"American Horror Story: Asylum" on FX HD - Page 4

I enjoyed the cold open more than the episode this week. Even if it did portray Adam Levine as some kind of one-armed knifeproof super boyfriend.

I thought a lot of this week was very stagey and it didn't flow together very well at all. It seemed to be more of a sequence of theatrical vignettes rotating through the main characters.

I liked the emphasis on Arden and his mad science. Bloody face is looking to be more and more like one of his experiments. Maybe a character that looks currently human but will later be transformed into a disfigured super-killing machine by one of his government-sanctioned experiments to create a supersoldier to fight the Red Menace. Possibly Kit, just to be ironic.

I concur with the above.

Cromwell has the best character IMO, so more time with him is welcome even if I did expect him to be a nazi war criminal. His flashback face was amazing, I couldn't tell if it was CGI or a different actor with prosthetics or something. Not caring at all about the reporter now and her inclusion is becoming merely to point out the excessively radical treatment of gays in the 60's. She needs to get back into the story of uncovering the insanity of the place.

The Anne Frank storyline I thought was quite hokey when the episode began but after awhile I kind of bought it. It did lead to a good last five minutes.

I can live with it since that character is not a main player and probably gone soon. However I am now half-expecting Arden to be Mengele and that would be pushing all the wrong buttons.

From the EW interview with Murphy. They are not kidding, Cromwell's son is the spitting image of him!

I think that was the first episode I almost hated. It was as if the director had just discovered the room where the camera equipment was kept and decided to use everything for no real reason at all. So we had split diopters, fish eye lenses, forced perspective, camera cranes ... oh boy, did he love the camera crane. That thing was flipping and zooming all over and the zoom in to the roof of the car was an exceptionally pointless use since the transition wasn't even close to being seamless.

Not to mention the really atrocious use of music (and theremin overdose) and the flashbacks with the weird 60's home movie (or poorly transmitted television broadcast) filter. That added nothing, except to make me wonder as to why it was being used.

Which was also the same reaction I had as to why the director was bludgeoning the audience with Arden's wolf's head (sword?) cane. Jeez I saw it the first three times you had it in focus, I get it, it's a wolf's head cane which probably has nazi connections. I didn't need a close-up of it in every scene Arden was in this week.

So we now know that bloody face is the sympathetic shrink who lives in a house with very large rooms and a very deep basement. To be honest when they started throwing out the red herrings a few weeks ago I wondered if the show was going to pull a Nightbreed, and they did. I wonder if the connection was intentional.

The last five minutes saved this episode with that revelation. I just hope they don't use that director again.

We only lost Kit's girlfriend and to me she always seemed to be disposable. I was hoping Jessica Lange would get killed off. Since leaving the asylum her story appears to have run it's course. Maybe next week the father of the girl she hit will kill her.

Sad to see Lana escape from Bloody Face and then end up back in Briarcliffe minutes later. Her character has very little to do there apart from look nervous. At least when she was in danger she had more to fight against and Bloody Face is a lot more scary than what's happening at Briarcliffe at the moment.

Next week we see Ian McShane take his turn. Honestly the idea of a "AHS: Christmas Special" sounds utterly stupid even for this show, and this show features nazis and aliens, but maybe they can give the episode a spin that doesn't make it appear completely out of place and shamelessly dropped in just for holiday viewing figures.

At least Moira came back. I would rather have had hot Moira though.