When surveying the other reviews circling the internet of American Horror Story: Hotel’s premiere episode, ‘Checking In’, there were several words that seemed to crop up all too often. Namely, these were ‘gross’; ‘lunacy’, and ‘just what to expect’. Never has a better summary of an AHS season been seen; after all, this is same show which introduced its very first season with a Frankestein baby, a teenage ghost rapist-and-school shooter, and a toddler who embodied the Antichrist. Falchuk and Murphy, eh.
As a veteran AHS viewer, whilst watching ‘Checking In’ the brain begins to juggle the two older seasons’ near-perfect success with the most recent instalment’s (Freak Show) catastrophic descent, nervously predicting which route Hotel was likely to take. It may still be too early to tell, but what has been seen of Hotel Cortez and its motley crew certainly bodes for an interesting journey, whatever the outcome.
We begin by watching our two introductory Scandinavian tourists arrive in a modern California besides Hotel Cortez, awash with Murphy and Falchuk’s trademark smooth, sweeping visuals. As they step through the worryingly dark hotel hallway (*cough* vampires *cough*), it is hard to ignore the fact that this is by far the most decadent and obliquely stylish of AHS’s five seasons. Our first sightings of the hotel interior are treated with vast, bulbous camerawork that shrinks our two theme-park goers (Vendela and Agnetha) against the art deco extravagance of Hotel Cortez. First impressions of the season are immediately articulated by Blonde Tourist No. 1, who states, “It’s retro. Maybe it will be fun.” After all, it doesn’t take a professional critic to note the vast decline in plot coherence visible throughout American Horror Story’s later seasons, notably Coven and Freak Show, which both appear to try and balance far too many plot lines, with far too gore-focused hands, to deliver a compelling and consistent plot amongst the grisly delinquency we have become accustomed to expect. At this point, to watch AHS is to place our bets on how quickly the series will descend into haphazard madness – and how many of the characters will be left at the end.
What ‘Checking In’ does do is provide an atmospheric and gloriously freaky pre-credits opening, with our unassuming guests following a bad smell to a sewn-up mattress concealing a mutated human-monster. According to Kathy Bates’s receptionist Iris, “this place’ll grow on you.”
And what role does this season’s most eagerly anticipated new arrival (and Jessica Lange replacement), Lady Gaga’s Countess Elizabeth, play in all this? Though I may be voicing unpopular opinion, I have to admit a slight relief that Lange is now no longer around to unfairly domineer any setting she is placed in, German accent barely intact or not. Her arrival as the secretive yet outrageous Constance in Murder House was an eccentric and driving presence throughout the anthology, yet her characters in later series absorbed too much of the story for themselves, leaving little room for other cast favourites (Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe, and Evan Peters to name a few) to spread their wings.
On the other hand, Countess Elizabeth and all of her fresh mystery is still quite an enigma. Clad in an ironically virgin-white waterfall of a dress, she slits the throat of one Scandinavian escapee with a glove-talon only a few scenes after conducting a bloodthirsty foursome with boyfriend Donovan (Matt Bomer), whom we discover to be the son of Iris, lured here many years before by Sarah Paulson’s Hypodermic Sally.
It’s true, not much plot line can be gauged from what physically happens in “Checking In” – but that’s typically what the first episode of any like-minded drama/mystery show is like. Instead, Falchuk and Murphy indulge their lunacies by introducing to us, one by one, a line of malicious, lavish characters all with backstories emerging at different rates.
The first to receive this treatment is this season’s emerging moral compass, a stoic and hard-faced Wes Bentley as detective John Lowe. By the end of this first episode we have shared many glimpses into a rocky, strained home life due to the suspicious disappearance of his young son Holden.
Besides, an initial lack of direct plot line by no means indicates a complete absence of one; in fact, I appreciated the slick handling of John Lowe’s detective scenes, reminiscent of CSI and other crime shows, in the pursuit of a killer who will no doubt provide the backbone for this season’s excessive, grisly story. Meanwhile, Hypodermic Sally and her gruesome, drill-dildo’ed friend is in line to play Murder House’s Rubber Man 2.0. All in all, there are still plenty enough doors in Hotel Cortez as yet unopened to provide, if not a compelling season, a compelling second episode – especially when cast favourites Evan Peters and Emma Roberts’ characters are no doubt unveiled in Falchuk and Murphy’s striking fashion. In the words of the Eagles, AHS: Hotel, like all the rest of its seasons (good or bad) provides one definite fact amongst the mystery we must sift through: You can check out of this show time you like, but you can never leave.
Words by Megan Harding.