In the early October, Ryan Murphy's masterpiece Dahmer broke a Netflix record, becoming the second most-watched show in the platform's history. And just two weeks later, he did it again with The Watcher, taking over Dahmer's crown with the same astounding success. The fact that these two shows were released so closely together is absurd, but it's even more astonishing when you consider that Murphy hasn't stopped there. With little fanfare, information, or warning, he's returned with the 11th season of American Horror Story.
For those of us who have been following the show since the beginning, the new season feels like an afterthought. The disappointing tenth season, split into two stories, and the two-episodes-per-week structure with this 11th season only reinforces that sentiment. Could AHS: NYC be one of the last gasps of the beloved cult series? Perhaps. But the slow burn of the two-episode premiere suggests otherwise.
All we've known for the last several weeks is that this season of AHS takes place in New York City in the early '80s, centering around the gay community and a serial killer. Teasers revealed the return of a handful of favorite actors from prior seasons like Zachary Quinto, Denis O'Hare, Billie Lourd, and Leslie Grossman, as well as the legendary Sandra Bernhard and Patti LuPone. This left us on skeptical but solid footing.
With this background in mind, the first episode of AHS: NYC begins exactly as anyone who has seen previous seasons would have guessed: Within the first three minutes, we see shirtless leather daddies and a beheaded dead body. It's not the first for this series; one of our protagonists, a semi-closeted cop named Patrick (played by Russell Tovey, an AHS newcomer), knows that this is just one of many that have been happening as of late. None of his co-workers, who don't know that Patrick is gay, care much that gay men are being murdered. This dynamic - gay men dying, cops doing nothing - is the overarching tension of the show, imbuing a sense of helplessness and injustice.
Mirroring these murders is a mysterious illness killing off deer on Fire Island, but also somehow now manifesting in the gay community in NYC. This problem is being studied by Hannah (played by Billie Lourd), who somehow has the responsibility of both overseeing deer populations and treating human patients in a clinical setting. With all of this, Murphy's central point seems to be highlighting the precariousness of said community in this era. The odd thing is, of course, that he just made this part of his point with Dahmer. Much like AHS: NYC now, Dahmer emphasized that the reason a sloppy serial killer could get away with his abject brutality for so long was police incompetence and carelessness. Because these men were gay, their lives were not on the radar. AHS: NYC feels entirely like a continuation of this theme, both in the murders and in the illness.
