Scream Queens takes place in some bizarro nether-world of Ryan Murphy’s Tumblr-addled imagination, where things are equal parts gory and funny, but never enough of either to be quantifiably so. To watch the show is to buy into this moonman logic, and for the most part Scream Queens has worked for me. I’m willing to suspend disbelief and buy into a show’s central conceit, provided I enjoy the cast, the writing, etc. I’m not saying that “Haunted House” was Scream Queens‘ point of diminishing returns (it still had its enjoyable moments) but it was the first installment of this show that didn’t work for me.
Let’s talk about the bizarre cold open: Chanel-o-ween. As a 27-year-old, ugh, “millennial,” I’m aware that my generation is particularly ripe for ridicule (did you know we use our phones??), but it’s unclear how much of this was supposed to be satire. Chanel has 752 Instagram followers, which seems like a low number for someone who’s cultivated the adoration she receives from them. So are we laughing at Chanel or at the homely women who follow her? Neither? Both? This was a particularly toothless attempt at satire (and especially grating after Saturday Night Live just spent about four minutes of its season premiere making the same well-worn joke). But, to its credit, it set the tone for Scream Queens‘ least subtle episode yet – and when you’re talking about a Ryan Murphy show, “least subtle” should be a very telling phrase.
Normally, the plotting is what I like most about this show. But “Haunted House” was all over the place. Maybe this will all make sense in context, and when I review next week’s episode (the two episodes are technically a two-parter) I’ll have to mea culpa all over the place.
Dean Munsch makes a pretty good case for her innocence, even though Wes and Gigi still refuse to believe her. And that seems to be the end of that plot. I’m still not convinced she’s not involved, especially because Boone’s absence becomes more and more conspicuous the longer it lasts (I really hope that’s on purpose and not just a screw-up on the showrunners’ parts). Grace and Pete go to talk to a woman who was at the Kappa party in 1995; she ends up predictably killed by the red devil. But we do learn one important thing, namely that the baby was a girl, which rules out current suspect Chad Radwell.
Okay, let’s talk about Chad. Let’s unpack the fuck out of this. Chad, in previous episodes, has been one of my favorite characters, mainly for his idiosyncrasies and surprising tolerance of Boone’s sexuality. Glen Powell is doing fine work with the character. But the script for “Haunted House” destroys a lot of that goodwill through Chad’s aborted tryst with Hester, who approaches him in a graveyard right before he’s about to masturbate over a tombstone (kudos, at least, to the show for not shying away from that – he was absolutely about to rub one out). Hester and Chad share a common trait, namely that they’re aroused by dead bodies. In the past, this was just a weird quirk of both characters, and fit in, more or less, with Scream Queens‘ sure-why-the-hell-not worldview. But it falls apart when put under a microscope, because you realize that this comes from nothing. There’s no genesis, no origin to this, just two people turned on by corpses, one of them a burgeoning sociopath who can’t stop making references to anal sex (oh, sorry, “attack my crack,” as Hester so memorably puts it). I like this version of Hester a lot less than the one we saw in the first couple of episodes; shorn of her neckbrace, Hester is, well, Chanel.
The most notable scene of “Haunted House” is also its most ham-fisted. The three Chanels, plus Hester, are handing out flyers in the cafeteria, warning people not to go to Zayday’s haunted house fundraiser. They’re approached by a misogynistic douche, helpfully wearing a fraternity sweater. Not only do they rebuff his advances, but they proceed to kick the shit out of him as well. Hester dumps trash on him, because subtlety is dead, and at the end of the beat down the entire cafeteria applauds. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate frat guys, and I consider myself a feminist – it’s 2015, for Christ’s sake – but this scene felt very self-congratulatory, considering it featured a display of female solidarity from a woman actively plotting the murder of another. So yet another character misstep – this show has no idea what to do with Hester, I’m realizing – followed by actual applause that felt like Ryan Murphy applauding himself. This scene, like the Chanel-o-ween sequence, was weirdly paced, awkwardly inserted, and felt way too tonally different from the rest of the show.
Zayday was kidnapped at the haunted house – not killed. That’s an interesting development. Gigi Caldwell is the hag at the haunted house, a much more interesting development. Even at its worst – and so far “Haunted House” is this show’s worst episode – Scream Queens manages to lure me back, so here’s hoping it doesn’t make me regret it.
A Few Thoughts
- “I hope this severed leg brightens up your trailer park”
- I wasn’t a fan of the Chanel-o-ween sequence, but Chanel driving that tiny car was a good sight gag
- Niecy Nash is just killing it
- Didn’t Chanel No. 5 quit?
- “She’s haunting the campus with her fatness”
- That was a weirdly solid McConaughey impression from Pete. Also, he and Grace striking the pose from the the How to Lose a Guy in 1o Days poster was just weird enough to make me laugh, hard
- Pete and Denise talking simultaneously was also pretty damn funny
- “Cause of death: stabbed a whole lot and all over”
- Also not a fan of the cafeteria scene, but that was a pretty impressive tracking shot
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