American Horror Story: Pilot

Episode 1: Pilot
This seems like an appropriate series to start on Halloween. It certainly is creeping me out, and not all of it is from the intended story, or maybe it is. I was warned by my friend about the spooky-cam effect. I didn't know what she meant at first, and then there it is, that kind of double or triple take, really a stutter-take if you will. Ya, that's annoying, though it did give me a bit of a Max Headroom flashback. Then there is the other spooky-cam effect of stuttering zoom-in.
And then suddenly I'm looking at Dylan McDermott's ass. So, I guess the show has got that going for it. And as a bonus we get to see it again while he's jerking off. Now, that is something you don't see in a television show every day.
So, we've got this neighbor, played wonderfully by Jessica Lange, who is the force to be reckoned with in the show. And we've got this housekeeper who appears different to the husband than to the wife. There's the gimp, the brain cancer suffering murderer, the psychotic kid patient, and the apparitions.
But the people that are really fucked are the family. They're all three so malleable to the setting they've found themselves in that you know it is going to eat them alive and spit them out dead or wishing they were dead.
Spooky-cam aside, there is a story-telling mechanism that I really find annoying - the scene ends sharply, sometimes a second or half-second too early and we got a black screen for almost a full second before the next scene picks up. The last 15 minutes of the show I thought credits were going to roll each time.
This show does not suck, but I'm through with it. I know it's Halloween and if there is any night when horror movies or television shows should be watched, it's probably tonight. But you know what, and I am not afraid to admit this, this genre is not so fun when you're watching a show by yourself. I'm all for paranormal themed shows, and I certainly watch enough procedurals with killers waiting around every corner, but horror is different. Now, I have it on very good authority that by the end of the season all of my questions will be answered, that the rules of the game will have been explained and that you'll start having those 'ah-ha' moments where you suddenly realize what happened three episodes earlier makes perfect sense in the American Horror Story universe. But, I'm not going to make it that far.
I guess I'm giving this show the highest honors I can. It's decently acted, there are pretty people to look at and it does what a horror story is intended to do, which in fact it does so well, that I'm not going to find out how the other 11 episodes go. I'm okay with this decision. I watch shows for entertainment, and sometimes anxiety can be entertaining, but too much anxiety and I might as well spend the 50 minutes banging my head into a wall as hard as I can, over and over and over, because that's how satisfying it is in the end, except that when you bash your head into hard things repeatedly, you're likely to at least pass out, whereas at the end of an anxiety session, I still feel anxious and it starts spilling over into the rest of my life. Nobody needs that.

American Horror Story at IMDb