American Horror Story: Coven

S3E1: “Bitchcraft”

I gotta say, I was expecting a lot more cray from this show. I’ve not watched either of the previous AHS seasons but I heard it’s just crazy piled on crazy and I have no problem with that. This episode, though, was underwhelming. I was hoping that the exploitation factor that I’ve experienced in other Ryan Murphy productions would be absent but no. Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking there. But the story material he’s chosen, Madame LaLaurie and Marie Laveau, both real and well known people in New Orleans history, is ripe with possibility.

Beware of spoilers...

The basic plot sum up: Zoe, accidentally kills her boyfriend with sex (sigh) and is sent off to a school for gifted girls in New Orleans. (Her family, and other witch families, are aware of the genetic witch line.) The school is run by Cordelia Foxx, a good witch whose mom, Fiona Goode, is bat shit and leaning towards evil. At the school Zoe meets a few other young witches. She goes to a frat party with one of them who is then raped and then uses her powers to kill the bus load of fratboy douchebros rapists. Meanwhile in 1834, Madame Lalaurie is on her own quest for youth and horrifically tortures and murders her slaves to make a very disgusting face cream. But, she murders Marie Laveau’s lover and Laveau poisons Lalaurie and we all think she’s dead. But! In the present Fiona Goode digs her up. She’s been buried alive for 179 years! Dun dun dun!

First off, I love how they’re shooting the city. I live in New Orleans and they really managed to catch the pockets of spooky that you wander into in this city all the time. I also live just a few blocks from the actual LaLaurie mansion. Don’t come to town and expect to tour it as they did on the show. It’s apartments and condos now, but yes, Nic Cage did own it for a while. Visually the whole show is stunning. I was very pleased to see how much interior shooting (as opposed to just using establishing exterior shots) they did in the city as well. There’s so much distinct architecture here that when you establish shots outside and then take us inside a building that is somewhere else, it is clear and a bit jarring. (Hello The Originals! *waves*)

And on that note, let’s get the exploitation discussion out of the way. When I heard they were using the story of Madame LaLaurie I was excited and super worried. She was a real life horrible person who was caught torturing her slaves and (in reality, not on the show) run out of town by the people of New Orleans. She’s villainized for how she treated her slaves, but then people seem to forget that a lot of people had slaves at the time and no one was bringing them tea and crumpets in the afternoon.  When telling her story, there’s always the risk of glossing over that.  (I could go into the Code Noir and the differences in slave trade in the French colony but this is not a history lesson.) But, there is a real chance with this story to really discuss the horror of the slave trade as a whole…..but there’s also the possibility of exploiting it which is what happened in this episode. While I don’t think that was the intention, none of the slaves depicted in this episode are given names or any agency in their own story. (Seriously, one of them is just listed in IMDB as “Peeled back face slave.) So, depicting their torture turned into just showing shocking, graphic violence on tv. Maybe this will change as the story develops. I hope so.  

The rape that happened midway through the episode was not as exploitative. Nothing about it was shown as salacious and there were no hot shots of female body parts. It was horrible. On the other hand, as much as I want media to discuss rape culture in this country, I’m tired of that being THE thing that happens to female characters to give them development. And having a female character rape and then murder one of the rapists is not empowerment. Her decision to kill of the guy was something I liked. I’m pretty into characters making horrible decisions and watching the world fall apart because of it (See; my undying love for Supernatural). But the rape/sex part of it was….bizarre? Unnecessary? The whole idea of this woman killing people with her vagina power seems pretty unnecessary.

Which brings me to things I really, really liked. (Sorry it took so long to get here.) The other witches and their neato powers. Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) as a human voodoo doll (but don’t get me started on how voodoo dolls are actually for healing) is an awesome idea and will be so much fun to play with as the season goes. Nan (Jamie Brewer who nails it so hard in this ep. I love watching actors nail it so hard that your brain wraps around itself like “how do they even do this?”) has this wonderful ethereal quality in her clairvoyance that is also somehow very weighted and rooted in reality. And the telekinesis of Madison Montgomery is always cool for effects and forwards the plot with her revenge murder bus flipping.

Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates always bring it. Always. They’re never not amazing to watch. This is probably what has me the most excited about the season. Watching these three amazing actresses go at each other for 13 episodes, and it certainly looks as though that is the direction we’re heading. Lalaurie may end up ultimately being a pawn in Goode’s quest which will probably lead her to a face off with Laveau. I’m assuming she’s alive and kicking in the city as well.

I also like the hints that witch burning is still going on and perhaps escalating and that Goode, who is being set up as not so much a white hat, may have some legitimately good points about the school for witches preparing its students for that. Sort of like the supernatural version of Magneto versus Xavier and his school for gifted children.

This may have been a C+ grade episode at best, but there’s a lot of potential for some good bat shit crazy fun down the road. I may have to turn a blind eye to some of the exploitative stuff...ehhh nah. I’m going to point it out when I see it. Sometimes I just want writers to think harder than “shocking! edgey!” because I think if they did, the story would get more interesting or maybe they’d find an even greater level of horror to get to.