AHS: 13 Review: The Worst Season Yet, and Ryan Murphy Has No One to Blame but Himself
AHS: 13 brought back the show's biggest stars and gave them its worst season yet.
BY: DAVEY
I defended American Horror Story through Hotel. I defended it through Apocalypse. I even sat politely through Delicate. AHS: 13 is where I run out of excuses for Ryan Murphy.
The pitch was irresistible. Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd and Gabourey Sidibe, all back for a 13-episode crossover built around the most cursed number there is. What we got was a season that recycles everything and understands none of it. The episodes were cut down to sitcom length (the third one barely clears 22 minutes), so the whole thing feels endless and unfinished at the same time. Most of it is characters standing in rooms explaining supernatural rules to each other.
Satan is Mr. Nas, a withered old man rotting in a New York penthouse while his younger, noncorporeal self (Paul Anthony Kelly) waits for the body to reach 100 so he can rule all creation. Every batch of 13 sacrifices ages him closer. Constance Langdon, last seen as a ghost bound to the Murder House, is somehow in Manhattan as his caretaker. The show never explains how, which tells you how much it respects its own history.
Then came the twist that made me laugh out loud. Constance and Fiona Goode are twin sisters, and their parents are Satan and Sister Jude. Three of Jessica Lange’s most iconic characters, each with her own rich history, got collapsed into one family tree for a cheap reveal. Fiona, who died in Coven and was sentenced to her own private hell, comes back meek and apologetic with none of her rage. That isn’t the woman we watched for 13 episodes in 2013.
The finale is where it completely falls apart. Episode 12 kills Cordelia and Queenie and sends them to hell. Episode 13 undoes it because Satan has what he calls a “satanic midlife crisis” and quits. Madison gets pregnant by the Antichrist after a broken condom and gives birth in under three minutes. Cordelia is nearly forced to kill a dog in hell for no real reason. There’s time for John Waters to deliver a monologue about modern kink while Troye Sivan plays, but no time to show Mallory’s trip to 1600s Salem. Satan ends up trapped inside The Last Supper as Judas.
A whole season building the Devil up as the end of everything, and he just gives up. The one genuinely interesting idea, that apocalypses are cyclical and evil always returns, gets dropped for a feel-good ending. Twisty the Clown gets one of his best scenes ever, a clown school massacre, and it leads nowhere. The old catchphrases keep coming back with nothing new behind them.
The cast deserved so much better. Lange plays four women, often opposite herself, and still finds real grief in Constance. Paulson commits to every scene like it’s Asylum again. Kelly makes a smug, magnetic Devil, Joey Pollari carries more of the plot than any newcomer should have to, and Bassett gives Marie Laveau her usual command. Every one of them acts like they’re in a much better show. They were handed a pile of retcons and asked to sell it, and they very nearly did.
Murder House, Asylum and Coven are the reason people still care about this show, and AHS: 13 cheapens all three. FX renewed it for a 14th season a week before this finale aired. I’d rather they left these characters alone.
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