Sure, here's a more expressive and vivid version of the content:
As the midpoint of NYC on American Horror Story approaches, a question has been posed—does this season really feel like a true AHS experience? Initially, I was hesitant to dwell too much on it, given that we were only four episodes in and the departure from the usual burnout method was refreshing. But now, at the halfway mark, it's appropriate to ask.
As a standalone question, no, it doesn't feel like a typical AHS season—at least not entirely. Whether that should be seen as a critique or a compliment is yet to be determined. While releasing two episodes per week is being presented as a scheduling decision, it does encourage viewers to interpret the two-part episodes as a cohesive whole. The pattern is clear: the first half serves as a crime thriller, with something bad happening (like the gay club arson or Barbara's murder), but it doesn't feel particularly scary until the very end of the episode. Considering AHS's history of drawn-out torture scenes, these montage-like sequences feel relatively tame.
For instance, with Barbara's death, one might have expected a protracted strangulation scene with Big Daddy lurking around the house and Barbara becoming increasingly suspicious. Instead, we get a brief sequence with more emphasis on Patrick's sadness upon finding her. There's nothing particularly scary about it, but the little fright at the end of the first episode carries us into the second, which is inherently scarier. This week, we learned that the Mai Tai Killer is constructing a Frankenstein's monster composed of dead gay men as a message to New York City about its hypocrisy. Even in this case, previous AHS seasons might have given us a better view of this creation, but it's still scary enough.
Based on this drawn-out two-episode system alone, this season feels like half-AHS and half a Ryan Murphy thriller mystery. That doesn't mean it's bad, though—it's not always excellent either. Episode five, "Bad Fortune," spends a good deal of time in a psychic's studio. For whatever reason, Kathy runs this studio in addition to her bathhouse cabaret. She's looking for new employees when Fran feels hypnotically drawn in and applies. Without any prior experience, Fran begins her first shift the next day with Hannah and Adam. Hannah is pregnant, and it's revealed that Adam is the sperm donor. They decide to go to the psychic on a whim to learn the sex of the baby, but after several failed attempts, they begin pulling only death cards from the tarot deck. It's a semi-frightening foreboding bit...until it repeats itself again and again—to Adam when he returns with Theo and later to Gino. We get it: everyone involved is dealing with some horrible omen or curse challenging their fate and destiny. There is something profound in these themes: Is fate an uncontrollable force? Are they naive to even try and fight it? Or is there some other evil at hand hoping to convince them that's the case? Previous seasons like Hotel, Coven, and Apocalypse asked these questions too, but with the repetition of the tarot scenes, there is little subtlety in how this season presents those themes.
