Lee this season, as I only previously knew her in a small role as Tara's crazy mom in "True Blood". It's nice that Ryan Murphy recognized her talent and promoted her to the lead role this season of AHS. Speaking of "True Blood", Murphy needs to cast the actress who played Tara (Rutina Wesley) in the next season. Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jason (Ryan Kwanten) would also be great additions to the AHS cast.

I greatly miss those three.  I recently re-posted Lafayette's response to a homophobe, and I'm craving a True Blood re-watch.  My favorite horror genres are demonic possession, zombies, and vampires.  I wish RM would do one of those, but he'd be crazy to do zombies with TWD on the air.  Vampires are overdone, and Exorcist is currently airing a demonic possession (although ratings are dismal.  Horror lovers, please check out this show!) 

RM, Showtime massively fucked up by cancelling Penny Dreadful.  Please snatch up as many of those actors as possible for a future season.

[RedheadZombie]

43 minutes ago, sugarbaker design said:

Wesley is currently on Queen Sugar on OWN, a second season has been green-lighted.  Ellis is on this season of Elementary.  I have no idea what Kwanten is doing, but if he's shirtless it's worth watching.

I'm so glad Jason was changed from the book.  I despised him there.  But on the show he was a manwhore with a heart of gold.  The scene where Hoyt no longer remembers Jason and is leaving town makes me cry every time.

[Captanne]

I was remarkably unimpressed by the actress who played Real!Lee.  I thought she was painful to watch and spent the whole time wishing she'd been recast.  The only worse actor was the young woman blogger.  Whew.  Badso.   I didn't really like Cuba Gooding, Jr. either.

Otherwise, I thought the cast was uniformly solid.  (I especially liked seeing Calamity Jane.) 

[iMonrey]

Quote

The reason I could suspend my disbelief about MRN becoming such a hit (and in the finale they do describe it as a "surprise" hit) is that shows I couldn't care less about become viral tapeworms. 

The issue for me isn't whether people like reality shows or docu-dramas. Certainly people do, Survivor is still a popular show even after 33 seasons. The issue is whether we believe this particular reality show would be popular. I don't believe it would be. All of us sat through the first five episodes of this season, and the collective response was generally "this is stupid, why don't they just leave the house?" Why are we to believe a fictional audience of millions of Americans would react any differently than we did?

We saw too much of the docu-drama part. They should have limited that part of the story to a few clips - maybe devoted one episode to it, tops. Then we would have only seen enough of it to grasp the concept without seeing too much of it to realize it was stupid.

As for "season 2" where the participants returned to the house for a reality show? The idea that half that footage would have ever made it onto the air is laughably absurd. Those were real people getting killed. I don't even think HBO would show actual deaths.

Edited November 18, 2016 by iMonrey

[Dobian]

2 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

Or different from her other character, so that my first thought wouldn't have been "didn't she die?".

You'd have to at least double the airtime. Brevity isn't in SK's wheelhouse. :-)

LOL yeah, by the end of the season we would have completed the back stories for two of the characters.

[tennisgurl]

Finally got to watch this, and...I dug it. There is definite suspenssion of disbelief here, but I think its by far the most focused and well written season since season 2. It helps that this season seemed to have an actual point to it, a consistent theme, and was actually based on real American mythology, not just on "Ryan Murphy has issues". 

I do kind of get why people kept going back to the house. People wanting fame, people being thrill junkies or obsessed fans, or not believing in the ghosts, I do. But I do have to laugh at just HOW MANY PEOPLE have died in conjunction to this show. Between the people who died with just Matt and Shelby, the whole cast and crew of the second season (except Lee), the three vlogger kids, and now all these people, this is a damn high body count! Plus the people who died in the redneck tirade? This show really needs to be cancelled, just for the good of society. And someone finally listened to my Twitter account, and burned that fucking house to the ground! And how could people not know the crew of the second season really died? The bodies were found, there was a trail! We know they died!

The most unrealistic part of the show, to me actually, was that this show would be such a huge monster hit, ala Game of Thrones or Waking Dead. I buy that the show would have fans, or even be a hit, but it seems like it would be more of a cult show than an enormous hit with giant panels and frantic fans and mainstream success. Most people would think the whole thing was a hoax, or exaggerated, and was kind of slow. Again, I buy it being a hit, but one of the biggest hits ever? I just dont see it. But that happens with a lot of shows that try to create a successful show within a show. You can talk all you want about how great your show is, but its hard to get your actual audience to agree with them.

I still have complicated feelings towards Lee. She did really love Flora, and gave her life for her, and you could make a case that she was possessed or something when she make the deal with the Woods Witch and killed those kids, but she did still Mason of her own free will, and she got away with it, making Flora look like a liar in front of the whole country. Mason had every reason to keep Flora away from Lee, and every right to be pissed that she kidnapped her and dragged her back to Murder House Southern Gothic Edition. Its not like he was abusive or a bad guy, beyond being angry at Lee. Killing him was pretty awful.

That all being said, I did really like this season, and I find the whole found footage thing to actually have a point. It was about the media, and how people get so invested in their TV shows and the general media circus, especially in the world of reality TV and legal shows. People get so invested in parts of a true story they see on TV, that they dont get to the real story, or maybe that people get WAY too invested in what they watch on TV. No matter what, it was an interesting season, and it was actually a pretty solid ghost story. Not bad, show. Not bad.   

[dadondada]

No. no. No. they lost me when they tried to convince me that any of the real people would return DURING the blood moon after what they went through! Maybe if the second half showed just the actors going back I would have believed them but the real people?! No ma'am Ms. Murphy. Try again.

The only real person I could have pictured going back was Matt just to be with the Jungle Witch. And Lee but only at the very end when Flora went missing again.

Why did Mott not return to help? Why did the Butchers son suddenly become complacent in murdering again?!

[queenanne]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

The most unrealistic part of the show, to me actually, was that this show would be such a huge monster hit, ala Game of Thrones or Waking Dead. I buy that the show would have fans, or even be a hit, but it seems like it would be more of a cult show than an enormous hit with giant panels and frantic fans and mainstream success.

Based upon footage I've seen of their panels at the likes of ComicCon(s), I actually think you might have nailed it, that folks' theoretical reaction to Roanoke Nightmare is RM poking gentle fun at/satirizing Walking Dead and its fans.    

I'm a little bothered by the same aspects, but I find it easier to believe the popularity of Roanoke Nightmare than I find it to believe that Flora continues to beg to be abandoned in the house with a ghost.  That's one morbid dissatisfied child, with no backstory or rationale to say why.  At least it's possible if they had played out the theoretical tie-ins with Lee's prior deceased child, Flora's sister (?), they might have got me - that Flora had been affected by the loss of a sibling, or similar.  Or even that she thought it would be a way to spend time with her deceased father or uncle.  (Did they play a "longing after dead relations" card in Flora's last speech?  I don't think they did but I may have zoned out and missed it.)  If she wants to spend time with Priscilla because it makes up for not having a sister, at least that's remotely possible to me.  Left to her own devices, I don't see a child Flora's age hating life so much, that being abandoned in the house seems like a plausible or better outcome.  She doesn't even have the excuse of teen hormones.

[Bruinsfan]

Murphy already featured vampires as recently as last season, and Lily Rabe was possessed by the Devil for much of Asylum. I don't think he'd be quick to go back to either well, though of course ghosts are so prevalent in scary stories as to be basically unavoidable if there's any element of the supernatural.

I thought Adina Porter was knocking it out of the park once we got to the last few episodes with her interacting with people in real time. Lee may have been batshit crazy and possessed of better luck with indictments than anyone since Nixon, but her performances were very moving to me.

[Canada]

My take on Lee's death is that it was inevitable.  She managed to escape the house twice, but it dragged her back by using her daughter to lure her there.  She finally died during her third time there.

[Terrafamilia]

"National treasure, Lana Winters" That line broke me up. It pretty much encapsulates how self-involved the media is.

I, too, have no interest in torture-porn but this was so satirical and over-the-top it didn't bother me. When the last Polk was suddenly blown away by the cops I actually laughed. The only killings that seemed in any way 'real' to me where those of the vloggers.

[JennyMominFL]

On 11/17/2016 at 1:18 AM, Tony said:

I hated that finale episode. It was all choppy and kept jumping around between various reality shows and reality.

Hopefully this format was a one-season novelty and we'll get back to an actual, fluid storyline next season.

 

I'm sorry, I'm trying to stop laughing at the idea of AHS with an actual fluid storyline.

[Avaleigh]

I will go so far as to say that this season made the first four seasons look like high art in comparison. 

One thing that has always been wonderful about AHS is slowly getting the backstories of various characters over the seasons. There wasn't one character this season where we needed to know more of their backstory and that's an indication to me that this series wasn't nearly as strong as the others. 

The first half of the season had no scares because of the format, and the last half of the season had a bunch of people behaving stupidly to the point where it was almost impossible to believe that any of these people would be in the situation that they found themselves in. 

The humor, something that has been a strong point in every other season save most of Hotel, was largely absent save a small handful of moments. The Uber driver scenes, the producer imitating Cricket, Angela Bassett's character giving her 'I knew it!' expression when she hears Lee's confession (a tiny moment but I thought it was gold--AB is so good with stuff like that), Kathy Bates's actress character being interviewed, and a few moments with Audrey being self absorbed, but other than that I found it surprising how little humor there was in this season. 

On 11/17/2016 at 8:33 PM, rubinia said:

The fan from "London" sounded like she had a Southern American accent or something. I thought for a minute that she and Audrey would both reveal that their accents were fake.

This whole season was pretty "meh" to me. The biggest shock for me is seeing that so many people here liked Coven! That season was beyond pointless to me :)

This season made me appreciate Coven a lot more than I did at the time. Coven was hands down one of the funniest seasons and not only that, but I felt that every single main character had an interesting backstory where I wanted to learn more about their characters. 

I gave the example earlier of how different Angela Bassett was in this season versus Coven and she was just totally wasted as an actress here. Kathy Bates and Frances Conroy were a lot more interesting as characters in Coven too and they seemed like they had more fun with their roles. 

Coven also had lots of questions and mystery and the mystery wasn't 'why are all of these people so freaking stupid?'  

Coven also raised interesting issues regarding race, slavery, ageism, the American Deep South, feminism, etc.

Roanoke sort of touches on the long term effects that reality TV has on society but not in a particularly meaningful way. I just feel like every other season did a better job of examining various meaningful issues and topics than Roanoke did. Even Hotel touched on the dangers of the anti-vaccination movement.

I felt like Roanoke failed as a horror story (the primary goal of AHS) on top of failing on delivering any kind of meaningful social commentary, so all in all, I think it was a failure of a season. It's the only season in the entire run of AHS that I've been down on and kept hoping that it would eventually grow on me, but no such luck.

iMonrey, you've pretty much nailed every reason why this season hasn't worked for me but I think the real sign for me is that I didn't bother to rewatch any of the episodes. That's a first for me with AHS. I'd typically watch the episode and then watch an encore before every new episode aired and this season I just couldn't be bothered. I'd rather watch an encore showing of Westworld.   

[WhosThatGirl]

I liked the idea of Coven and I remember loving the promos for that season. They were so good but the execution of that season was kind of.. meh for me. 

[Captanne]

On 11/18/2016 at 4:28 PM, iMonrey said:

The issue for me isn't whether people like reality shows or docu-dramas. Certainly people do, Survivor is still a popular show even after 33 seasons. The issue is whether we believe this particular reality show would be popular. I don't believe it would be. All of us sat through the first five episodes of this season, and the collective response was generally "this is stupid, why don't they just leave the house?" Why are we to believe a fictional audience of millions of Americans would react any differently than we did?

We saw too much of the docu-drama part. They should have limited that part of the story to a few clips - maybe devoted one episode to it, tops. Then we would have only seen enough of it to grasp the concept without seeing too much of it to realize it was stupid.

As for "season 2" where the participants returned to the house for a reality show? The idea that half that footage would have ever made it onto the air is laughably absurd. Those were real people getting killed. I don't even think HBO would show actual deaths.

This comment is in response to a comment I made about never being able to predict what reality show will go viral and what one won't.

I completely agree with you, imonrey.  You're right -- even though I'm tone deaf to what goes viral and what doesn't, I don't believe this one would have.  

[Chaos Theory]

For me Coven was probably the worst i funniest worst written least thought through season of them all.  I don't think anything about that season worked for me at all EXCEPT the last five minutes.  Everything worked for me about Roanoke.  I understand it is a stretch that the original show would become  worldwide hot even a sleeper one.  Then again I didn't think Making A Murderer would either or any other reality tv program.  Who knows and in the end some things need to be hand waved as tv stuff.  Personally I think a lot of people just lached onto the love story of Matt and Shelby and word tool off plus a murder plot and the Polks.  It just took off.  

It was a killer story.

Coven just bored me to death.

[Bruinsfan]

15 hours ago, Avaleigh said:

I gave the example earlier of how different Angela Bassett was in this season versus Coven and she was just totally wasted as an actress here. Kathy Bates and Frances Conroy were a lot more interesting as characters in Coven too and they seemed like they had more fun with their roles.

It might not be possible for someone to have more fun with a role than Kathy Bates did with Delphine LaLaurie (LIES!), but she was clearly having more fun as Agnes than the rest of the cast combined this season.

[ClareWalks]

That London fan sounded more like she was putting on a Liverpool accent. Either way, it was BAD.

[luna1122]

17 hours ago, Avaleigh said:

 I think the real sign for me is that I didn't bother to rewatch any of the episodes. That's a first for me with AHS. I'd typically watch the episode and then watch an encore before every new episode aired and this season I just couldn't be bothered. I'd rather watch an encore showing of Westworld.   

I'm very rarely compelled to rewatch shows (at least, not right away...I can binge watch repeats of older series like Scrubs and Always Sunny and Friends, etc like a boss, and my obsession with Mads Mikkelsen means I've seen every episode of Hannibal 2-3 times) but I have seen every episode of Roanoke twice. Not entirely by choice, or rather, certain circumstances led to it: a DVR-less friend coming to our place to catch up on the episodes she missed. So, tho, I wouldn't have necessarily watched twice on my own, I did for this season, and I was never bored, or even close. I was still entertained/scared/interested. Coven was the season I most wanted and expected to love, as New Orleans fascinated me, and I loved the idea of the coven. And I did love it, at first, and remained interested, but it kind of lost focus and became too outlandish at times even for me. I kind of blame Emma Roberts for a lot of that, even tho she actually amuses me.

 

Tangentially to this thread: I saw 'Moonlight' this weekend (it's a perfect, gorgeous, shattering film that everyone should see) and it took a full scene for me to be sure that one of the characters later in the film was played by Andre Holland. It was his voice that I recognized first; he doesn't look terribly different, but without the glasses and with shaggier hair, I didn't realize it was him at first. And I've liked Matt, but I have now fallen hopelessly in love with him after this film. He is brilliant and beautiful and heartbreaking.

[Captanne]

I thought the actor who played "Matt" this season was one of the really outstanding members of the cast.  I couldn't believe it but he sold me that "I came back here for her -- I love her" line.  I never thought anyone could sell me on that.  He did.

[Bruinsfan]

Glad to see others echo my appreciation for Andre. I wasn't sure if I was seeing something real, or if it was just the comparison with Cuba Gooding Jr. that made him seem so good.

[rubinia]

If you're a fan of Andre's acting definitely watch him in "The Knick." He's great.

[sugarbaker design]

On 11/21/2016 at 1:50 PM, luna1122 said:

Tangentially to this thread: I saw 'Moonlight' this weekend (it's a perfect, gorgeous, shattering film that everyone should see) and it took a full scene for me to be sure that one of the characters later in the film was played by Andre Holland. It was his voice that I recognized first; he doesn't look terribly different, but without the glasses and with shaggier hair, I didn't realize it was him at first. And I've liked Matt, but I have now fallen hopelessly in love with him after this film. He is brilliant and beautiful and heartbreaking.

Ditto!  Andre Holland was good in AHS, he was great in Moonlight.

[Canada]

I have to say, FX had a marathon of this season over the weekend, and it was a lot more enjoyable watching all the episodes one after the other than it was watching them once a week.  I enjoyed it much more on the rewatch than I did watching it the first time, week by week.

[kelslamu]

I want to know how the cops knew to go to the house.  Lee said she'd been searching for two weeks.  Did they allude to it and I missed it?

[Canada]

I'm assuming they were alerted by people who were watching the live-stream of the young people being murdered.

[Nowhere]

It must be nice when your acting sucks and your fans give excuses like, "It was purposeful because it was a parody. The accent was supposed to suck." Somehow Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates pulled this "parody" off with brilliant performances. They must not have gotten the memo. 

[Chaos Theory]

1 hour ago, Nowhere said:

It must be nice when your acting sucks and your fans give excuses like, "It was purposeful because it was a parody. The accent was supposed to suck." Somehow Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates pulled this "parody" off with brilliant performances. They must not have gotten the memo. 

I have never seen Sarah Paulson have a bad performance in anything she has done.  Worse case she can't do British  accents.  Fine one thing she is incapable able of.  Best case "bad accent" was intentional because she was playing three different rolls during a ten episode story arc.  I am leaning toward the best case.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[Canada]

I don't understand the problem people have with Paulson's accent in the show.  It sounded like an authentic English accent to me.  I think the issue is that most people don't realise that there is no one 'English' accent; there are hundreds of different accents in England.  Go meet some luvvies in England and you'll hear Paulson's accent!

[Chaos Theory]

On 11/26/2016 at 7:34 PM, Canada said:

I don't understand the problem people have with Paulson's accent in the show.  It sounded like an authentic English accent to me.  I think the issue is that most people don't realise that there is no one 'English' accent; there are hundreds of different accents in England.  Go meet some luvvies in England and you'll hear Paulson's accent!

I have been told I dont sound like a New Yorker and I have lived in New York all my life.  I have heard people who have moved from England to America get told they don't sound British by people who insist they have an ear for languages and accents.   It's one of the reasons I don't particularly care about accents and it actually annoys me more when people get so obsessed with them that it is all they notice about some actor who may not pull it off quite right.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[iMonrey]

I'll have to agree and defend the accent. We do not know enough about this character to determine exactly how she "should" sound. For example, what part of England is she from? How long did she live there and how long has she been living in the U.S. - assuming she lives in the U.S. at all? Sometimes when foreigners have lived a long time in the U.S. their accents become muddled and they start to sound more American. And that's kind of how Paulson sounded - a Brit with a fading accent. Some of her words sounded more "Americanized." And I think that's the main complaint about her accent - she tended to drop it here and there. But this show doesn't take place in the UK and we don't know how long it's been since Audrey lived in the UK or how many times she's been asked to do an American accent for American television. Eventually her accent would become muddled. A lot of former Australians sound completely Americanized but every so often a word or phrase sounds Australian.

[Bruinsfan]

The thing is, Paulson's character was a British actress, and one who appeared to have an extensive resume. Based on that I would expect Received Pronunciation, not some obscure regional accent unfamiliar to Americans.