MHA's Blog: Chiming In

Since we didn’t get a new episode of American Horror Story this week, I wanted to talk about something holiday related, and the first thing that popped into my head was It’s A Wonderful Life.   Frank Capra’s story about man and his influence on the people around him has become a touchstone of holiday entertainment.  This movie has been copied and parodied so many times that it’s easy to forget about the original, and about the one element often ignored in all of the parodies.  George Bailey is suicidal.

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A question that has always fascinated me is how much influence your genes have on you versus your environment.  I come from a family with a history of diabetes, and everyone in our family has a greater likelihood of getting diabetes due to our genetics.  What determines who gets the disease and who doesn’t?  Can we change how our genes affect us?  This week’s American Horror Story brings up this question (but doesn’t offer any answers, obviously). 

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Last night’s American Horror Story was the show’s Christmas episode.  It was the scariest episode of the show yet.  It was grotesque, mean-spirited and had an honest-to-God unsettling villain.  What made this episode so effective was the minor theme of powerlessness that ran through all of the characters, bad or good. 

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American Horror Story just introduced the Angel of Death, played by AHS season vet Frances Conroy.  The literal Angel of Death, with black wings and life-ending kisses, showed up at Briarcliff this week and interacted with a number of our favorite characters.  This fact makes a lot of the rest of the action this week seem irrelevant, including Lana’s near escape, Jude’s crisis of faith and Grace’s shooting.  I guess there’s now going to be a fight between the Angel of Death and the Devil in Sister Eunice.  Interestingly, the Angel of Death’s appearance gave us a sympathetic and almost realistic discussion of suicide.

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In this week’s American Horror Story, we spent time with Bloody Face.  Bloody Face, the poorly named serial killer stalking Massachusetts, was revealed last week to be Dr. Oliver Thredson, the psychiatrist appointed by the court to determine whether Kit Walker, the man arrested for the Bloody Face murders, was competent to stand trial.  With this reveal, Dr. Thredson joined the ranks of famous serial killers in pop culture. 

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