Main cast: Matt Bomer (Michael Winslow), Gavin Creel (Troy Winslow), Sierra McCormick (Scarlett Winslow), Kaia Gerber (Ruby McDaniel), Paris Jackson (Maya), Belissa Escobedo (Shanti), Merrin Dungey (Dr Andi Grant), Aaron Tveit (Adam), Selena Sloan (Erin), Ashley Martin Carter (Rowena), Valerie Loo (Nicole), and Celia Finkelstein (Gladys)
Director: Loni Peristere

I’m going to be honest: the only reason I am reviewing American Horror Stories is because it is an anthology series, which means I won’t have to sit through a whole season of irritating characters that will drive me nuts by the time the whole thing ends. That is my sentiment when it comes to American Horror Story in a nutshell: the series have become worse and worse with each season, especially because after a point, it becomes apparent that the show is just a vehicle for Ryan Murphy’s favorite pretty boys and best friends to stay employed in Hollywood.

I guess they must have really run out of ideas to resort to having an anthology series based on what crap that passes for “lore” in the American Horror Story “universe”. Don’t get me started about that, as I stopped taking that show seriously after the second season, when I saw how they could take a potentially solid premise and squandered everything for self-indulgence and a bizarre inability to let the characters played by Ryan Murphy’s pets to be held accountable for anything these characters committed on the show. Given that premise, I suppose that it makes sense for the opening two-parter episode goes back to revisit the first season, American Horror Story, or retroactively re-titled American Horror Story: Murder House, because gee, we didn’t do that enough in that crap season involving those stupid witches and a whiny, incompetent Antichrist.

So, Rubber (Wo)man: Part One. So, we have another gay couple moving into the haunted house, because yay, we certainly haven’t done that before in the original first season. This time we have Matt Bomer because I hear that Ryan Murphy and Zachary Quinto hate one another now. Mr Bomer plays Michael, and Michael and his husband Troy move into that house with their daughter Scarlett, the two men hoping to flip the house because people are just lining up to buy a haunted house these days. Scarlett, who looks like she’s 30 on a good day, meets and becomes infatuated with Michael Jackson’s daughter, I mean, the character Maya played by Paris Jackson, but then she goes cray cray and wears a rubber suit before killing Maya and her friends. On to part two!

This episode starts out with some of the most cringe-inducing dialogues ever, and then I get to see Mr Bomer hamming it up like the gayest gay gay that ever gay’ed in Gayville. That’s the main problem with this episode: nothing here is done to resemble a coherent episode; instead, scenes and lines are created to allow people on social media to turn into memes and overuse in every one of their bloody post. The show struck gold on this during the third season, the one with the supremely idiotic witches that just can’t die for some reason, and since then, the show has devolved into something that would be more at home in the acid dreams of a social media addict that has little contact with the real world outside. Everyone here talks like they are reading aloud lines from Reddit and Twitter, and when they have to act, they seem to be camping it up for TikTok.

At least in the first season, there were Jessica Lange still acting like she gives a damn and Dylan McDermott’s heaving naked butt. This episode is just an uninspired Netflix-tier display of uninteresting, self-absorbed characters and who-cares plot that lifelessly attempt to recycle the most memorable concepts and scenes from the first season in a manner more rotten than any walking dead in town.

So yes, this leads me to the second reason why I am reviewing this show: I’m not masochistic enough to review each and every episode of the last few seasons of American Horror Story because every organ in my body will likely fail out of protest, but reviewing this show will give me a chance to go off-tangent on why I detest a certain season linked to a particular episode of this show.

Anyway, this is a pretty dull and lifeless, not to mention completely forgettable episode, and I can’t wait to see how the next episode stinks up the joint further.