Kai and Winter’s relationship isn’t any healthier, with Kai exerting immediate control over her despite their political differences (I can’t help but feel this is Ryan Murphy’s self-aware commentary about Evan Peters’ online popularity and how legions of Internet folks lusted after his school shooter character in Murder House). Ally gets yelled at for voting for Jill Stein and costing Hillary Michigan by her own girlfriend, and Ally’s political obsession is ruining both her business (The Butchery on Main, in a nice nod to last season) and her relationship with Ivy.
Certainly, portraying the 4Chan crowd as dangerous demagogues isn’t going to win them any favours, but it’s not as if the upper-class liberals get off any better, either. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, who wrote this episode, seem to be bound and determined to attack everyone on every side. He’s definitely intimidating, particularly when he’s working his magic on Winter and getting her into the household of Ivy and Ally. He makes a deranged speech in front of the city council about the greatness of fear and how everyone’s melt-downs will only make people like him stronger, he shows off his one-on-one charisma in his scenes with Winter, and he’s portrayed as the ultimate hero of online right-wing agitators who only want to troll the world via President Trump. He opens up the episode screaming obscenities and only seems to get crazier from there. Once again, Evan Peters is going to take a repugnant character and make him into a sex symbol. She flies off the handle at everything, and her fear of clowns, holes, and fluids/blood are used impeccably well. That’s not to say she’s not intensely watchable Sarah Paulson loves a good bit of scenery chewing, and her character is so overwrought by design that it doesn’t feel like overacting, but just the way this damaged person handles the world around her. The episode opens with her having a breakdown, and she spends the rest of the episode having psychotic breakdowns, possibly hallucinating clowns, and wringing her hands nervously. Once again, Sarah Paulson is going to be doing a lot of screaming and crying.
American horror s... season 7 episode 1 (election night) tv#
The right wing side is represented by an apocalyptic troll named Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) who celebrates Trump’s victory by screaming USA and humping his flat-screen TV before smearing Cheeto dust on his face and fashioning his Joker-blue hair into a faux Trump comb-over before heading upstairs to gloat to Winter (Billie Lourd), a self-harming college Tumblrina who quit Vassar to volunteer for Hillary Clinton, worries about where she’ll have her abortion, and boasts about getting retweeted by future Cult actress Lena Dunham. Ally is immediately troubled by Trump’s winning, to the point of having a breakdown-the smug liberal man Tom Chang only manages to yell at his wife for not voting. The left-wing side are a neurotic lesbian couple, Ally (Sarah Paulson) and Ivy (Alison Pill), a smug liberal man, and a non-voting wife of said liberal man.
This is simply the inciting incident from which all the trouble arises, as ingrained fears and innate prejudices are reinforced, emboldened by the election results and create all the troubles featured in the opening episode of Cult. Certainly, the other seasons have indulged in some social commentary of some kind or another, but this takes places starting in 2016, opening with actual footage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail leading up to the election of Trump as the 45 th President. This is, without a doubt, the most timely variation of American Horror Story since the first season.