‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ episode 8 ratings: John Lowe reveal hits season low

Even though “American Horror Story” may have definitively answered a big question on Wednesday night when it comes to the identity of the Ten Commandments Killer, that doesn’t mean that there were a lot of viewers around to watch it compared to previous weeks.

Wednesday night’s new episode of the series drew just a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic and around 2.3 million viewers. For cable, that’s still a solid performance, and it is enough to make the show #1 among the cable networks on the night. Here’s the downside: The show has lost almost two-thirds of the 3.0 rating it premiered with, and 3.5 million of the 5.8 million who were curious to see how Lady Gaga would work as one of the leads this season.

So why the big decline? First and foremost, we should point out that it is natural for this show in particular to lose huge chunks of its live audience in-season. Some switch to DVRs, and others just lose interest after Halloween / Thanksgiving. Still, these are the lowest numbers the show has seen since “Asylum,” when it was not the runaway hit it is considered now.

The biggest thing that we attribute this to other than people recording the show more is simply a matter of quality. This season’s lost a ton of steam. There are too many things going on, several episodes have been outright boring, and some of the big twists (including John as the killer) have felt unsurprising and don’t really work that effectively. If there is a show that could use a year off to retool and compose itself before returning, this is it.

If you missed our review of last night’s episode, you can see it over here right now. Also, be sure to sign up over at this link to get some other TV scoop on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt NEwsletter. (Photo: FX.)