"American Horror Stories": Halloween horrors from the Murphy-Falchuk team, so there'll be hot straight guys

 

American Horror Stories is Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's solution to running out of material after several hundred installments of American Horror Story: it's an anthology series, with hour-long episodes that sometimes verge into science fiction and mystery rather than horror. Season 3 was released in two parts, at Halloween 2023 and 2024.  Usually when a year elapses, they call it a new season. 

As in the mother series, there may or may not be gay characters, and they may or may not be sleazy, leering stereotypes.  I watched just enough of each episode to determine if the protagonist was gay, sometimes fast-forwarding to check for queer codes.  

1. Bestie: "After the loss of her mother, a young woman seeks connection with a mysterious online friend."   Amrou Al-Khadi, a queer Muslim drag queen, appears as Ana Rexhia. whose podcast has the motto: "It's a drag to be a fag, so just die!"  What a disgusting thing to say, especially in the first scene of the first episode.

The high schooler's mysterious online friend, a grotesquely misshapen person, encourages her to do bad things like dress up as the Ana Rexhia "Die Fags!" character for Halloween.  Everyone is horrified, even the school bullies, and her dad locks her in the basement. The online friend becomes more and more aggressive...

She gets a boyfriend at school, or thinks she does, but he turns out to be allied with the online friend.  

The first guy her age in the cast list is Gavin Conner, so I thought he would be the boyfriend, but I didn't see him anywhere.  I'm still posting the cool Halloween cupcakes from his Instagram.

 

2. Daphne: "An artificial intelligence smart device grows attached to its user."  The device is played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and the user by Reid Scott.  Yes, she pushes him into sex.

Left: Reid Scott's butt.

3. Tapeworm: "An up and coming model will stop at nothing in her hunger for success."  Including a tapeworm.  I didn't even start this one, too  disgusting.

4. Organ:  "A blind date through a dating app goes very awry," as you can see.

Actually, Raul Castillo plays the guy with the app.  It brings him a roomful of underwear-clad women before things go very awry.

5. Backrooms: "A desperate father will do anything...and go anywhere...for a chance to find his missing son."  I figured that Dad, played by Michael Imperioli, would be searching through the back rooms of sex clubs and adult bookstores, but the son is like ten, and it's paranormal back rooms.

More after the break