So, I was listening to Sepinwall and Feinberg on their podcast this week and their first discussion on the podcast was "American Horror Story."

They hated it. Just HATED it. I am not sure I have seen dislike this strong from them since "The Killing" season finale and even still this went above that.

Their main complaints is that this seems to be a mish mash of horror tropes. They use references to canonical horror movies and themes without rhyme or reason. Also, they were really horrified (no pun intended) with the portrayal of a character with down's syndrome. They felt that the work that the head writers did in a positive way on "Glee" WRT a character with Downs was completely undone here.

I am curious to see how bad this show is now, but they identified it as one of the worst new drama series premiering this fall. Worse than "Charlie's Angels."

Just Wow.

Yikes. I was hoping it was good, but if nothing else the pilot will be a excellent train wreck.

I was a little uneasy with the child with Down Syndrome in the clip of the first five minutes, but without seeing the whole episode it's hard to tell how they handled that.

Worse than "Charlie's Angels."

Wow. I feel bad for Connie Britton.

Apparently you should. She is the one person they pointed who was actually trying to act well (not over the top, not change character every scene) and because everything else is so bad, it does not help.

I bet she just wanted a change from Coach Taylor's wife, too. That's a shame.

JP from Time has this to say:

Friends, I am not here today to argue that American Horror Story is, if I may use a critical-theory term, "good." At least if one judges it by such factors as coherence, consistency or plausibility of characters' motivations. The new series (FX, Wednesdays) comes from producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Like their current show, Glee, and like Murphy's previous show, Nip/Tuck, AHS is full of provocative ideas--about sex, about identity, about America. And like those shows, it makes the Murphian mistake of assuming that having a whole crapload of ideas is the same thing as having a story.

And yet for all its faults, I will probably watch every episode of American Horror Story, at least its first season. Partly because while it is a disorganized, unbelievable mess, it's often disorganized and unbelievable in an interesting way. And partly because in a horror story--especially a hallucinatory, highly sexualized horror story--Murphy may finally be working in a genre where way too much is just about enough.

Read more: [link]

That's basically what Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly said: [link]

Well thanks for that link, Frank. The end of the review sealed the deal for me. I will have to ask you all what you thought because I'm not watching it. I'm getting flashbacks to the season I dropped Nip/Tuck. I don't think AHS has anything for me.

Well, AHS is a mess. It's not a boring mess, as many of the reviews have also said, but, to paraphrase Crow T. Robot - "They just threw a bunch of horror movies in a blender and hit frappe."

Strange place for Jessica Lange to turn up, I must say. But after Titus, nothing will surprise me from her.

thank you for taking one for the team.

you going to see episode 2?