American Horror Story S1-S4

Murder House

The Setting

Audience Reception

Episodes

Conclusion & Thoughts

Asylum

Murder House

Basics & Synopsis

Taking place in 2010 The Harmon Family consists of Vivien (played by Connie Britton), a mother who just experienced a traumatic miscarriage and caught her husband, Ben (played by Dylan McDermott), having an affair. Them and their troubled daughter, Violet (played by Taissa Farmiga), move from Boston to Los Angeles for a fresh start. The house’s recent history, the deaths of former owners Patrick (played by Teddy Spears) and Chad Warwick (played by Zachary Quinto), is one of the reasons they decide to buy it.

Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk directed and wrote...

...multiple episodes in season one, along with Jennifer Salt, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Bradley Buecker, along with others-pause to read corresponding directors and writers for each episode. Most of these names will also appear as the writers and directors of other seasons, which I found really cool despite being shook by how few episodes Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk are directly credited with.

In season one, Murder House, our main actors Lange, McDermott, Peters, Conroy, Rabe, O’Hare, Paulson, and Brewer. All of the characters that they play - Constance, Tate, Addie, Moira, Nora, Larry, Ben, and Billie Dean Howard are some of the most recognizable from the series, responsible for many memes, GIFs, and threads—especially Evan Peters portrayal of Tate Langdon alongside Violet Harmon, both teen characters.

Upon moving in, the Harmons discover that there are multiple parties still invested in the house including Addie, the daughter of next door their southern neighbor Constance Langdon, and former owner Larry Harvey, just including those on the living plane of existence. Aside from unusually intense obsession with their new property others are obsessed with the new residents like Hayden McClaine played by Kate Mara, a former student of Ben’s whom he had an affair with and Tate who likes Violet so much he doesn’t recognize boundaries with her and his new therapist, her dad. Their maid Moira, a semi neutral party, also plays tricks to achieve her own goals and often can’t be trusted to be forthright.

The Setting

The collection of characters and their intertwining story lines is interesting all on its own aside from the supernatural elements. The house itself, Murder House, is the main setting of the entire season and the focal point of much of the action. The house not only sees an unusually high amount of tragedy for one property but also acts as a potential portal to hell, a place where the boundaries between this world and the next are blurred.

The lives lost on the property with unfinished business are doomed to roam the house alongside the living, repeating the same cycles that got them trapped to begin with. Throughout the season we see the home during different time periods and states. Including the present day with modern and updated fixtures as well as its dilapidated state when it had been abandoned following multiple deaths on the property.

Some Pre-Season Murder House Murders

Distraught Nora Montgomery kills her husband and then herself after their son is murdered in 1926.
Elizabeth Short is killed during an assault by Dr. Curran & Charles' ghost covers it up in 1947 (Black Dahlia)
Nursing students, Gladys & Maria, are murdered by serial killer R. Franklin in 1968.
Troy and Bryan are killed in the basement by Thaddeus Montgomery in the murder house basement in 1978.

Constance catches her husband, Hugo, attacking their maid, Moira, and kills them both in 1983.
Beauregard Langdon is killed by Larry Harvey at the request of his mother Constance Langdon in early 90's.
Lorraine Harvey sets herself and children Margaret & Angela on fire in the house, killing them in 1993.
School shooter Tate Langdon is shot by a swat team after murdering 15 students in 1994.
Chad & Patrick Warwick are murdered by Tate’s ghost and the crime is staged as a murder suicide in 2010.

Murders Committed During the Season

Fanatics break in & attempt to re-enact the 1968 nursing student murders but are killed by ghosts in.
Hayden McClaine is killed by Larry Harvey to keep her baby with Ben Harmon a secret.
exterminator, Phil Critter, finds violet’s corpse & is killed by Tate to keep violet’s fate concealed.

Moira lures Joe Escandarian into the basement & attacks him so that Larry can murder him.
Finally, one more ghost is added when Ben is hung from the chandelier by ghosts at Hayden’s request.

Audience Reception

Season one is not nearly as good as I remember it being. It’s possible that I’ve just grown more tired of it after rewatches over the years but I had always thought it was a clear slam dunk when remembering back. It’s well regarded and is a good watch but I found some of the sexual themes to be overwhelmingly cringe and the obsession with women’s reproduction and babies specifically, something I’ve noticed in almost every AHS season, to be boring.

Episodes

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6:

Episode 7:

Episode 8:

Conclusion & Thoughts

After adding up each episode’s individual rating I divided that by the number of episodes to come up with an average for the whole season. These numbers were pulled from IMDb which represented the largest number of user reviews in one place that were averaged already. The first season is on the whole well received, far better than many shows and amongst the most well rated seasons in the franchise. Although this season is extremely well received and well watched it isn’t the most highly rated season on average.

Part of the audience reception for Murder House in particular is owned by the romanticization of Violet and Tate’s relationship along with their individual mental health issues. Even Tate’s school shooting became romanticized on platforms like Tumblr with the use of GIFs, or short animated graphics from the show, often including subtitles of the most popular line for the featured character or scene.

GIFs like Tate “saving” Violet when she overdoses, Tate walking down the school hallway with skeleton face paint, Tate mocking agents by shooting himself in the head with a finger gun, and any/all physical scenes between the couple went viral on blogs and forums. These sites were typically frequented by teenagers with content created by other teenagers, often putting a positive spin on extremely macabre circumstances. This contributed significantly to the “Tumblr Girl” aesthetic and mentality of the general time period 2010-2015 with Violet and then Taissa Farmiga’s character in the subsequent season 3, Coven.

Part of the mania surrounding the relationship should be attributed to Evan Peters and the bad-boy attraction he garnered on the same platforms mentioned above. This phenomenon didn’t repeat in season 2, Asylum, but it hit doubly so in season 3, Coven, with the addition of Peter’s then girlfriend, Emma Roberts, to the cast as a love interest. I’ll discuss the viral love-triangle more in the season 3 audience reception section.