Huh. I guess Asylum isn’t for me.

I loved American Horror Story: Coven (third season and the first I watched to completion) despite a weak ending, and I ended up liking Murder House (first season) quite a bit. Murder House is a slow burn style of horror I’m usually not a fan of, but it managed to grow on me by the third episode. On the surface, Asylum (second series) should be right up my alley. It hits hard and fast right out of the gate, and there’s a lot going on. Never a dull moment. My complaint is actually that Asylum might have a little too much going on. Too many characters and so many subplots that half of them don’t seem fully baked. Some of the subplots tie together in some way, but several of them seem tangential or even completely unrelated to the main story. To be fair, I still have three or four episodes left. Maybe it all comes together in the the end, but I’m currently not in any particular rush to find out (though I still plan to finish).

For those unfamiliar with American Horror Story, the reason I can watch the various seasons so completely out-of-order is because each season stands on its own as a kind of mini-series. Some actors come back, but always as different characters in stories unrelated to each other. It’s an interesting approach to making a television series, though the seasons end up varying wildly in style. Both strength and weakness, I think. Each new season is a potential jumping-on point for new viewers or even old viewers unimpressed by previous seasons, but the creators have no guarantees regarding how much if any of the prior season’s audience they’ll hold onto. I do hope the next season, Freak Show, turns out well. The show has held more good than bad for me, and I’d like to see it get a long run.