American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 1 and 2 Review- Evan Peters And Frances Conroy Make Fabulous Party Monsters

If American Horror Stories didn’t scratch your Murphy and Falchuk itch, American Horror Story Season 10 Episodes 1 and 2 should. The first half of American Horror Story Season 10 Red Tide, dubbed the “sea portion,” begins tonight with the first two episodes. The main players are introduced succinctly while dipping in and out of a monster story. Murphy and Falchuk know how to tell a story even if they lose their way every now and then(looking at you, Roanoke). Their honest affection for the horror genre comes through in the character development, pacing, and loving nods to Salem’s Lot and The Shining. American Horror Story Season 10 Episodes 1 and 2 is an intriguing start propped up by exceptional talent and an uncomfortable truth.

The fictional Provincetown is a generic Cape Cod stand-in. It is an idyllic, gorgeous place that manages to become foreboding and weird even in broad daylight with careful lighting and intelligent shot selection. Doris Gardner, a caustically vulnerable Lily Rabe fresh from her powerhouse performance in Tell Me Your Secrets, and her husband Harry, fabulously testy Finn Wittrock, and their child Alma(Ryan Kiera Armstrong) have moved for the winter in the hopes of curing Harry’s writer’s block. Doris is very pregnant and plans to spend her days redecorating while precocious Alma focuses on her virtuoso violin playing. It’s the perfect set-up for the typical evil town with too many secrets type of story that Red Tide looks to be.

Just moments after arriving in town, a diseased and ranting woman tries to scare them away. Poor Sarah Paulsen playing a nearly unrecognizable Tuberculosis Karen is forced to scream and rage against the townsfolk as she vehemently pleads with the Gardner’s to leave before it is too late. She says the town is full of “bloodsuckers”. Whether she means that in a literal or figurative sense, we don’t have to wait long to find out.

Just a day into the Gardner’s arrival, one of the creepers breaks into their house and attacks Harry. In the very next scene, always consistent Frances Conroy’s Belle Noir, another writer that frequents Provincetown literally sucks eternally boyish Macauley Culkin’s Mickey. It’s an especially creepy scene that speaks to both his vulnerability and her predatory nature. Considering Evan Peter’s Austin Sommers is first introduced swilling alcohol and singing karaoke with Belle Noir, we can assume he is also in on the bloodletting.

Part of Peters’s appeal is his mercurial ability to shift from grounded idealist in Mare of Easttown, jovial speedster in WandaVision, and campy pompous playwright in breakneck speed. He glides seamlessly from sinister to carnivorous with a smirk and well-placed gravel in his voice. His entitled aggression might be the scariest thing in American Horror Story Season 10 Episodes 1 and 2. That says a lot, considering the creatures and the baby eating. Conroy and Peters are an unlikely but incredible duo with all the chemistry of a well-balanced martini. It tastes great going down and makes you feel all warm inside, but it leaves a brutal mark the next day.

The episode, which features a gaggle of pale-faced razer teethed humanoids from the depths of the sea, are as much vampiric as they are mermaids. Are they bloodsuckers or something new? The beasts, which feel like a curious hybrid of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s famously creepy Hush baddies and Dark City’s cerebral floaters, are odd lurching specters that arent as indestructible as their immortal counterparts. Harry dispatches with one fairly easily when it tries to attack him.

In typical horror movie fashion, the Gardner’s choose to stay despite the freaky weirdos lurking outside their house and the very real attack inside. After Austin offers Harry a mysterious muse of a pill that unleashes a fountain of words and nasty behaviors, Doris begs to leave. Harry has tasted temptation, though, and wants to stay. He even rationalizes the weirdness when he comes across a gang of bloodied monsters feeding on a dead animal on the street. All of these would have been a massive red flag to GTFO for sane people. However, Harry is desperate for success and hopped up on the Provincetown Koolaid, and so he chooses the road less traveled. He hunkers down and blends up a cocktail of raw meat, blood, and abusive behavior.

The Chemist who supposedly created the pill that Harry foolishly takes has found a way to prey on hope and desperation. Taking the drugs makes a new kind of beast that is exceptionally gifted but beholden to blood. From the promos, it appears aliens and humans are working together to form something better than both. That is, if better, means privileged, obnoxious, and homicidal. Like your traditional vampires, those that turn are better, stronger, smarter, more attractive. For Harry, that means being a more inspired writer. According to Austin, the pill only works if you are already pretty good. If an idiot took the pill, it’s game over, while the intellectually elite become even more brilliant. There’s a curious bit of commentary here about the objective and competitive nature of art. If that gets explored further, we will have to wait and see.

At least a few people in Provincetown know what the deal is. Tuberculosis Karen accuses Harry of taking the pill and the grocery store worker looks at him as if his days are numbered. How many know what Belle and Austin are up to? Although from the very specific rules Belle gives Harry at the end of American Horror Story Season 10 Episodes 1 and 2, the relationship between the town and the monsters is parasitic and symbiotic.

The bloodsuckers bring the money and agree not to eat the town, and the town agrees to cover things up and take their money. Maybe the aliens we will meet in the back half of the season are to blame. They are hiding, making more alien hybrids until the time is right to take over the world. Whatever Harry is becoming, he no longer likes food, at least not the traditional kind, and is prone to vicious verbal assaults.

Lovers of good television will recognize the theme song of House, another Fox show featuring an antihero with a genius mind but a massive drug addiction right before Harry fully embraces his new nature. Harry initially tries to go cold turkey, but like all good addicts, he comes running back when he can’t produce without his high. Dr. House was convinced he wasn’t as clever without his pills. That wasn’t exactly true, but his intense pain made life unbearable without something. Harry also has started down this dark road of need and want. Success is a consuming high that Harry can’t shake. The Chemist who has capitalized on human frailty even better than the coldest drug dealer or big Pharma Ceo is a looming figure currently hiding behind her lab. What her end game is and whether she samples her drug, we don’t know yet.

Lured by the desire for fame and fortune, Harry joins Belle and Austin on a feed and discovers despite his initial objections; he is down to f-feed that is. Hooking up with fellow pill connoisseur and dentist/tattoo pro Lark who enables the bloodsuckers in town to gain the appropriate mouth gear to drink more effectively, marks the beginning of the end for Harry. At this point, he has fully committed, and there is no turning back. Simultaneously sweet little Alma and Mickey are also chasing the dragon. There’s nothing scarier than a deadly little kid. Poor Doris has no idea what she is in store for.

Fame is a fickle bitch. One day you are riding high, and the next, you are down in the gutter. By making inspiration the reward for taking the pill, American Horror Story season 10 Episodes 1 and 2 lays the groundwork for the imbalanced pay-for-play model that Faust would be proud of. One thing is for sure. It’s definitely not Lyme disease. Follow all our American Horror Story coverage and watch for American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 3 next Wednesday on F/X.