 Welcome to the final part of my Death of American Horror Story series, if you missed my last video I dove deep into the first seven seasons of American Horror Story and defined the three eras of the show as follows. Seasons one through four make up the golden age, seasons five through eight make up the silver age, and seasons nine through the present are what I am calling the bronze age. Let's just pick up where we left off with the final season of the silver age and see if American Horror Story Apocalypse can prove to be a turning point for the series and steer it back in the right direction after Hotel, Roanoke, and Colt had fans divided like never before. For the first time in the series, the show would completely break the anthology structure and deliver a season that served as a follow up to the events of Murder House and of Coven. We'll talk a bit more about the ambition of this season when we get into the writers room, but first let's talk about which alumni they bagged for the ultimate all star season of American Horror Story. Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson both returned to cap off some pretty impressive streaks. This would be Evan's eighth consecutive season as a main cast member, and it's Sarah's seventh consecutive season as a main cast member, but her eighth consecutive season as a whole including her recurring role in Murder House. Sarah would play two new characters, Mr. Gallant and Jeff Fister, as well as two characters from previous seasons, Tate Langdon from Murder House and James Patrick March from Hotel. Sarah would play a new character named Wilhelmina Venable, her first true American Horror Story villain, and she also reprised Cordelia from Coven and Billy Dean Howard from Murder House. Kathy Bates returned as a main cast member for the first time since Roanoke, this time playing Miriam Mead and reprising her role of Delphine LaLaurie from American Horror Story Coven. Cheyenne Jackson returned as a new character, John Henry Moore, and after her guest spot in Colt, Emma Roberts returned as a main cast member for Apocalypse as Madison Montgomery, her character from Coven. Billy Lord returned after her role in Colt, this time playing a new witch named Mallory. Adina Porter is back this season as well for the first time ever being built as a main cast member for her role of Dinah Stevens, New Orleans, New Voodoo Queen following Marie LeVoe's death in Coven. Despite Adina Porter's roles in Roanoke and Colt being major roles in those respective seasons, I think the reason why she was built as having recurring roles must have been a contractual issue with her other projects at the time. After having a memorable recurring role in American Horror Story Colt, Leslie Grossman was also upgraded into a member of the main ensemble, this time playing Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt, a witch whose magic abilities are limited to detecting gluten and calories in food. Both Adina and Leslie I'm classifying as established since they both had long and fruitful careers before hopping on the American Horror Story boat. Leslie Grossman though does have a rich history with Ryan Murphy having starred in popular Ryan Murphy's teen comedy slash drama series that ran from 1999 to 2001. The final main cast member is a complete newbie to American Horror Story but he was plucked straight from the Murphyverse having just come off of the assassination of Gianni Versace where of course talking about Cody Fern who would be playing an aged up version of Michael Langton, the child that we saw come to fruition all the way back in Murder House. His main ensemble has enough heavy hitters on its own, Apocalypse really brought it when it came to securing every fan's casting dreams in the season's guest stars. Francis Conroy appeared for a multi-episode run as the resurrected Myrtle Snow, Lily Raib reprised Misty Day from the Depths of Hell, Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton reprised their starring roles from Murder House marking the first and only time Connie would return to American Horror Story. Stevie Nicks couldn't resist a mid-season musical number either, Gabri Sadebe also returned to resolve Queenie's Ark after she got trapped in the Hotel Cortez back in season 5. Tysa Farmiga returned to play not only Zoe Benson from Coven but also Violet Harmon from Murder House. Jamie Brewer reprised her Coven character of Nan, Lance Reddick had a memorable surprise return as Papa Legba, Angela Bassett saved the return of Marie LeVoe to help boost the finale's fan service and her return was definitely memorable and great to see but the writers did her very dirty in my opinion as Marie LeVoe could have and would have had a much more epic showdown with the Antichrist and I personally would have liked to see her survive that face-off but underwhelming face-offs between my favorite characters and the Antichrist was definitely a theme of that finale. And last but not least Apocalypse brought back Jessica Lange to American Horror Story for not one but two episodes. That's right, what many fans thought was impossible was achieved this season. Jessica reprised her Murder House character of Constance Langdon and even with a relatively small amount of screen time she managed to add a lot more depth and humanity to one of her most iconic and well-known characters in the series. After saying she would never return to the show it goes without saying how excited fans were to see her back and delivering monologues as precisely as ever. With such a great lineup, despite one inexplicably absent Dennis O'Hare, there's no reason why this season should be as controversial as it is. But unfortunately what left a lot of fans wanting more was the season's overall narrative and once again a divisive and arguably weak finale episode. But before we see how it fared with the critics, let's first take a look inside the Apocalypse writer's room. Todd Kubrak departed the writer's room this season after writing on both Roanoke and Colt. Our two newbies from last season, Joshua and Adam, stuck around in addition to the six remaining remnants of the Golden Era. Two new writers to American Horror Story were brought on board by the names of Asher Michelle Wilson and Manny Cotto. That second name may send a chill down your spine and I'm gonna figure out why that is in this video and we'll try to figure out if it's justified. But first, Asher Michelle Wilson is credited as a staff writer on this season but was brought in to pen the ninth episode of the season entitled Fire and Rain. She would remain on American Horror Story as a story editor for the next season. Manny Cotto has already had a prolific television writing career. Working as a writer since 1988, Manny Cotto has written 27 episodes of 24, 14 episodes of Star Trek Enterprise, 10 episodes of Dexter and that's just scratching the surface of his television credits. But to some American Horror Story fans, Manny Cotto is the death of American Horror Story and I'll admit that I've played into that narrative from time to time. But I'm gonna be as fair as possible here and at least in Apocalypse it's hard for me to pin the failures of this particular season on this guy. Hell, the only episode he's credited for in Apocalypse is Episode 3, Forbidden Fruit which is one of the season's strongest to me but will track Manny Cotto's relationship with American Horror Story as it develops through these last few seasons but for now let's let the man relax he's done nothing wrong just yet. To me Apocalypse is a perfect transitional season as I'm technically classifying it as a part of the Silver Age but it starts a lot of the issues that are going to plague the show throughout the Bronze Age and with its guest stars and fan service reminding fans of the brighter days of the Golden Era at times it feels like the series is saying goodbye to the show that it used to be. This at least at the time would be emphasized by the news that neither Evan Peters nor Sarah Paulson would be returning for Season 9 so in a way it really did feel like a send-off to the Golden and the Silver Ages as a whole while simultaneously ushering in the Bronze Age. So how did critics and fans respond to this game changing season? Well for the most part Apocalypse was welcomed with open arms. On Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it a certified fresh tomato at 79% which was the highest critics rating since Season 3 and audiences gave it a fresh 75% approval rating. On IMDb Apocalypse's episodes average 8.1 stars out of 10 placing it just narrowly above Covens rating. On paper Apocalypse was a success with fans and the critics but of course that's not the entire story but at the end of the day this season was remarkably strong for its first 6 or 7 episodes I'd say and I think that's where the season does deserve a majority of its praise and where a majority of that praise is actually coming from. The successful crossover between 2 of the series greatest seasons with most of their main cast reprising their iconic roles is something that us as American Horror Story fans frankly did not deserve. The critics consensus for Apocalypse reads, Ryan Murphy and his murderers row of witchy performers literally saved the world and franchise in Apocalypse the series most ambitious crossover yet. Well there you have it, at least for now the death of American Horror Story was narrowly avoided with a bombastic blast of a season that burned bright at the start but fizzled in its finish. And just like that we close the door on the Silver Age of American Horror Story and we enter the show's most current era, the Bronze Age. As we move into the Bronze Age there are 2 glaring changes to the casting lineup and their names are Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters. If the separation between the Golden Age and the Silver Ages are defined by Jessica Lang's departure then the separation between the Silver and Bronze Ages must be this pair's now inconsistent involvement in the show. After both of their 8 season streaks ended with Apocalypse. Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters' talents bring so much to their characters and the overall quality of American Horror Story and their fans are also incredibly devoted so their now inconsistent appearances in the franchise definitely is a contributing factor to a decrease in viewership and fan engagement post Apocalypse. To fill the shoes of Sarah and Evan and to help carry the American Horror Story torch into a new era, Emma Roberts, Billy Lord and Leslie Grossman continued over into this season from Apocalypse alongside new fan favorite Cody Fern. Joining the aforementioned cast members is an established actor who also happens to be plucked from the Murphy verse, Matthew Morrison. John Carroll Lynch would also be a part of the main ensemble after playing one of the series' most iconic yet recurring roles of Twistie the Clown in both Freak Show and Cult. This time though he's playing a different kind of serial killer by the name of Mr. Jingles. Also plucked from the Murphy verse is Angelica Ross who had just played Candy on Pose. This time playing a complex villain whose name is eventually revealed to be Donna Chambers. Zacvia would be playing the real-life serial killer by the name of Richard Ramirez. Rounding out the first cast of the Bronze Era is the first piece of stunt casting we've had in a while, Gus Kenworthy. Gus Kenworthy made his name as an Olympic skier but American Horror Story 1984 would be his first acting gig. Like any season of American Horror Story it's great depending on who you ask but the obvious casting issues aside from my memory this season actually suffered the least amount of backlash that I've seen any season get since Hotel. So hey let's celebrate that and let's take a peek into the writers room for 1984 and see if they're breaking the writing mold as much as they've broken the casting mold. In a rare occurrence for the American Horror Story writers room the two new writers from the previous season did not return as neither Manny Cotto nor Asha Michelle Wilson wrote any episodes this season. Asha did serve as a story editor though before departing from the franchise after 1984. Manny though as far as I can tell did not have any part in American Horror Story 1984 but his return is inevitable. Joshua Green who wrote on Colt and Apocalypse also dipped at this point in the series. To make up for all that lost talent J.B.D. and Dan Dworkin were added as episode writers. J.B.D and Dan Dworkin who I know as two of the creators slash developers of the first two seasons of MTV's Scream the TV series served as consulting producers for 1984 and J wrote the fourth episode entitled True Killers and Dan wrote the fifth episode Red Dawn. These two episodes cap off the five episode arc of that first night at Camp Redwood and those are arguably the strongest episodes of the season at least to me so it's sad to see that 1984 would be the first and only collaboration between J.B.D. Dan Dworkin and American Horror Story. But would this new blood in the writers room and casting department alike attract positive reviews? Well believe it or not American Horror Story 1984 achieved the highest Rotten Tomatoes score of the entire franchise with a certified fresh 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. With audiences it remained consistent with Apocalypse with a fresh 75% approval rating. On IMDb 1984 slips ever so slightly to an average episodic rating of 7.9 out of 10. The critics consensus reads a near-perfect blend of slasher tropes and American Horror Story's trademark twists 1984 is a bloody good time. It seems that even without Sarah and Evan fans and critics were open to these to these fresh faces and new twists on familiar ideas. And with the similarly well-received Apocalypse in the rear view the path to a new renaissance would truly all depend on if they could stick the landing with the anniversary season that was season 10. Any show going into its 10th season is going to show its age a little bit and any show produced amidst the height of a global pandemic is also going to prove to be troublesome. But with all that being said fans had nearly two years to anticipate American Horror Story season 10. And all of that anticipation would unfortunately result in disappointment for most as what double feature ended up delivering was a lot of false promises and wasted potential in what I believe to be the most widely disliked season of American Horror Story to date. But let's go back to a happier place when all we knew about season 10 was its cast and a still image. With double feature being announced as the season's theme that meant we'd be getting essentially two miniature seasons of American Horror Story complete with their own separate ensemble cast. So let's start with the cast for part one entitled Red Tide. Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters both returned after their absence in 1984 much to the excitement of fans. Joining them would be Francis Conroy in a role that Kathy Bates was initially cast in before the pandemic made it too complicated for Kathy to take part due to her health concerns. Despite having a memorable role in eight seasons, Bell Noir would only be Francis's third time being credited as a main cast member. Lily Rae would return after having a memorable guest role in 1984 the season prior. Similarly, Finn Wittrock would return as a main cast member after guest starring in the final episode of 1984 and also starring in Ryan Murphy's Ratchet in the time leading up to double feature. Billy Lord would return as Lark, Leslie Grossman returned as well as Ursula. Adina Porter returned after taking 1984 off as perhaps one of the most done dirty characters in American Horror Story history, Chief Burleson. Obviously spoiler alert, but not only had Adina Porter already played a cop back in Rono and she had just played one in Outer Banks, but Chief Burleson gets barely any screen time and has very little importance to the season's plot. In fact, if you watch to the third episode of the season, Chief Burleson is fully murdered by the newly turned vampire violin Prodigé. Adina spoke to the rap about her minimized role in the season saying, She also said that the scripts for double feature were much more over the top and campy than the more serious and dark tone that ended up dominating the red tide half of the season. To me, this is the first season where I feel like things are starting to be miscast or at the very least huge talents are being wasted on roles that can essentially just be edited out of the season. Angelica Ross returned for red tide as the chemist, another villain with a hidden past. For me, Billie, Adina, Angelica, and even Evan Peters to a lesser extent suffer from the material that's been given to them. Or if the real issue is that producers decided that the tone should be more serious than camp after the material was already finished. I could see that resulting in a lot of minimized roles and performances left on the cutting room floor. But that's just speculation, but we can see this season's casting is just a lot messier than any season before it in terms of the actors and the roles that they're given. Now it also suffers because of COVID protocols, no doubt about it. The characters are rich in the role of the character. And I don't really notice it as much after that in Death Valley. This results in red tides, multiple plotlines feeling isolated, and again we have moments of really interesting characters and relationships. The characters are written so that they can only interact with one or two other characters at most. And any given scene has a maximum of like three characters in it. And that's true for red tide up until about the finale episode. And I don't really notice it as much after that in Death Valley. This results in red tide's multiple plotlines feeling isolated. Again, we have moments of really interesting characters and relationships dangled in our faces just to never really be seen again. In addition to the aforementioned returning cast members, we also had newcomers to American Horror Story, Macaulay Culkin, and Ryan Keara Armstrong. Macaulay Culkin is undoubtedly a established actor. However, I am labeling him as stunt casting because of the unexpected nature of this casting and the fact that his inclusion in the show generated an increased amount of buzz and media coverage. Ryan Keara Armstrong is one of few child actors to appear in American Horror Story, and she's definitely the youngest main cast member in the series history. That being said, she really gives the role of Alma her all and is responsible for some of the season's most memorable moments. Dennis O'Hare returns in a recurring role. His moments are small but impactful, but I'd argue he's in a similar boat with Adina, where I feel like their characters should have been more important than what we ended up seeing. Now moving into the Death Valley side of the casting couch, Sarah Paulson returned as Mamie Eisenhower, Lily Raib as Amelia Earhart, Leslie Grossman as a new character, Calico, and Angelica Ross returned as an alien leader named Theta. As you can tell, these roles are insane, but they're honestly a mixed bag when it comes to performances that unfortunately all suffer from the even worse writing in my opinion of Death Valley when compared to Red Tie. I want so much to like a lot of the wacky things that the season introduces, but knowing how it all surmounts to nothing in the end just really kills any intrigue for me. Lily Raib is barely in this half of the season, definitely not enough to call her a main cast member, but she's credited as such nonetheless. Joining the AHS alums are a couple of cast members that were introduced to the American Horror Story universe through the spinoff show that had aired its first season just weeks before season 10 aired, Kaya Gerber and Nico Grieven. Kaya's definitely stunt casting as she's the daughter of Cindy Crawford and had primarily only worked in modeling before she dove into the riveting roles of Ruby McDaniel and Kendall Carr. This is an instance where I think the stunt casting pretty much only attracted negative attention unfortunately, sometimes justified, sometimes not, but her role in Double Feature was definitely a stark improvement from her work on American Horror Stories. Next we have complete newbies to American Horror Story, Isaac Powell, Rachel Hilson, Neil McDonough, and Rebecca Dyant. If Isaac Powell hadn't returned for season 11, I'm not sure what I would think of him, but now after seeing what he can do in NYC as a performer, I say let's give everyone else who suffered through this season another shot. Neil McDonough plays Dwight Eisenhower, Cody Fern returned briefly in a recurring role as Valiant Thor, we even get special appearances from Steve Jobs, Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Kubrick, and Buzz Aldrin along the way. The chaos of Double Feature's casting is not exactly reflected in the writer's room on paper, but truly there's just as much chaos brimming underneath the surface, so let's get into it. 1984 consisted of nine writers, and all of them aside from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk would not return for season 10. Maybe it was a contractual thing, but Double Feature was the first season of American Horror Story without contributions from James Wong or Tim Minier, and Crystal Liu and John Jay Gray also broke their six season streaks. Manny Cotto returned after writing that one episode of Apocalypse, except between then and now, he'd also written four episodes of the divisive American Horror Story spinoff entitled American Horror Stories, but let's break that down for a second. Sure, he wrote The Naughty List, which is definitely one of the worst things to come out of the entire franchise in my opinion, but the most controversial episode of the first American Horror Story season had to be the three centered around The Murder House, which all happened to be written by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, with none of those episodes being attributed to Manny Cotto. Meanwhile, the fan favorite episodes of American Horror Stories season one seemed to be Ball and Farrell. Ball was co-written by Manny Cotto and Ali Adler, and Farrell was written and directed by Manny Cotto himself. Don't get me wrong though, the best episodes of season one of American Horror Stories still feel like very subpar episodes of American Horror Story to me, but I'm going to go ahead and say that once again, we cannot blame one writer for the failures of American Horror Stories. It's also worth noting that out of the 15 episodes of the first two seasons of American Horror Stories that exist, Manny Cotto has been responsible for nine of them. So keep that in mind as we discuss the rest of Double Future, because there's certainly something to be said of these writers having an above average workload than is normal for the series. But anyway, Manny's writing run on American Horror Stories definitely laid some negative groundwork between himself and the fandom that would only get worse as 2021 progressed. But again, Manny Cotto has had a gratuitous career in writing and some of his work. On the American Horror Story franchise I have genuinely been a fan of. I like the ball or facelift episodes of stories, or the emotional roller coaster that is the fifth episode of Double Future entitled Gaslight. In addition to Manny Cotto, two new writers were brought on board, Kristen Rydell and Riley Smith. That means that Double Future would be the season with the least amount of writers at the time, with the season's 10 episodes consisting of a total of five writers. But with a lot of the issues we are now seeing brought up as a part of the current writer's strike, I believe that this smaller team was likely overworked and underpaid, at least when compared to earlier seasons which had a more adequately sized writer's room, which certainly explains a lot of what we ended up getting in Double Future at the end of the day. I'll link a video by Dan Murrell in the description that goes over the writer's strike and really gets into what the writers are asking for. If you want to try and get a more basic understanding of the writer's strike, I recommend that video, check it out in the description. In the Golden and Silver Ages of American Horror Story, the most episodes a writer would write would be like two or three if they were really pushing it, but most writer's workload would be one or two episodes per season. This of course means those writers can put more energy into those episodes rather than stretching their talents across six to nine episodes like what happened here in Double Future. Even looking at last season, 1984 had nine writers and nine episodes and pretty much every episode was written by a different writer aside from the two that were helmed by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Double Future, on the other hand, had ten episodes and five writers. That's more episodes and less writers than the season prior. The math just doesn't make sense and it's clear that this was likely a large contributing factor in what went wrong with this season. Kristin Rydell wrote on four episodes this season, Manny Koto wrote on six, and series co-creator Brad Falchuk wrote on nine out of the ten episodes. With some episodes having four credited writers, it's hard to say how they divided the workload, but at the end of the day the workload the writers had on this season was still much larger than any previous writer's workload in terms of episode count. Basically if you blame any of these writers for the quality of this season maybe you should shift that blame towards the people who decided that season ten would have half the writers and one extra episode when compared to the season that came before it and those people are the producers and the studio executives. Seasons of television like Double Future are exactly why writers are currently striking, partly so that they have enough time and assistance to make the best product possible. And it's hard not to see this shift in the writer's room's workforce as one of the biggest contributing factors to this decline between seasons nine and ten. Anyway let's learn a bit about our new Double Future writers. Kristin Rydell seems to have been borrowed from her executive producer role over on Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 and Riley Smith has since worked with Ryan Murphy on a handful of his Netflix projects including being a writer and producer on Dahmer and The Watcher. What I wouldn't do to be a fly on the wall during any of the story meetings for this season to really get a good idea on where it all went wrong but my best guess is that there was more work divided against less writers all amidst the height of the pandemic and it seems like the season lost its direction after episode five and no one could really save it. Even with the criticism of seasons five through eight Double Future seemed to be more poorly planned out from the start with the narrative lacking cohesion especially when it comes to how both parts of the season concluded. Despite Red Tide and Death Valley never having any sort of crossover or overarching narrative they are technically a part of the same season so the Rotten Tomatoes score is a little bit harder to understand than a usual season especially since most of the critics nowadays will only review the first few episodes of a TV show Nonetheless perhaps helped by an admittedly strong first five episodes of Red Tide Double Future holds an 80% approval rating from critics however it's also the third season of the show to not receive the certified fresh label. Audiences who are more likely to finish an entire season before reviewing it as you may expect panned the season with a Rotten score of 52% which ties the previous record holder of lowest audience score which was Colt I've been hard on the season but honestly five out of the ten episodes of Double Future are very strong in style and performance but the problem is that it feels like a lot of good potential was thrown out the window in episode six and the rest of the season was a bit like watching the show struggle to tread water with an underwhelmingly short Alien season. On IMDb the good episodes were not strong enough to outweigh the bad as the season's average episodic rating is 6.7 out of 10 the lowest average of any season at the time reflecting the fact that critics don't finish the seasons before reviewing them nowadays the Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus reads though its second tale remains a mystery the first half of Double Future proves a spientingly good time with terrific performances especially from the spectacular Leslie Grossman Leslie I love you but did you write this? I will say though Leslie Grossman's performance of Calico and Angelica Ross' campy performance as Theta through the silliest prosthetics were the highlights of Death Valley for me but at least to audiences, Double Future was not able to stick the landing of a third solid season after Apocalypse in 1984 were well received by critics and fans but did season 10 kill the show? Leading up to season 10, Ryan Murphy and company described it like a return to form that in and of itself kind of feels like them acknowledging that the past few seasons had been lacking the same magic that other seasons possess while the AHS fandom is not as large or demanding of a presence as it once was the fan base was still strong and vocal throughout the Silver Age and into the Bronze Age but somewhere in the Bronze Age the fire in the fandom seems to have significantly died down I think season 10 and season 11 both suffered from the existence of American Horror Stories as both Double Future and NYC were preceded immediately by seasons of that spinoff if you were a casual fan the two shows airing back to back could be a little overwhelming or confusing especially because American Horror Stories was airing on Hulu and AHS is still on FX and it has now been confirmed that the two channels have separate advertising budgets this explains why it seems like both seasons of American Horror Stories were more heavily promoted than either Double Future or NYC and it explains why the general public might have only heard of the spinoff which especially in its first season poorly reflects the quality of the brand in my opinion not only is there now an issue of brand oversaturation but there's also not one streamlined advertising strategy in theory American Horror Stories could have been used as a promotional tool to get more of the streaming Hulu audience excited for seasons 10 and 11 but with Hulu putting more of an advertising budget into American Horror Stories since then FX would put into Double Future or NYC it's a recipe for the main show to be overshadowed by its annoying younger sibling personally I think a lot of damage was done to the American Horror Story fandom during 2021 with both the spinoff and season 10 and I definitely think that those projects may have been the last straw for a lot of diehard fans unfortunately American Horror Story seasons have been divisive in the fandom since day one but never has everyone in the fandom been in such agreement that not only the two Double Future finales but also the entire half of Death Valley and the spinoff were a complete letdown I don't think any of the writers are to blame sadly I think the blame has to be on the showrunners and the producing team or whoever agreed that now would be the best time for American Horror Stories it's easy to say it now with hindsight but I would imagine you would want to protect the AHS brand while the main show is still running and save a spinoff for when the main series ended American Horror Story had already been renewed up to season 13 when they announced the spinoff so the oversaturation should have been easy to foresee clearly after Double Future it's been rough for AHS fans and for me this definitely felt like a death of American Horror Story in a way because I'd never truly been so let down by a season like I was let down by Double Future that being said one area that Double Future upped their game in was definitely in their visuals and cinematography as especially in Red Tide there was a strong cohesive visual style that really sets it apart from the rest of the series visually but nonetheless another year came and another season would come out so let's see how American Horror Story attempted to rise from the ashes and course correct from rock bottom The second batch of American Horror Stories were produced and aired as season 2 before season 11 would air on FX and in all honesty the second season of the spinoff was a big improvement sure there's a couple filler episodes including the incredibly boring finale which really just ruins what could have been a completely solid and redeeming second season nonetheless it's clear that Ryan, Brad, Manny, or whoever listened to the criticism of American Horror Stories season 1 as these stories are scarier, more adult, and visually more aligned with the actual series aside from that second season of the spinoff fans were left almost completely in the dark about season 11 until just weeks before the season aired maybe it was an attempt to build mystery and intrigue while working with FX's minimized advertising budget but to me it seemed like the network and the creators didn't care about season 11 from the get-go which is incredibly unfortunate given the subject matter combined that with Ryan Murphy's immense success at Netflix that just so happened to coincide with this season AHS definitely felt like a neglected child when it was announced that the theme would be AHS NYC heck FX didn't even release a trailer before the first episode came out we just got some bad posters and some decent character stills bad promotion aside for the first time since 2019 we got a full narrative season with one main ensemble so let's take a look who got sucked into the AHS universe for the 11th go round once again departing and giving us all abandonment issues was Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters Billy Lord, Leslie Grossman, Rebecca Dian, Dennis O'Hare, and Isaac Powell would all return from the previous season Leslie Grossman plays her most grounded character yet and maybe her most heartbreaking I was genuinely surprised to see such a grounded and serious character for Leslie like I alluded to earlier Isaac Powell had a great run this season as Theo and after being absent for eight seasons Zachary Quinto returned to the series for NYC and established actor Russell Tovey joined the cast alongside Joe Mantello, Charlie Carver, and Sandra Bernhard who are all established actors who just so happened to be plucked from the Murphy verse as well last but not least we have Hollywood royalty plucked from the Murphy verse as Patty Lepone makes her AHS return in NYC she had previously had a guest role in Coven but AHS NYC was her first main role my highlights this season were Isaac Powell, Patty Lepone, Joe Mantello, Sandra Bernhard, and Charlie Carver and all in all this season was a much more well casted season than double feature was even if it's missing a lot of the heavy hitters from the golden age it still has some of my favorite bronze age mainstays in Billy and Leslie that being said one of my main criticisms with NYC is its lack of female characters and the sidelining or exclusion of the lesbian or transgender perspective on the AIDS epidemic which the season revolves around in the writers room Ryan Brad and Manny Cotto returned joining them would be Ned Martell who wrote On Hotel and Roanoke and Jennifer Salt one of the long lost writers of the golden age also returned as a writer for the first time since hotel Our Lady J also wrote on the season after previously writing on season 2 of American Horror Stories on what is my favorite episode of the spinoff and also writing on all three seasons of Pose and a first for American Horror Story we have a cast member Charlie Carver contributing to the writing of four of NYC's episodes we've had AHS cast members directing before Angela Bassett directed Chapter 6 in Roanoke and Drink the Kool-Aid in Cult and Sarah Paulson directed Return to Murderhouse in Apocalypse but NYC was the first time a cast member had written for the show I've just reviewed the season so if you want to know my thoughts in depth you know where to look for them but aside from a couple rough episodes near the beginning I actually thought AHS NYC was a really refreshing season it's incredibly dark and depressing like earlier seasons but it truly takes the title of the series to a whole different level with so much of the horror the season being historically accurate I know this isn't the most popular take on season 11 per se but with so much anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislature in the United States currently I thought this season served as an important and timely reminder of the consequences of queerphobia in not only the culture but also the government and those consequences unfortunately are death and violence against queer people and this season gave us a compelling glimpse into queer joy being heinously corrupted and cut short by a society's ignorance and a government's inaction I'm gonna be honest I've noticed that I seem to enjoy this season generally a lot more than most people it seems like I had the opposite experience of most where I wasn't super into the season in the first few episodes but got super invested in the second half once it became more clear what they were going for I feel like most people were invested in the first half and just hated the direction it went in the second half I wish this season wasn't so divisive as I think it deserves more praise than it deserves criticism but let me attempt to be unbiased while we discuss the reception On Rotten Tomatoes NYC became the fourth season to not receive a certified fresh tomato despite still clocking in at a fresh 71% Audiences however gave NYC the lowest approval rating of any season ever with a score of 41% This is also reflected in the lowest average episodic rating of any season with an average of 5.9 stars out of 10 some way somehow fans ranked this season even lower than that of double feature NYC doesn't have a critics consensus yet but critics were surely less hard on the show than fans seem to have been Since NYC aired I've gotten a ton of homophobic comments about the show and saying AHS has gone gay or they miss when the show wasn't so gay and it's just really confusing to me how it took some of y'all 11 seasons to realize how gay this show is and if you're about to spew homophobic BS in the comments just know it'll be deleted so don't waste my time, don't waste your time American Horror Story has always been a gay show played by gay people with a plethora of queer characters, actors, writers, directors and producers so if you haven't seen NYC and you are deterred by these scores I encourage you to give it a shot and decide for yourself but I will warn you it's not a very uplifting season so you might want to emotionally prepare yourself for that To me a combination of double feature American Horror Stories and this negative and often times toxic reaction to NYC are what have come the closest to killing American Horror Story but you can't kill Ryan Murphy and seasons 12 and 13 are moving forward as has been the plan since season 11, 12 and 13 were all ordered by FX back in 2020 so we are either about to see a comeback story unlike any we've ever seen before or seasons 12 and 13 will prolong the series past its due date with more divisive seasons for us fans to complain about this decline sucks to see though as I genuinely wish the show could sustain itself for as many iterations as possible but like I said earlier the lack of quality control particularly in 2021 with both double features and American Horror Stories really tarnished the image of the show in a lot of fans' minds who had grown to expect a certain level of quality even with a tendency for rushed and unsatisfying conclusions the fact is a lot of fans turned off American Horror Story and the last time fans were united were over seasons like Apocalypse in 1984 which certainly have their flaws but they majorly played into things that fans had been asking for for years double feature did try to keep that fanservice going with Ryan's weird Instagram polls and false promises of sirens and the long awaited return of the aliens but the end product left fans wondering how we ended up with a vampire apocalypse and the forced crossbreeding of humans and aliens but NYC definitely took another approach to the season so much so that fans threatened to boycott if they weren't giving plot details before the season premiered it's clear the fans weren't the main priority when writing this season and yeah it's not perfect but to me it's got more heart and a stronger identity than either parts of double feature had and I care about these characters in NYC and can't remember their names a lot better than those in double feature so hey to me that was a step in the right direction the Bronze Age will continue with season 12 and my imaginary divisions are to continue to have four seasons in each era and if the trend continues it could be another season of transitions like freak show or apocalypse transitioned from their eras to the next although in season 12's case it might just be a transition into the final season if 13 ends up being the end we have started to get some news about season 12 already and you know I've got you covered with all you need to know in another video but in this video I'll definitely fill you in on a massive change to the writer's room of American Horror Story and season 12's stunt casting so controversial that it got AHS trending in the year 2023 so let's take a glimpse into the future with season 12 season 12 has been announced to be entitled Delicate and will be based on an upcoming novel entitled Delicate Condition this is the first time that AHS will have a blatant source material in another first it was announced that AHS Delicate will be written entirely by one writer that writer will be Hallie Pfeiffer a newcomer to AHS but not a stranger to Ryan Murphy having served as a supervising producer on impeachment American Crime Story as you've seen in these past two videos AHS usually has at least five writers and at most ten writers so it will be interesting to see how one writer will be able to shape this season especially considering it's a completely new voice to the series I don't know what to think of this considering how the last time we had a small writing team turned out but now with scripts on hold due to the writer strike I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely concerned currently AHS Delicate is filming with no writers on set which is a recipe for disaster and it will likely be put on hold within the coming weeks if there's no resolution with this strike so I'm definitely on the team of let's stop these productions until the producers and studios can get their heads out of their asses and realize that their entire industry is built off of writers and their ideas and without them the industry will crumble just like it did in 2008 in season 12's casting news returning after taking two seasons off is Emma Roberts who has been announced to be starring in her sixth season alongside newcomer and major stunt casting Kim Kardashian they will also be joined by established television actor Matt Zucre and plucked from the Murphy vs MJ Rodriguez is making her AHS debut this season as well someone I've been asking to be on a season of American Horror Story for years now we've got new cast members dropping for season 12 every week so check out my recent AHS news videos and my community tab for the most up to date news on AHS Delicate to wrap up this year long saga of a video is American Horror Story dead? the answer obviously is no, it's not of course season 12 will air as will season 13 and perhaps after season 13 the series might actually end but for now the gangs got at least two more shots to reinvent themselves and maybe regain some of the fandom that it once had to those that have departed from the AHS fandom though I'm sure to them American Horror Story is dead if you're a fan that dipped with Jessica laying around the end of the golden age then I'd expect you would consider Hotel to be the death of AHS if you think the show died once it became a parody of current events you might say Colt was the season that killed the show if you stuck with American Horror Story through found footage, killer clowns and time travel maybe the last straw was the poorly planned double feature which we had two years to build anticipation for only to be met with the least satisfying conclusion of any season to date my point is it's all subjective and there's a good chance you disagreed with a lot of the things I said in this series and that's fine the fact of the matter is we can't expect a show that's about to go into its 12th season to maintain consistent creative quality or consistent talent in front of or behind the camera it would be nice but the people who have worked on AHS just so happen to be some of the busiest people in the industry as you know whenever AHS decides to kick the bucket I'll be attending the funeral but I truly hope that that day doesn't come anytime soon and the show can live on in one way or another past season 13 because if you haven't guessed by now I'm a big fan of the series despite this negatively titled video series that is secretly a video essay appreciating the many different iterations and lives that this show has had in its impressively long run and with that let me know what you think about the many evolutions and reinventions AHS has had over the last 12 years let me know all of your thoughts in the comments below leave this video a like especially if you've made it all the way to the end of what I can confidently say is the longest project I've ever made for YouTube subscribe for more horror coverage and I will see you next time