As strange and unique as last season’s American Horror Story was, I dug it. I fully admired the uniqueness of the show — at least to anything else on television last year — and the times it stepped outside any sort of comfort zone to try and make us feel … uncomfortable. When I heard the second season was going to completely start a new story from scratch, I criticized it as a possibly dumb — albeit brave — move; it would be like starting a completely new show, and possibly confuse old fans not aware of the non-continuing storyline from the first season. However, it didn’t stop me from wanting to tune in, so I did.

What originally started off a a promising new story to tell in the AHS-verse turned out to be a jumbled mess of evil where I’m still not sure what the overall plot was supposed to be.

We started out with the mystery of Bloody Face, which quickly brought us to aliens, an insane asylum run by insane people, mysterious “people” in the woods, an angel of death, mad doctors, rape, torture, murders, suicides. As I said, it was a jumbled mess.

As the final scene of the finale came to a close, I couldn’t help but think there was supposed to be a bigger message at play with this season. “Look evil in the face, and it will look right back at you.” Close in on Sister Jude’s eyes. Think back to what had transpired all this season. What was it all about, really? The sorry state of mental health care in our country? OK, I can see where … aliens fit into that … And an  old Nazi doctor incinerating himself with a dead nun. …

Here’s to hoping next season of American Horror Story picks a theme that’s not so all-over-the-place and establishes a true horror story that makes sense from beginning to end. Then again, is horror every really supposed to make sense?

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After the success of the first season of American Horror Story — and the then announcement of FX’s pickup of the show for a second season — we learned that not only was the new season going to be an entirely new locale, time period and story altogether, but a good number of the cast would transition over as well. If that wasn’t confusing enough, the cast would be playing entirely different roles than they had in the first season. In a previous post, I brought up the possibility that this unusual change would confuse and anger fans, since a good many of those viewers aren’t keeping up with fine blogs such as this one, to learn of these complete story changes; that theory remains to be seen, now that the season’s kicked off. It could just be that everyone who cares about this show is keeping up with TV websites, guides and watching promos — who knows?

I compared this series to The Twilight Zone, but instead of each episode being self-contained, it’s each season. And like Twilight Zone, there were some actors who’d played different roles in subsequent episodes. This season takes things another step in that direction by not merely continuing the theme of hauntings and ghosts, and instead brings a bit of sci-fi into the mix. There’s blood, gore, murders and mayhem and all-around creepiness, but now there’s a new twist: aliens.

Let’s assume that the visions Kit Walker witnessed were real and not vivid hallucinations. Anyone who’s somewhat familiar with alien abduction stories and movies knows the telltale signs seen there; that spells out UFOs and aliens. Generally one might not necessarily consider an alien-themed show or movie to be of the horror genre; I’d be more apt to consider it science fiction first and foremost, in fact. Come to think of it, though, there aren’t very many alien movies that aren’t “horror” at their foundations, unless they’re right-out comedies or children’s flicks. I applaud the writers of this series for not merely continuing on with the same flavor of what some consider horror, and bringing us something that is going to be something much, much different. Again, this all assumes Kit wasn’t going simply going nuts. It’s possible the answer could be that Kit dreamed up the bright lights, noise, floating and probing from reading old sci-fi rags of the day, but I don’t want to believe that.

So far it appears Briarcliff may be somehow behind the things Kit witnessed, and might be keeping these aliens at bay with regular body part feedings in the woods. Now the promo posters of all-in-white nuns with big, all-black eyes makes sense: they look like freakin’ aliens! Will we find out that a majority of the Briarcliff residents are there because they, too, saw bright lights and floated to the ceiling?

Regardless of whether or not this new season will confuse or upset fans of last season, it’s off to an interesting start. It’ll actually be interesting to see if people who didn’t watch last season decide to hop into this one, since there’s nothing at all to catch up on. Which group do you fall into?

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