Okay, so I watched the Pilot for the first season of American Horror Story. I'm kind of intrigued but the jury's still out. A married couple and their daughter move to a "20s LA Victorian" house that is infested with evil. The previous owners died tragically ("murder-suicide" says the real estate agent who puts on a rather poor poker face; sure her face is icy cold and her attempts to charm them certainly left me less than impressed), and later a criminal dying of brain cancer, with a burnt visage and creepy white eye (they always have the creepy white eye), informs the man of the house, psychiatrist, Ben (Dylan McDermott), that his family must leave. This creep who peeps on them and forewarns of horrors to come if Ben's family doesn't leave, says he was an obedient child to "the voices", who commanded him to burn his family and the house alive. The voices are starting to communicate to Ben, and he's sleepwalking, doing things like lighting his fireplace and holding his hands over lit stove eyes. Ben's estranged wife, Vivien (Connie Britton), suffered not only a miscarriage (the baby was seven months old, awful) but literally walked in on her husband boning one of his students (he must have been a teacher on the East Coast). So Vivien is having a hard time forgiving Ben, understandably so, and this pilot shows their angst while attempting for some sort of domestic calm after the emotional storm. Ben has a daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga), having trouble adjusting to her new school thanks to a queen bitch who considers herself high on the hog, a voice that must be adhered to, accompanied by her two followers, bourgeois bullies, quite the divas. An unstable patient currently under doc Ben's evaluation is drawn to Violet and vice versa. Tate (Evan Peters; he has these black eyes that seem soulless, and his behavior, manner of talk, his approach and opinion to/towards life is certainly shouting loud the signs of a potential psychopath) offers to frighten Violet's chief tormentor (the whole connection derived from Tate catching Violet cutting; yeah, she's a cutter). Going into the basement, Tate has Violent bring the girl, cutting on/off the lights, apparitions of (demonic?) creatures (ghouls?) appear. Decades prior to the Harmons buying the house, twins with bats entered it when it was once in ruin and left to decay, breaking and destroying glass, finding their way into the basement, were killed by "something". Their specters appear to the "mongoloid" daughter ("You are going to die here") of an eccentric neighbor (Jessica Lange; who easily steals every scene she's in) equipped with acid-tongue, blunt honesty with quite the sting, and a way with words. From Virginia, Constance Langdon came to LA for a Hollywood career, but she was not the kind to get naked in front of the camera. Once she had the child, her dreams for a career hit the skids. Constance has a way of infiltrating Vivien's domain, her daughter obsessed with the house (or, better yet, the ghouls within it) offering an opportunity to do so. Add Frances Conroy's maid Moira O'Hara (she has a "wicked eye" as well; something about the albino eye interests show creators, Ryan Murphy and Brad Halchuk), who appears in sexpot form to Ben while just a creepy old lady to everyone else. To add an odd touch to the pilot, Moira finds Constance going through Vivien's jewelry. Constance calls her an old whore and warned her to not get in her way or she would kill her *again*. Throw in a gimp costume for some kink (the gimp appears to Vivien and they have sex; Vivien believes it is Ben in dress up; but is it?). Constance even stops Ben from placing his hands over the burning stove eyes, telling him it isn't time. So obviously Constance knows a few things. Vivien is pregnant; after a major row, Vivien and Ben get all hot and heavy, going at it. Yeah, this show had places to go yet.
Review of Pilot
