Kirsty Capes reviews the season six finale of American Horror Story: Roanoke…
The finale of AHS Roanoke is finally upon us, and there are still plenty of unanswered questions, as well as some rather interesting theories about what the future holds for the anthology show. After the traumatic finale of episode 9, which saw Lee and Audrey in a stand-off which led to the death of Sarah Paulson’s character, episode 10 examines the aftermath of the Roanoke TV series at arm’s length, primarily viewing it through the lens of various formats, including YouTube videos from superfans and surviving member of the Polk family Lot (although how he managed to get a video on YouTube is beyond me); a TV special between Lee and Asylum’s Lana Winters; a Most Haunted-style ghosthunting show called Spirit Chasers; various news broadcasts; footage of a panel discussion (pre-season 2) of all characters at Paleyfest, and finally a return to the traditional narrative format, in the final frames of the season, something which I have been longing for since episode 1.
Like the rest of the season, episode 10 drills even further its commentary on the fandom phenomenon, the celebrity of AHS and the way audiences consume television in 2016. Ryan Murphy is making a deliberate and repeated point about AHS fans and celebrity culture in this show, and it’s as though he is responding to critics of the experimentation of Freak Show and Hotel. AHS has cultivated an army of superfans, and every moment of the series is pored over and dissected for clues and deeper meaning. For me, I have always felt as though AHS is a very surface-level show. Sure, its stories are fascinating, gory and disturbing. But in terms of its writing, I always find that its cleverness is rather shallow – it leaves plot threads dangling at the ends of seasons and shoehorns in crassly put together hints and clues to further seasons. One of my big disappointments form episode 10 was that Lee’s dead daughter, Emily, was not mentioned once. Here was a huge piece of characterisation which could have given Lee great nuance and depth as a character, but it was forgotten, or ignored, or deemed unimportant. It is oversights like these which, in my opinion, stops AHS from being genius, and instead leaves it as being good or great.
Ryan Murphy, though, seems have become fully enraptured with his own celebrity. The endless fan theories, Reddit threads, accolades and (sometimes misplaced) praise has all gone directly to the brain, and Roanoke as a season reeks of his own ego. The whole premise of Roanoke develops into this clever meta-commentary, and often seems as though AHS is directly attacking its own fans for, well, liking AHS. We see a group of fans including Taissa Farmiga get a little too close to the Roanoke house and suffer grisly deaths as a consequence. In the Paleyfest scene, fans are depicted as pathetic and mindless as they lavish the cast members, who are elevated above them onstage (figuratively and literally), with gifts and requests for hugs. There is some reasoning behind this disdain for fans, if perhaps AHS were holding up a mirror to a generation of digital consumers who must have everything in bite-sized segments, and use the internet to mobilise more effectively than ever before. But Murphy must also admit that these crazed fans are also the very same ones who made AHS so successful in the first place, and kept him in the luxurious lifestyle that I am sure that he is accustomed to by now. In fact, there are huge parallels between Sidney James, the Roanoke producer, and AHS show creators in their disdain for their audience and their desire to make every season even more groundbreaking, even more gruesome than its predecessor, and failing. AHS often falls flat on its face with this, and resorts to shock tactics in place of a good narrative arc: cannibalism, sex-death, bloody entrails etc. Much like My Roanoke Nightmare, the fake docudrama in the series, AHS is mediocre at best, and it says something that AHS creators thought that My Roanoke Nightmare was believable as a fictional cultural phenomenon in its mediocrity. Another mirror held up to reality.
Despite all my whining, there were some good things about the season finale. AHS is always very good at its resolutions, and Lee’s death is certainly a fitting resolution for her. Adina Porter has had an incredible run in this series and I’m happy that for once Sarah Paulson did not take front and centre in an AHS season, although of course Murphy still managed to find a way to get her into every episode of the season. This is an unpopular opinion, and I do like Sarah Paulson, but I really don’t think she’s the best piece of talent in the core cast. She was over-used in this season, while Taissa Farmiga had a crime committed against in the casting she was given, while other actors like Lily Rabe once again had to play a secondary role to make way for Paulson’s gluttonous limelight. Regardless, Adina Porter was incredible in her range of character and I hope she comes back for another season. And hopefully we will also FINALLY get to see Lily Rabe as a protagonist.
Overall, AHS Roanoke has been a big disappointment for me, and it’s mostly down to the fact that the show has developed such an enormous ego that it has eclipsed all the good things that allowed it to cultivate its success in the first place. I hope that it heeds some of its own warnings and Ryan Murphy tries a different direction for season 7. Honestly, if something doesn’t change I don’t see AHS having a life past its next season.
Kirsty Capes
