‘American Horror Story’ episode 11 preview: What’s the run time for ‘Magical Thinking’?

Tonight, the wait for the return of “American Horror Story” is over! Wednesday night marks the start of the show’s final three episodes, but based on what we know right now, it’s going to be rather tough for the show to replicate the success of “Orphans” with “Magical Thinking.”

So how long should you set your DVR for this week? Since this is FX, the network has a tendency to not exactly give things the most traditional run time. In this case, the episode is going to run for 65 minutes, and should be over a few minutes after the 11:00 p.m. hour. There have been longer episodes for sure, and we almost wonder if this one could have fit it in there had it not been for the opening and closing credits.

One of the things that we are very curious about this time around is what the time jump could be, given all of the jumping around that we did during “Orphans.” We know that Elsa Mars does go on to be a TV star, so her preparing to leave for Hollywood is with some sort of purpose. Meanwhile, there has to have been enough time for the sale of the Freak Show to pick up steam, given that we are going to see Neil Patrick Harris in this episode as Chester, the salesman who becomes the new owner of the establishment. He also has a thing for really horrible magic, which we will see over the course of the next couple of episodes. Barney, this is not.

In the end, let’s just hope that the show finds a way to close things off that is as interesting as the Pepper story ended up being. We feel like this show is really at its best when it focuses more on its individual characters. At this point, we prefer that much more than when it is actually horror-based.

What do you want to see on tonight’s episode of “American Horror Story: Freak Show”? Share with a comment, and head over here to acquire some not-so-scary TV updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: FX.)