I have been obsessed with old carnival sideshows since I was a kid. I even had delusions of running away and joining the circus when I was a teenager. So I have been looking forward to American Horror Story: Freak Show for months. It delivers a lot to love, but plenty that I am sure people will hate.
Set in Jupiter, Florida in 1952, Freak Show concerns Elsa Mars, a German ex-pat who runs a sideshow. Business isnt good, but a freak turn of events (pun intended) may change the tide. After the milkman discovers elderly Mrs. Tattler has been stabbed to death in her kitchen, he discovers something even more shocking. Hidden inside a dark room he finds Dot and Bette, conjoined twins who share one body and circulatory system, but two hearts and four lungs. The girls had been stabbed too, so they are taken to the hospital. Initially the girls are suspects in their mothers murder simply because they look like monsters, but it soon becomes clear that the girls were stabbed days after their mother died.
Elsa hears about Dot and Bette and tries to recruit them. Bette is excited by the idea; Dot is horrified. The girls sneak out of the hospital and head home, where Elsa finds them and convinces them to join the sideshow. Bette admits that she stabbed her mother in a fit of rage when she wouldnt allow the girls to sneak into the movies. Dot stabbed her sister a few days later, partially to cover their tracks, and partially out of anger. The girls go with Elsa because she promises safety and protection.The twins are overwhelmed by the other sideshow acts they meet. The geek freaks them the hell out. Ethel is the bearded lady and Elsas right-hand woman. Her son, Jimmy, is the lobster boy, a charmer who uses his fused claw hands to please frustrated housewives for some side cash. He is tired of being a freak and desperate to leave the carnival life. Ethel insists there is no place else for them in the world. There is Pepper, a microcephalitic pin head who you might remember from Asylum; Ma Petite, the smallest woman in the world; Amazon Eve, a giant nearly seven feet tall; and Paul, the tattooed seal man. There are other sideshows we are destined to meet, but they havent appeared yet.
A detective finds the Tattler twins hiding out at the sideshow and arrests them for the murder of their mother. Ethel, Jimmy, and several other performers band around them to defend them. The detective wont take no for an answer, and Jimmy ends up slitting his throat. But they have a show to do.
For the first time in months, the carnival has paying guests, Dandy Mott and his mother, Gloria. The pair are financially well-to-do and have a relationship that even Norman Bates would consider too close. He is entranced by the freaks who open the show, but the headline of the show is meant to be Elsa, performing a cabaret act from her Weimar days. (Strangely, she sings Life on Mars, a song that wasnt written until almost 20 years later.) After the show, Gloria wants to buy the Tattler twins for her son. Bette and Dot dont want to go – this is their home now, which is exactly what Elsa wanted to hear. Gloria is mad that Elsa wont sell, especially after she sat through her dreadful song. Elsa admits to Ethel, in private, that she is working this carnival in hopes of finally becoming a star. Glorias words cut her deep. When left in private, through her tears, Elsa unclasps her fake legs. Both have been amputated above the knee.
The performers, led by Jimmy, take the detective out to the woods. He decides that, if the world wants to believe that they are monsters, that they will become monsters. The others cheer him on, and they all start hacking up the detectives body. It is reminiscent of the one of us scene in Freaks.
Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in Jupiter. Brutal murders are taking place that have police befuddled and citizens scared. A grotesque, disfigured clown, Twisty, has been slaughtering people at random. So far, he killed Troy, a young man on a romantic picnic with his girlfriend, and a middle-aged couple. Troys girlfriend, and the couples son, have been abducted, and Twisty is keeping them prisoner in a rusted out van in the middle of nowhere. Before getting killed, the detective promised to make those murders stick to Bette and Dot as well.
If you are phobic of clowns, you may want to skip this years American Horror Story offering. We all know about Jessica Langes Elsa, the German woman trying to nurse the last, struggling breath of the freakshow back to health. But bearded ladies and conjoined twins are not the horror of AHS. That honor belongs to Twisty the Clown, the murderous clown who terrifies the small town of Jupiter, Florida. Twisty may give Pennywise a run for the Scariest Clown Ever title, though Twistys fearsomeness is far more obvious than Pennywises, with his gruesome, deformed face that may or may not be part mask, his filthy costume, and his Unibomber-style hideout in the woods, complete with doll heads on pikes.
As with each season of AHS, there are things to like and things to dislike. It looks beautiful, and the effect of giving Sarah Paulson two heads is nearly flawless. I am beginning to feel like Jessica Lange is playing different versions of the same character every year: a woman who appears to be altruistic (to varying degrees) but is really fulfilling some sort of narcissistic desire to the detriment of those around her. The dreams of stardom are also present (again, to varying degrees) throughout all of her AHS characters. I am intrigued to see where this season will go.
I worry that the freaks will truly become vengeful murderers. I am not some P.C. thug but it feels like making the freaks into actual monsters will be setting back the progress of the physically disabled.
