The Hype
American Horror Story has always been a great series, different stories each time around with (almost) the same cast, and an amazing cast at that. American Horror Story and the second season "Asylum" were both superb story telling and almost impossible to stop watching. The third season "Coven" stated off strong but turned into a mess, relying on shock value and pointless insanity to keep viewers interested, but it wasn't a big enough disappointment for me to lose faith in the series.
The Review
Freak Show started off strong with a simple but hooking introduction. I was always curious as to how they would pull off this freak show concept, but it's is quite interesting so far. This time around the show takes place in 1950, and you truly believe that. AMS has always been dedicated to accurately portraying their chosen time period and sometimes I feel they put in more effort to this aspect then some major motion pictures.. *cough* Annabelle *cough*
At first I was disappointed that Sarah Paulson would be a two-headed Siamese twin, I thought it would take away from, and limit the character, but as the episode went on i started to appreciate it for the unique and ballsy move it was and it added a lot of extra interest and depth to the character(s). The effects were outstanding. An aesthetic like this on a TV budget could easily be disastrous. We also have the menacing killer clown, whose scenes were not only well done, but were tense and terrifying.
Jessica Lange and Evan Peters are as great as ever and im more than pleased to see them return for another season. Kathy Bates also returns, but doesn't get her chance to shine quite yet. The premiere episode was extended to 92 minutes, and i feel this was very unwarranted, There was nothing wrong with the extra scenes and they had some great moments but they weren't vital to the premiere, i would have rather seen them next week and got the extra 30 mins of sleep. This may be one of my shortest reviews to date, and you could attribute that to laziness or fatigue but there's simply not much to say, no glaring mistakes to criticize, and no fantastic feats to praise.
The Verdict
Freak Show delivers a solid premiere, but lacks the wow factor of previous episodes
7.6/10