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.

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.

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 second season is really consistent throughout and only 1 episode is rated below 80% or 8 out of 10 stars, which is the best overall performance of any season. This season is also the one of the highest rated seasons on average over the whole franchise and that is apparent throughout watching. The season is well paced, full of grab-bag-like surprises that the creators stick and the ending is more satisfying than many other AHS seasons, a common issue with the franchise.

As mentioned in the season 1 reception section the viral love magic with Evan Peters didn’t apply to season 2. Most viral or discussed moments pertained to the horror elements rather than the sex or obscene as had been the norm in season 1. Pushing the boundaries sexually still featured prominently but with the Holy spin that Catholicism and 1960s puritanical culture brings to the subject. While more interesting it didn’t provide as many salacious clips that became viral GIFs on platforms. I believe that contributed in part to this season's slightly lacking viewership despite it being very highly rated. At the time Twitter had become an essential piece of media premieres and consumption but with less pop culture moments in comparison with seasons 1 and 3 this season didn’t get as much glitz and glamor until viewers considered it in hindsight.

After rewatching this is still one of my favorite seasons, if not my absolute favorite then it’s in the top three for sure. It’s easy to forget just how much story is covered in this season and just how interesting most of the stories are. Very few of the plots are boring, they are spooky and even scary at times, and call into question mental health and the nature of evil while also critiquing the disciplines tasked with aiding those who are suffering like psychiatry and religion.

The promotional campaigns for this is one I’ll always remember being captivated by, the combo of old southern Bayou with modern stiletto and studs makes me want to know more about each character. The ad campaigns all hint to things that will actually happen in the season or that could be feasible once you’ve seen it.

Over the last few generations the bloodline of witches decreased significantly. Partially due to women choosing not to have children and in some part due to witch hunters and other threats to young women displaying abilities, like religious zealots. Cordelia Foxx, the headmistress at the start of the season, spends a good portion of her time investigating potential witches and reaching out to them to offer a home to them.

Despite her dedication to the coven...

...and guardianship of the girls Cordelia is not the Supreme, considered the most powerful witch and the only one in a generation that is able to perform all seven wonders or powers. The powers: telekinesis, Concilium or mind control, transmutation or teleportation, divination, pyrokinesis, Vital Vitalis or resurrection, and Descensum or astral projection to the nether world.

It is very clear even by the end of episode one that witches, as a collective, are under attack and that they turn inwards to the community for issues, shutting out the world for their own protection. With a mistrust of the police and strangers alike the events of the season prove to the coven that they can only rely on themselves…but that there are a lot more of them then they had previously thought.

By the end of this season...

...Cordelia passes the seven wonders and becomes the new Supreme of the coven, Fiona Goode is in her own personal catfish-smelling-hell, and witches have outed themselves to the world while calling upon young women who might also be witches to come to them.

By the time this season finished many believed that AHS had cracked a secret horror show formula that pushed boundaries that appealed to younger audiences while paying homage to imagery and cultural touch points of the past. Performances by Lange, Bates, and Bassett portraying the most iconic characters in the series set them apart from their counterparts in perpetuity.

As mentioned in the Season 1 audience reception section Taissa Farmiga’s characters, Violet and Zoe, contributed significantly to the Tumblr Girl era in the early 2010s. With the addition of Emma Roberts from Scream Queens to the cast not only did the quiet girl feel represented but then also the mean, vapid-but-actually-deep girl took off on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram too.

Average Audience Rating

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. This season is the season, it is highly rated from start to finish by audiences while also boasting some of the highest and most consistent viewership in the franchise’s history.

As mentioned in the Season 1 audience reception section Taissa Farmiga’s characters, Violet and Zoe, contributed significantly to the Tumblr Girl era in the early 2010s. With the addition of Emma Roberts from Scream Queens to the cast not only did the quiet girl feel represented but then also the mean, vapid-but-actually-deep girl took off on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram too.

The countering aesthetics and fictional sparring over the same man, Peters, who had a real-life, very public relationship with Roberts at the time, basically made the content itself. In addition to the love triangle Roberts gives a phenomenal and almost equally as iconic as the aforementioned performances in her portrayal of Madison Montgomery. I’d wager that Madison is the most featured character in any fan or outlet made AHS content across seasons 3 and her reprisal in season 8, Apocalypse.

The season creates a world full of...

...fear and pleasure, delving into both metaphorical and physical manifestations of freaks and their relationship with society. What that relationship says about society rather than the freaks themselves is a theme woven throughout each narrative, the idea that we dislike what we see in others that we dislike in ourselves.

The overarching themes are relevant and compelling but the extreme and often preposterous nature of stories like Jimmy’s flipper-party escapades and the wild sex party that seems to happen once and then never again do wash them out some. This season isn’t one that I can rewatch often, it’s rather dry and you can sense the story being stretched out over more episodes even when what is being added contributes little to any of the core plot lines. 

Freak Show, the fourth installment of American Horror Story, got announced as Jessica Lange’s last early on and became a key factor in the season. Despite no proof to the point I believe that the story got sacrificed for more Lange musical numbers. Let me explain.

Lange is responsible for not one but...

...three different iconic franchise characters by the time Freak Show came out, Constance Langdon in LA’s Murder House, Sister Jude in Asylum, and Fiona Goode in Coven. With this in mind it’s no wonder that the show wanted to give her a proper send off with a really, really good ending to the character’s story. Unfortunately for the story’s sake it makes absolutely no sense and causes the ending to fall flat and feel forgettable amongst the bigger moments of the season.

For example: it would’ve made way more sense and have been way more impactful if they had made Dandy Meep-like instead of Stanley-Richard-Spencer and then put him in the giant glass case to drown while everyone watched like their version of a Freak Show. Elsa shouldn’t have gotten a good ending, if anything I left the season feeling that her character hadn’t gotten nearly enough punishment to walk away feeling satisfied, she got rewarded.

She gets to live out...

...her best days over and over and over in the afterlife after sacrificing everyone to get fame and glory. Even up until the end she cared only for herself and was admired by audiences despite doing things that are reprehensible.

Other characters like Esmerelda, Paul, and Dell’s stories cut off abruptly with jaw dropping deaths that would have been better off as daydreams or imaginings than actual endings. Things that we’d been setting up all season turned out to be pointless once the massacre at the camp occurs and everything non-Elsa related is wrapped up rather quickly.

The least that could’ve happened is her living out being made fun of and booed on stage for all eternity, something. Instead I found myself checking every few seconds how much longer the last episode had. At the end I felt like I could have just watched a Jessica Lange fan edit and imagined my own ending for the season and saved myself the annoyance.

The thing that stood out the most for me about this season is how much time is spent on filler. Filler stories, filler scenes, filler moments within scenes, everything. It feels like the studio contracted 13 episodes but the story chosen for the season couldn’t be stretched seamlessly into that many episodes. I don’t care to rewatch this one much and still don’t really after a rewatch.

Freak Show is the beginning of the end, with a notable high at the start of the season off the tail winds of Coven and the newly garnered audience members. The quirky and off-beat roots that American Horror Story returned back to and expanded upon unfortunately didn’t meld with the new audience. Quickly following the season premiere the subsequent episodes received significantly less viewership and followed the same trend of other seasons but worse so.

The season, which had been heavily promoted as Jessica Lange’s last with AHS and thus centered around her and her character, Elsa. Although the season wasn’t a flop it didn’t come near Coven’s success or see an increase in audience viewership over the course of the season like its predecessor.