The Best & Worst Things About "American Horror Story" Season One

If there is any show for which a "best and worst" breakdown is wholly appropriate, it's Ryan Murphy's batshit crazy series American Horror Story. Easily the most polarizing new show of the fall, the FX ratings monster was somehow able to be simultaneously entertaining in a very fresh, nothing-like-it-elsewhere-on-TV manner as well as frustratingly incoherent and over-the-top, to say the least. Now that the wild ride's first stretch is over, allow us to break it all down with The Best & Worst Things About American Horror Story Season One.

Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)

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Sure, some others would've simply put Dylan McDermott on their worst list simply for all of his "SHOUT-ACTING," and while he was out-performed by almost everyone around him on a weekly basis, he wasn't the root problem. The Harmons, sans Violet, were simply boring as hell. Connie Britton is great, but there's only so much she can salvage when her character is reduced to yelling shrilly about something each week.

Seriously, we can't think of a single conversation between Viv and Ben from the pilot to the season finale that wasn't a retread of the exact same thing: Hayden, blah blah, you cheated, violated trust, "I want you out, Ben!" And then cut to: Ben looking guilty as ever and trying to calm her down on some greasy shrink head-game ish. These are the same people who didn't notice that their daughter was dead for about a month. Harsh, sure, but go back and rewatch the season. You'll notice that some of the best episodes feature little of Mr. and Mrs. Broken Marriage.

Give it up for Tim Minear, the writer responsible for far and away American Horror Story's two best episodes, "Halloween (Part 2)" and "Birth." Dude simply had the best grasp on how to marry the macabre, supernatural elements with drama and yield satisfying results. Sure, Ryan Murphy and co-creator Brad Falchuk are responsible for the overall broad Season One sketch, but Minear has a history of working on cult supernatural TV shows (including The X-Files, Angel, and Firefly), and his experience showed. Keep this guy around for season Two; better yet, give him a promotion.

The Murder House has many inhabitants, and American Horror Story's first season introduced many undead antagonists, but none was more entertaining than Zachary Quinto's performance as Chad, the gay drama queen. Some of his and partner Pat's spats occasionally teetered on overkill, but in lieu of that, Chad walked away with the best line of each episode that he appeared in; plus, he was truly threatening when the script demanded it, reminding us of the good ole Heroes/Sylar days.

Pictured above: a half naked man fighting off a home invader wearing a rubber suit that's more overtly S&M than Ben Affleck's Daredevil costume. Sadly, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The pilot alone had about 17 crazy things pop off, enough to sustain a season's worth of fast-paced narrative television. Or so we thought.

The excessive insanity that followed included stabbings scored to the classic Psycho shower scene music, a pig man, more naked Dylan McDermott, more ghost sex, the worst fellatio ever, and the Black Dhalia, to name a few. How about when Tate stuck a firepoker up Pat's ass...after killing him? Or the mere existence of Beauregard, Tate's unfortunately named, deformed ghost brother in the attic? God help us if Murphy tries to outdo himself next season.

"Piggy Piggy," the season's sixth entry, was hands down American Horror Story's worst episode, especially coming off the high that was "Halloween (Part 2)". To be fair, "Piggy" does open with a flashback of Tate's harrowing assault on his high school (which was almost too horrific), and Taissa Farmiga does some of her best work as Violet discovers the true nature of the Murder House. But the rest of the episode's action had absolutely nothing to do with anything in the overarching plot, not to mention it was incredibly stupid.

Vivien eats brains (there goes that restraint problem again) simply because Constance and Moira tell her it's good for the baby, because they're obviously all there in the head. Meanwhile, Ben treats Cam from Modern Family (government name: Eric Stonestreet), here portraying a man with a fear of urban legends. His legend of choice: the Pig Man, a lame retread of the old Bloody Marry legend, about a man in a pigskin mask that hides in your bathtub and kills you. The episode ends with said patient pulling back his bathtub curtain to try and face his fear only to find a hiding burglar, who promptly shoots him in the face. Like we said, nothing to do with anything.

When she first showed up, Hayden achieved the impossible: She was more annoying than Vivien. We practically cheered when Larry the burn guy (Denis O'Hare) gave her crazy ass a much needed shovel to the face. Then, as the rules of the show became clear, we were anxious of her inevitable return as a ghost. Turns out, death was all she needed to become more interesting.

As their final shot near the end of the season finale made clear, she and Tate were a similar kind of nutjob, with very warped senses of affection. Hayden's desire to move Viv out and claim Ben and the baby made her the closest thing the season had to a main "villain," and credit goes to Kate Mara for turning Hayden's bonkers tendencies into a colorful character trait.

Jessica Lange spent the whole season walking the fine line between Emmy-worthy and caricature, and she impressively never fell off her game, meaning, the Oscar winner's performance was both grade-A and over-the-top in a luridly entertaining, soap operatic fashion. Constance was blunt, heartless, and conniving, which is to say we're not surprised she was the only one to make it to the end of the season still breathing. She raised a sociopathic mass murderer, and was last seen raising an even worse kid. Whether the setting changes next year or not, we're sure we haven't seen the last of crazy old Constance.

For a ghost, Tate's one busy guy. If you look back to the pilot, almost all of the mysteries that were set up trace back to his severely damaged ass, which is just too much. To recap: He's the Rubber Man (thus responsible for Viv's rape and Chad and Pat's murder), a mass murderer, and the Ty Pennington to Larry's extreme makeover. That is to say, he's responsible for nearly every bad event. It's not much of a mystery if it's the same douchebag each time, but damn if Evan Peters didn't sell his performance.

Nothing sold us on just how far gone Tate is in the head than when he asked Ghost Ben if they could possibly "hang out some time." Same goes for trying to kill the new kid in his and Violet's old room so that Violet will have someone for eternity since she doesn't want him. Not to mention, most of his Murder House kills (and subsequent rape) were out of some warped sense of loyalty to Nora, the baby-desperate ghost that showed more motherly affection to him than his own mother. Like we said, severely damaged.

To be fair, there isn't much new territory being covered in horror, let alone the haunted house subgenre. But there were far too many "influences" during this first season for our liking, the most blatant being the improperly used classic horror soundtrack cues. A lof the year played as if Ryan Murphy threw a bunch of tropes from different horror movies into a blender, and the result was a season full of pieces that didn't quite fit together. Don't Look Now meets The Shining meets Rosemary's Baby sounds good in theory, but in practice it'ss quite jarring.

Last night's season finale was definitely a lot quieter than we expected, especially by this show's standards. There were some very nice emotionally satisfying conclusions between characters that had a lot of beef to settle, namely Ben/Tate, Tate/Violet, and Vivien/Moira; surprisingly most of these scenes were simple, honest conversations that weren't predicated on some crazy occurrence. The final scene, in fact, in which Constance discovers that Vivien's now-three-year-old seed is already a homicidal maniac, was appropriately chilling and enticing enough to ensure our return next fall.

But something about it felt too...easy. All of the Harmon family's problems were so quickly absolved by death that it almost played as if they should've just pulled some murder-suicide shit in the beginning and just avoided all of the insanity. Yeah, yeah, we get it, death brought them together, and that's nice and poetic, but it's also very sanguine.

The same goes for the new family bit. On the one hand, seeing Viv, Ben, and some of the nicer ghosts scare them out for their own good was quite fun. Although, it was very tongue-in-cheek and not in keeping with the morose, bleaker tone in the preceding episodes. We stand by what we said last week: American Horror Story will be much better off if it leaves the Harmons, and the Murder House, in the rearview in favor of a brand new story.