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With COVEN not even 24 hours expired the genres attention has already turned to not just next season but also the season after. EW chatted with show helmer Ryan Murphy who let loose with a few tidbits about what the future holds for the wildly popular FX series.
When asked about what next season may have in store Murphy replied:
“I don’t wanna say because we haven’t even started the deals, and I literally just locked this thing on Monday. I’m meeting with people too and the writers haven’t even started yet.” but then went on to say “It’s a combination of things. It’s a combination of two time periods, with the main one being the 1950s. I don’t know. We haven’t started writing it yet, so I don’t really know the tone. I like that we had a lot of comedy in this year, and I like the comic characters, so I think that will remain… Next year will be equally as challenging [as “Coven” was] because so much of it is period and bizarre and crazy and Gothic. My feeling is, if you loved this season, you’ll love next season. It has the same sort of comedic tone to it.”
We know that Jessica Lange will be returning and the rumor mill has both Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett being approached to return although there has been no official announcement confirmation of any of that.
We even learned a little bit about season five:
“It’s a radically different idea from the stuff we’ve been doing and it will take a lot of playing.” We’ll have to see where things go.
Season II (Asylum) had some brilliantly funny moments juxtapositioning the horror of the entire season. Each episode was a hold your breath, “My God” episode. Themes and underlying pathos weaved throughout the season.
But, what made AHS in Asylum so effective was completely lacking in Coven. Coven lacked the simple but all effective basics of what makes horror, well, horror. There was no sense of “the uncanny,” that un-named something which brings to forefront our unease, hidden anxieties, and most human moments gone terribly awry. It is our teenage angst rising to meet us; the uncontrollable desire to flee though we are riveted in our place.
All these aspects of horror in one shape or another were present in the first two seasons. And for whatever reason (lack of continuity of story, little to no emotional investment in the characters and shock for shock value only, misplaced in this season, was no shock at all)- turned what could have been a dynamic season of first rate fright, into no more than spun-sugar, and cardboard witch cut-outs. It was a shame really, for this season past (III) had the promise of a first rate horror endeavor which included the element of terror by the very subject matter itself – women/witches (terror is a female embodiment of the male imbued horror).
So this is one viewer who was disappointed in reading Ryan Murphy’s synoptic implications for season IV. I hope to find out this fall of 2014 that the creative force behind American Horror Story returns to the darker side of what lies within, and takes us, his viewers, to places we’d rather not go but are drawn to all the same.