I can honestly say that "Test of Strength" is the first episode of this season of American Horror Story to honestly and completely bore me.
The show has struggled since the death of Twisty the Clown and the brilliance of Edward Mordrake's ghostly quest. Left without one of the show's prime sources of horror, it's devoted the second act to the story aspect of the title. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but unfortunately it is showing off some of the problems that derailed Coven last year.
First off, it was predictable. Really, really predictable. The cast members who are not going to make it out alive this season might as well be wearing red shirts. I understand it's because it's easy to make the audience fall in love with the small and the harmless, and therefore it makes more of an impact when they die but it somehow feels very cheap.
There's a reason Jason Voorhees rarely targeted children. Doing so would have been shocking, of course, but it also would have eliminated the social contract that we make with horror films. To enjoy the spectacle of death you have to have at least on some nasty, hateful level of yourself feel that the victims deserved it. It can be the horrible lizard brain part of you that judges a vain jock, obnoxious stoner, prude, or harlot at the level of a teenage boy, but it's still there. Among the freaks we've seen each death is the equivalent of watching someone pull the wings off a butterfly. You don't revel in the mayhem, you just want to call a guy in a lab coat.
More than that is that the show has abandoned itself to a moral and is about as subtle at wielding it as Dell is with his hammer. We get it; we are the real monsters, not those born with unfortunate medical conditions.
This played well when Dandy and Twisty worked off each other like a Satanic Abbot and Costello bit. Even Elsa's plots and schemes were bolstered by the revelation of her past and presently hidden freakish condition. Now though...
This story continues on the next page.
