Thursday, October 20, 2022

My Review of American Horror Story: NYC - Something's Coming

 


Written by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk
Directed by John J. Gray

Gino: "I'm not looking to break a big story, Pat. Come on, this is about people dying."

And for the gays, you get a season for yourselves. Isn't that a good thing? After a rather female dominated second season of the spin off series and past seasons on this show being more female led, perhaps this season focusing on gay men was somewhat overdue.

However, going by this opening episode, this will be a season that inevitably will draw comparisons both Pose and Dahmer, and to be fair, there are some similarities where those comparisons will not be unjustified. Saying that,this might be one of the stronger opening episodes the show has done. It's also the first time this show has ventured into the Big Apple and I'm surprised it's taken eleven seasons to do such a thing.

So where do I approach talking about this episode? Let's talk about the journalist Gino Barelli (Joe Mantello) and detective boyfriend, Patrick Read (Russell Tovey). There are some issues in their relationship and the slew of gay men being murdered, seemingly by a leather dom named Big Daddy (Matthew Bishop). Both have different approaches to handling this potential killer before both find some common ground on the issue.

Gino and Patrick seem to be the centre relationship here and the latter upon quickly realising how ineffectual his own precinct has been with these murders essentially encouraged Gino to do his own investigation. This led to Gino seeking out some fancy artist type named Henry (Denis O'Hare) who predictably put Gino in danger. Meanwhile Patrick decided to explore the hanky code while his boyfriend was getting kidnapped by a killer.

Then there's Adam Carpenter (Charlie Carver). He's another sympathetic character who's worried about his missing friend Sully and managed to outrun Big Daddy. He also managed to do some digging into his own by making friends with photographer Theo Graves (Isaac Powell). The latter was definitely not as helpful as he could've been to Adam but there's a sense that underneath his hedonism that there's something of a conscience with Theo. Not to mention an obvious spark with Adam that later episodes will undoubtedly explore, given his blatant disdain for sleazy sugar daddy Sam (Zachary Quinto).

With Big Daddy being a looming threat, Sam on the other hand was a very present one. His possessive nature towards Theo and sleazy behaviour towards the men that the latter photographed, including poor Freddy, who found himself in danger as the episode ended. Unfortunately, Freddy will be far from the last guy in danger from Big Daddy.

As for the few female characters that appeared in this season, there was a doctor named Hannah Wells (Billie Lourd). Hannah spotted a disease in the deer community and ordered them to be shot at a specific location while Fran (Sandra Bernhard), the only lesbian regular so far offered Gino protection while giving him flack for not publishing lesbian voices in his newspaper. Then there was a glamorous lounge singer named Kathy (Patti LuPone) and Patrick's ex-wife Barbara (Leslie Grossman) but outside of Hannah, none of these roles had a lot of screen time. This season does seem to be geared towards the gay men.

- The opening credits didn't appear here but thanks to the first two episodes leaking on Disney+ India, I spotted them. I'll mention them in my review for the next episode.
- We met another friend of Adam's named Morris (Kyle Beltran) and Patrick's chief, Mac Marzara (Kal Penn), who I'm expecting to be revealed as gay later in the season.
- Theo definitely feels like a stand in for Robert Mapplethorpe, though given the time period, I wouldn't be surprised if he appears later in the season.
-  The hanky code got mentioned due to opening victim, Captain Ross (Lee Aaron Rosen) having a dark blue one lodged down his throat. Gino also talked about the light blue, grey and yellow bandannas to Patrick. Bandanna was a working title for this season. 
- Standout music: Kathy's rendition of Fever was pretty decent. 
- Chronology: New York City, 1981.

Something's Coming did a great job of kicking this season off. The central story has risk of being cliched and it won't kill Ryan Murphy to have a wider spectrum in how he writes gay men. So far with the obvious exceptions of Sam and Henry, the majority of the gay men in this episode are likeable/interesting enough.

Rating: 8 out of 10 

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