‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ episode 3 review: Why’d you have to get so weird?
Three episodes in to “American Horror Story: Roanoke,” and it certainly feels as though we’re only going to be getting stranger and stranger from here on out. We’re meeting more and more people, we’re seeing the fourth wall being broken courtesy of Lee and her daughter Emily, and ultimately we’re getting a sense that the Roanoke story may be far more than anyone first knew.
The main story of the episode, or at least what we’d consider to be the main story in the midst of all this chaos, was seeing Shelby, Matt, and Lee search for the latter’s living (at least then) daughter Flora at the end of this past episode. It was dark, pretty terrifying, and what we were left with was disorientation. LOTS of disorientation, and it’s a bummer because the show didn’t have to get so weird, so fast.
The one thing that was grounded tonight was the death of Lee’s ex-husband Mason, a guy whose passing led to some suspicion as to whether or not she could be behind it. To think, this is when things were a little more normal.
If there is a key flaw in the series right now, it’s that we don’t quite care for any character beyond Matt, Shelby, or Lee just yet — and we don’t quite care for the connections. The entire Roanoke mythology with The Butcher is a little too weird and confusing, even if it was great to hand Kathy Bates a generous amount of air time after she was the best thing about both of the two previous seasons of the show. Also, apparently Lady Gaga is playing some sort of strange / demonic character, but she did save Kathy Bates so there’s at least that going for her. Also, apparently Gaga has the power to convince people to eat hearts. It’s disgusting, but kinda-captivating television in its own way?
So in the end, we do think “American Horror Story” is bringing some of the goods this season — we’re just not sure if it drifted too far away from what we liked in this episode. This is especially true in the end, with the whole bit about Matt having sex with Gaga’s character out in the woods, seemingly not of his own mind.
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