American Horror Story NYC

[Guest]

Anyone watching?

I'm enjoying it somewhat as it brings back memories from the 80's.

I never understood the bathhouses having singers like that. I knew Bette Midler used to perform in the earlier baths, I guess it was a different setup back in the day.

[ConversionPerv]

36 minutes ago, Muscledadbod said:

Anyone watching?

I'm enjoying it somewhat as it brings back memories from the 80's.

I never understood the bathhouses having singers like that. I knew Bette Midler used to perform in the earlier baths, I guess it was a different setup back in the day.

It's a little different in the show because Patti LuPone owns the bathhouse she performs in, while also having a side business as a fortune teller. It's weird.

 

I've enjoyed NYC so far, though because it's AHS and Ryan Murphy, I know it'll implode into campy incoherence at some point. (It's starting to show hints of that already.) I like the new cast members like Russell Tovey and Joe Mantello, and the NY setting is a breath of fresh air. We'll see how it goes.

[ellentonboy]

I was really thrilled to hear AHS decided to use NYC as it's backdrop and the time era is really interesting.  Fire Island looks accessible to everyone (not just the rich, like today), and bathhouses were an accepted form of socializing and sex.  Of course the time frame is sad, the advent of AIDS.  It just seems like a "simpler" time period, when actually it was the "lull before the storm" as they say.  I know the Dahmer series took alot of criticism because it seemed to almost be a slasher miniseries celebrating the murders of young gay men.   AHS will have many gay men die, but it's a fictional account, with Dahmer we knew he did the horrible things he was accused of.

I have been a fan of the AHS franchise and I am very keen on Season 11.  I hope everyone can stream it at one point.   Watch it gentleman!

 

[Leatherman667]

What network is it on?

[ellentonboy]

23 minutes ago, Leatherman667 said:

What network is it on?

It is on the FX network, and then is streamed the next day on Hulu.  Usually 10 pm on Wednesday evenings, EST.

[Guest]

I watched most all of them. I would love to see Jessica Lange back, Some of the good ones were Murder House, Freakshow, Asylum, Coven, Hotel, wasn't crazy about Roanoke.

[BergenGuy]

On 11/8/2022 at 8:39 AM, ellentonboy said:

Of course the time frame is sad, the advent of AIDS.

AIDS, of course, is the horror in this season, and pretty much telegraphed as such early in the first episode.  1981 is the year of the first reports of the then-unnamed condition, including the famous New York Times article.  Various characters talk about the feeling of a coming darkness.  Even the number of murders that the police are investigating in the first few episodes, five, matches the number of cases reported in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Week Report (a month before the NYT article).  I'm sure I'm missing other parallels.  

 

On 11/8/2022 at 8:39 AM, ellentonboy said:

I was really thrilled to hear AHS decided to use NYC as it's backdrop and the time era is really interesting. 

Funny that you should say that.  This is occurring with my adult lifetime, and shortly before I moved to the NY area.  Yet, it seems like so long ago and such a different world that it could be 1961 instead 1981.

 

 

[ellentonboy]

11 hours ago, BergenGuy said:

AIDS, of course, is the horror in this season, and pretty much telegraphed as such early in the first episode.  1981 is the year of the first reports of the then-unnamed condition, including the famous New York Times article.  Various characters talk about the feeling of a coming darkness.  Even the number of murders that the police are investigating in the first few episodes, five, matches the number of cases reported in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Week Report (a month before the NYT article).  I'm sure I'm missing other parallels.  

 

Funny that you should say that.  This is occurring with my adult lifetime, and shortly before I moved to the NY area.  Yet, it seems like so long ago and such a different world that it could be 1961 instead 1981.

 

 

That's what I find enjoyable, not the advent of AIDS or seeing gay men murdered, just the way NYC appeared at that time.  The world is so different today.  I haven't been in a number of years, but what shocks me is the constant change every time I go back.  The gays are not just in Manhattan, but all the different parts of NY.  I guess it's just part of being able to afford to live there.

I'm sometimes tempted to leave Florida and move back north, but when I think the entire process through I realize that sexually I can find all of the same things here that I can find in NYC.  Same thing, just a different location.

[BergenGuy]

On 11/10/2022 at 8:27 AM, ellentonboy said:

just the way NYC appeared at that time

Well, yes and no.  In some ways, the producers make it appear like something out of the 1960s, with a lot of open windows (not an AC in view), manual typewriters and so forth.  And, NYC wasn't as clean in 1981 as it appears on film.  The city was still dealing with the financial crisis of the mid-1970s.  Stripped and abandoned cars were a common sight.  But, they did a good job of setting an ominous mood.

 

[Guest]

It was a weird finale ending, didn't care for it.

 

 

[ConversionPerv]

48 minutes ago, Muscledadbod said:

It was a weird finale ending, didn't care for it.

 

 

I was happy the season didn't devolve into camp nonsense and they kept the somber tone throughout. That was a nice change for this show.

 

But yeah, making the 2 final episodes solely about the AIDS epidemic felt strange, like the show tied up all of its overt horror elements and they still had 2 episodes to fill, so they decided to do "Angels in America Lite". They also either dropped or killed all of the female characters and focused solely on the male characters fates (which I get, being that AIDS was burning through the gay male population). But still, where did Sandra Bernhard and her friends go?

What I still can't figure out is that storyline involving Billie Lourds and the ticks and the deer on Fire Island. What in the hell was that about and how did it factor into the rest of the season? Did I miss something? Is there some conspiracy theory about ticks and deer being the origin of HIV? Because that's a new one on me.