Ryan Murphy is basically the human embodiment of the words YAASSSS QUEEN. It’s the reason he’s dedicating an entire season of American Horror Story to Lady Gaga, who is not an actress, and it’s the reason that there are gifsets of screen icon Jessica Lange on Tumblr. Basically he’s a very successful fanboy. Scream Queens is the latest iteration of Ryan Murphy’s formula, and it seems like he’s trying to cast everyone who he couldn’t find room for in AHS. And much like his other show, Scream Queens is a mixed bag.
Horror comedy is a risky venture. Those are two incredibly disparate genres, and mixing them almost always produces unwatchable garbage (Cabin in the Woods being the obvious exception). “Pilot” skews more towards comedy than it does horror, which is okay because this is a pretty damn funny hour of television. The delivery is rapid-fire across the board, which is keeping in line with the show’s glib, flippant tone. The tone helps as much as it hurts; the comedy is good, but there’s some real tonal whiplash when the show makes the switch into horror. For most of “Pilot,” the structure is joke-joke-joke-murder-joke-joke-murder, et cetera.
Scream Queens follows Grace, a college freshman looking to pledge the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority, which is under the leadership of Chanel (Emma Roberts), the quintessential queen bee who looks and talks down to everyone around her. (Emma Roberts might want to ask herself why she always gets cast as a huge bitch.) Chanel is a wildly over the top character, and Roberts does fine work (for what the role demands), but her casual reaction to murder (including one she commits) is a little hard to swallow.
The main conflict so far is, obviously, the red devil killer who takes out two Kappa sisters in this first hour alone. Both deaths are notable, for different reasons. One of Chanel’s lackeys, Chanel No. 2 (Ariana Grande), pleads for her life with the killer by exchanging texts with him. It’s one of the more bizarre scenes I’ve seen on TV this year. “I’m going to kill you now,” the killer texts, prompting No. 2’s reply: “Wait whaaaatt???” It’s funny, but it also tries a little hard; ultimately I’m going to give it a pass because it’s just so goddamn weird, which is why I watch Ryan Murphy shows to begin with, I suppose. The second death was that of Tiffany, nicknamed Deaf Taylor Swift by Chanel, because she’s, well, deaf and a Taylor Swift fan. I can’t wait to read all the thinkpieces about how ableist Scream Queens is.
At this point it’s pretty obvious that the red devil is the baby born in the cold open, which takes place in 1995. This could be a massive red herring, but from “Pilot,” at least, that’s the implication I got. And I’m fine with that. I don’t need the mystery to dominate the show. I need a little more horror and a little less comedy, otherwise we just have a gruesome college sitcom, which is something I’m less interested in. But like I said, horror comedy is an incredibly risky venture, so I’m inclined to give Ryan Murphy credit for at least attempting it. He hasn’t been totally successful as of yet, but this is still the first episode, so let’s give him some time to find his footing.
A Few Thoughts
- Jamie Lee Curtis is doing unironically great work. She’s not winking at the camera, she’s not chewing the scenery, she’s just giving a genuinely good performance. It’ll be nice to see her every week
- For those of you playing White Girl Joke Bingo, you can cross off “Taylor Swift love” and “pumpkin spice latte joke”
- “I hate sororities and I hate you”
- “Everyone is encouraged to wear/be white!”
- “I’m a candle vlogger” (I low-key think that “vlog” is one of the funniest things people can say they do)
- “We’re just trying to have a nice day shooting golf balls at hippies”
- “How did you get HPV? When were you in Mexico?”
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