So should I watch AHS? What I'd heard about the first season sounded too creepy for me, but my juniors are addicted to the show and keep telling me how much it connects to what we've been talking about in class (?!?). I don't want to watch something that will creep me out completely, but I would like to be more informed about how "accurate" it is re: American history. Is it weirder or more disturbing than True Blood, for example?

Uh. I'm pretty sure accuracy is way down the list on the things the show is concerned about.

Yeah - the object is to tell a good story. Concern with accuracy is close to zero. I will say it is worth watching for over the topness and fuckedupness. And amazing acting.

What are you guys studying, Pix?

I haven't watched TB in yonks, so I can compare, but there's some disturbing stuff, for sure, but also some really funny momemts.

It's discussion-worthy, for sure.

We talk a lot about big ideas of American identity, especially in terms of race and gender. We are about halfway through Huck Finn currently, so we've been talking a lot about caricature; I did a lesson on minstrel shows and blackface recently to talk about how Jim starts out as a completely stereotypical Jim Crow caricature but then develops (at least somewhat) into more of a real character as the story continues. We've also talked a fair amount about the tension between the Old South and the New South (mainly when we were reading Streetcar, but in Huck too) and realism vs romanticism.

Watching the show could spur a lot of interesting discussions about race, but like Dana said, historical accuracy, not so much.

Pix,

Having never watched the show until this season, my feeling is that AHS:Coven is kind of a masterclass on how to troll on race and gender issues.

It is not more gory than True Blood (hard to be since this is FX), but it shares TB's over the top aesthetic.

I would agree that it trolls rather than explores.

I will say that when they were giving free samplels of TB a while back, I thought the Faerie birth scene was one of the funniest I had ever seen. Brilliant bawdy "low" comedy.

Myrtle with the melon baller and the eyeballs was just spectacular. Poor Beverly Leslie. I think she and Misty and Cordelia should just ditch the rest of the coven, go to LA and start over. They can bring Nan, but only if she agrees to stop obsessing about Luke, who is probably dead anyway by now so that might not be an issue.

I cannot with the LaLaurie storyline. Roots and Mandingo? Really? Sure, the BAPS line was funny but it was cheap funny. Queenie is better than that (or she should be). And this is no way to redeem Madame, if that's what they are going for. I care not a whit for a severed head crying while watching footage of the Civil Rights Movement, not that she'd do that anyway, right, given that she did far more terrible things to black folks and just called it Tuesday.

At this point, I'm just in it for the good performances. The ladies continue to bring it. I'm waiting to use "What the head said." as a way to shut down a pointless conversation in the near future.