'Glee' Creator Brings the 'Horror' in Dark New Drama
Mark A. Perigard - Boston Herald
Oct 05, 2011
In 1978, twin brothers approach a rundown Victorian mansion in Los Angeles, baseball bats in hand, a little destruction in mind.
Adelaide (Kaitlyn Reed), a little girl with Down syndrome, warns them, "Excuse me. You're going to die in there."
What follows is the one of the darkest, creepiest openings of perhaps any TV series ever.
"American Horror Story" is the latest from producer Ryan Murphy, the man behind "Nip/Tuck" and "Glee," and is about as close to either one as a Barbie tea party is to the actual Tea Party. Unless Murphy (who directed the 70-minute pilot and wrote the script with series co-creator Brad Falchuk) decides to set a death rattle to Auto-Tune, nobody is breaking into song here.
In the present, psychiatrist Ben (Dylan McDermott, "The Practice") and Vivien Harmon (Boston native Connie Britton, "Friday Night Lights") and teenage daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga) move from the Hub to Los Angeles in an attempt to salvage their family.
Vivien gave birth to a stillborn son months ago, and not long after found Ben with another woman.
Their real-estate agent reluctantly informs them that the previous owners of the charming 1920s Victorian mansion they have their hearts set on died in a murder-suicide.
That's the first flag they ignore.
Their new neighbors -- Constance (Academy Award winner Jessica Lange in her first regular TV series role) and her daughter, now grown-up Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) -- have a habit of barreling right into the home. Constance is a faded Virginia belle whose pleasantries barely coat her loathing.
Before the Harmons can unpack, strange things start happening.
Ben sleepwalks and plays with fire. The longtime maid Moira (Frances Conroy, "Six Feet Under") warns Vivien that the house needs to be taken care of. "It has personality, feelings. Mistreat it and you'll regret it."
But why does Ben see Moira as a 20-something sexpot (Alexandra Brecken-ridge, "True Blood")? And who is the man (Denis O'Hare, "True Blood") shadowing Ben?
And in what could pass for a cynical rebuke to "Glee's" rosy outlook on romance, Violet and a patient of Ben's named Tate (Evan Peters) bond over self-inflicted cuts. Their prank on the school mean girl gets a rise out of the house's nefarious tenants.
This psychosexual super-natural thriller will be the fall's most polarizing show. I can already imagine the howls from the Parents Television Council; and in that we can agree: This is no tween-friendly show. It includes cursing, partial nudity and violence, though, in what appears to be an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," the horror is implied more than shown thanks to quick editing cuts.
Lange doesn't so much steal scenes as smash them open like pinatas and let the emotional nuances cascade to the floor like hard candy. Britton tethers the supernatural to reality, while McDermott, who has coasted on his looks, digs deep for the best role of his career, a therapist with little control over his sex drive.
I loved the pilot, mostly because I could never predict where the story was going, a rarity in prime-time TV. Leave it to Murphy: In an industry that churns out cookie-cutter product, he's an original.
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