 It has been a long drought of any American Horror Story content since 1984 ended back in 2019, but the summer just got a little bit scarier as the AHS spin-off American Horror Stories has premiered on Hulu. So in this video I will be reviewing the two-part premiere entitled Rubber Woman Parts 1 and 2. Spoiler alert for the episodes, so if you haven't seen them and don't want to be spoiled, this is your chance to turn away. Before I get into my review, let me take a moment to thank my members. Thank you guys so much for your support and for making these videos possible. Alright, let's just be honest here, American Horror Stories had a bit of a rough start. The premiere promised us a new story in the Murder House, and I do appreciate the attempt to make the episode something entirely different than the last time we revisited the Murder House, but it just ended up feeling like a watered-down version of the things we saw occur in Season 1, with a mix of other borrowed plot points and tropes. That being said, I didn't actually hate the episode entirely. Once I could tell what we were in for, I was able to find a decent amount of enjoyment in the episode for what it was. I think the episode adds to the lore of the Murder House without really tarnishing anything about Season 1. So let's just start with what I enjoyed about the episode and then get into the problems I had with it, and I'll end my review with a rating out of 10, just like the good old days. I pulled you guys in my community page about the episodes and, yeah, the reaction was mixed, but a lot of you actually loved it and are defending it, so here's to you guys. I might not agree with you on this one, but I am glad that people are enjoying these episodes and it is not my place or anyone else's to tell you what is good or bad. So don't let my opinions tarnish your enjoyment of the show because there is a lot to enjoy, and it's all subjective, so who cares? One moment I particularly enjoyed in the opening of the first episode was that they immediately went into a canted angle once Scarlet comes face-to-face with the Murder House, in a very similar sequence of shots to when Violet steps onto the grounds of the House in Season 1. One thing that I think really could have improved these episodes as a whole is if they relied more on recognizable cinematography from Murder House. The canted angles really make very few appearances in these episodes, and I think if they were a bit more heavy-handed with those visual references to Season 1, it would have felt more like the haunting setting we know and love, but for the most part the Murder House still looks like the Murder House, just oftentimes it doesn't feel like it, and I definitely think that this might be one of the reasons why I felt this way. But we then see the title sequence for the episode, which I absolutely loved. Sure, it's simple, and it's not really competing with any of the title sequences from the main series, but I think it was really cool to see some new interpretations of the latex motif that the AHS team has now used across three separate seasons now. I thought the title sequence was nice, and I really still love hearing that theme song ten years later, so yeah, I think they nailed that personally. And even more exciting is that each new episode of American Horror Stories will have its very own corresponding title sequence, which is enough to keep me watching every week, even if every episode is unremarkable. The writers seem to be consciously making these characters in the same vein of the Harmon family and those adjacent to them. And there's moments where it feels like it is the house that is imprinting itself onto everyone. Scarlett's gravitation towards the rubber suit was a good way to show this, I think. In part two of the Rubber Woman arc, there is a stretch of scenes starting from when Adam discovers the bodies of Maya and company, up until Michael and Troy find out that they are in fact dead, which I think may be the strongest moment in these two episodes. That stretch of scenes was very eerie, fast-paced, and exciting, and the art department, or whoever they hired to do these corpses, did a great job as well. This was definitely a highlight of the premiere for me. Now I would like to praise Sierra McCormick for carrying these two episodes, doing the best with the material she was given, because she was a fun protagonist to watch for these episodes, and I hope she will return to AHS in some capacity in the future, just hopefully with better material to perform with. She was able to be the most captivating character in a sea of unlikable characters, and I think that likability definitely is due to what she brought to the character and not how the character was written. So yeah, hats off to her. Great work. Okay, so I'm looking through my notes right now, and that's about all the positive things I had to say. I hate to be a negative Nancy, but I'm also not going to be dishonest with you guys, so here are my thoughts on what could have been better about the episode. Let's start with one of my biggest complaints with the first episode, and that is that they used my least favorite overly used plot device, which is showing text messages on screen. It always seems so lazy and is never interesting to watch. I counted, and they used this five times in episode one, and thank God it was abandoned for episode two. I mean, I hate to say it, but it really feels like Ryan and Brad definitely phoned it in with the script for this episode. Brad Falchuk wrote episode two alone, and it's honestly not much better, so I don't know what to say. I'm excited to see what the other writers for the other episodes do with their stories, though. There is a lot of room for improvement, which is a good thing, I guess. But I mean, the dialogue is painful, it just causes me pain at times. I think the award for worst dialogue has to go to either Troy or Ruby. Michael and Troy are just very unlikeable people and awful parents as well. There are a couple of moments that just left me more confused with the episode than if they had been left out. Like when Michael and Troy bring up when Scarlet was kidnapped as a child, and there's a whole cutaway scene, but then it's never brought up again, and I'm uncertain what it was trying to imply. Then there's the time when Michael says that he was haunted by the Piggy Man, which is a bit confusing because we have never seen the Piggy Man inside the walls of the murder house before. Yes, the character originated in that season, but as an urban legend involving repeating a mantra in a mirror. So like, unless Michael was purposefully summoning the spirit of the Piggy Man for some reason, or perhaps there's a Piggy Man ghost that lives in the murder house that we've just never seen before, that will appear unprovoked, I don't know. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but this moment confused me, and I don't understand why they had to bring the Piggy Man into this at all, much like the Infantata only for a split second. If you have a better understanding of what's going on there, let me know. Maya and her friends being so obsessed with humiliating Scarlet for no reason made me really uncomfortable and made little sense to me. What exactly was their plan? Because until Scarlet starts talking about what type of porn she watches, Maya was literally just pretending to flirt with her and leading her on. I don't understand where it would have gone if Shanti didn't text Scarlet. The whole scene also seemed very queer-shamey, as well as reminding me of something similar that happened in the pilot for the Scream TV series. It just felt like something I'd seen before, it felt a little gross, and it felt very predictable. I lost a lot of hope in these episodes after this scene. Also, Shanti didn't handle that situation very well, or the subsequent phone call, I would be pissed if that were my friend. Then the girls get murdered by Scarlet with the assist of the twins and the Infantata, which was definitely nice to see a familiar face, but they really put all that effort into the creature makeup, only to use him for a couple of shots with a total of like 3 seconds of screen time. It was a bit underwhelming if I'm being honest, but I guess I should be grateful that we got any familiar faces at all. Episode 2 starts with the introduction of Ruby, and she honestly comes out of nowhere, and her relationship with Scarlet has no build-up or context, but I think we're expected to just ignore that. Now, Kaya Gerber has gotten a lot of criticism for her performance in this episode, and I won't lie, it is a bit rough, but acting is hard, and I'm not here to criticize the producers for gimmick casting, as that has worked out for them in the past, and is an effective way of getting publicity for the show. And I'm also not going to criticize the actors, because they were really left floating in the water by the creatives behind this. But Kaya Gerber, and I'll also say that Paris Jackson were two cast members that I thought lacked energy or presence in most of their scenes, which is a shame. But I also don't blame them, like Sierra McCormick was able to make a good performance out of bad writing, but if you have very little acting experience, it would be a lot harder to shine when trying to act out poor writing. So it's not entirely on them, but I mean, yeah, it was something. Brad must have been half asleep while writing that bathtub scene, because people just don't talk like this. I don't imagine ghosts do either, but I can't imagine what was going through his head. The show keeps trying to make me care about Michael and Troy's marriage, but it just felt like a lazy and far less interesting retelling of Vivian and Ben's marriage. In fact, each character in this episode fits neatly into an archetype of one of the season 1 characters. Is it lazy or is it poetic? You decide. Michael is a bland version of Vivian, being that he's a loving spouse to a cheating asshole husband, but he lacks any of Vivian's complexity or likability. Troy is a boring and unfunny version of Ben, being that he's a cheating asshole husband, but the mentality behind Troy's actions or how he handles his behavior is never explored, unlike Ben. Scarlett has elements of both Tate Langdon and Violet Harmon, ultimately becoming more like Tate though, a sociopathic teenager who begins to commit murder in the rubber suit. We could say Adam is like Hayden as well, being that they are the person that the cheating husband cheats with and they both attempt to blackmail their respective couple, but there's really nothing more to Adam's character than that. I don't know. I think it comes to a point where you're just remaking a story that you already told, but what do I know? Scarlett tells Ruby that she's the love of her life. You've known each other for like a month and she killed your parents and you have absolutely no chemistry together. I don't understand the development of this relationship, it was all just so sudden. And then the episode ends with a cute but confusing epilogue. I just want to know why would Scarlett only visit the murder house on Halloween? She can visit anytime because she's still immortal. If anything, Halloween should be when they come visit her for once. Hello. But I do like that Scarlett did survive and maybe we can catch up with her in a future episode because, um, you know, it's interesting to have a sociopath on the loose in a rubber suit. Anyway, American Horror Stories ended up having a bumpy start, but despite this, it appears to be doing somewhat well for FX on Hulu's standards, so who knows? I will say, although I was underwhelmed by this premiere, I am excited to see the stories that don't have a previous season to live up to. And I think with different writers for future episodes, hope is definitely not lost and the series still has a lot of potential to me. I'm glad to have AHS back on my screen, regardless, but I won't overlook the flaws of this spin-off, so I give the two-part premiere of American Horror Stories five rubber women out of ten. Let me know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say. Give this video a like if you enjoyed it and I will see you next time.