BWW Recap: All Is Revealed on the Season Premiere of AMERICAN HORROR STORY

The sixth season of FX's American Horror Story premiered last night and, after taking a completely different approach in marketing, we also learned that the season was formatted quite different than we are used. With the excitement for future seasons always stemming from the announcement of the theme, something that AHS has become known for and what makes it so exciting and refreshing each year, the knowledge that the team were choosing to keep this years theme closely under wraps and in much guarded secrecy until the series premiere (which they did so successfully that the team on Thrones could probably take a few pointers!) was a shock and interesting choice. Last night, however, all was revealed...or was it?

The series opener, only titled on our TV Guides as "Chapter 1", switched up the narrative format we've come to know on American Horror Story in favor of a mock docudrama reminiscent of ghost story television shows such as The Discovery Channel's A Haunting. Our story centers around a couple, Shelby (Lily Rabe) and Matt (André Holland), who are doing sit down interviews about their time in what the documentary affectionately titles "My Roanoke Nightmare". While they narrate, we're seeing their "nightmare" come to life on screen courtesy of what is seemingly a reenactment, characteristic of ghost story shows, with Sarah Paulson doubling as Rabe's character and Cuba Gooding Jr. standing in for Holland. (Their intimate scenes and relationship are a far cry from where they were on The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, that's for sure!)

Matt is a traveling salesman who foots the bills, while Shelby is presumably a yoga instructor who probably wont find a lot of clients in their new town. The two decide to move after "the worst day of their lives" (which seems like a little dramatic as the story that then precedes that then follows them being haunted and harassed by either ghosts, racist hillbillies, something completely different, or all of the above) when some douchey white boys decide to play a game of "knock-out" on the street. For those that never heard of this sick game until today, like me, it literally just involves assholes trying to knock out an unsuspecting victim. The victim they chose was Matt, a happy recently expecting father. The pair find themselves in the hospital, with Matt hanging on to life by a shred of a string. Matt eventually wakes up; but Shelby looses the baby (a life for a life perhaps?). After this traumatizing event, the two decide to move somewhere relaxing, ironically, and go to North Carolina to be in the country and near Matt's mother and sister.

They stumble across this incredibly old farmhouse for sale and bid against some begrudging locals, using all of their life savings to purchase the house. The 1792 southern mansion eerily resembles a plantation, and why anyone would see this as a perfect home is questionable, but it seems like Matt and Shelby have found their dream house. Shelby doesn't seem as inclined to live in the country as Matt, but she seems to be doing alright (they both are)...for the first day. That night, while copulating (yes, it's AHS after all...we couldn't go the first episode without it!), they hear a strange noise which Matt goes out to investigate. He finds bloody and completely destroyed trash cans, diving out of the way of one that appeared to fly out of the sky. The horrifying events don't stop there, as Shelby finds it to be hailing when she's home alone, and goes out to investigate, only finding that it's not hailing snow or ice, but human teeth. She tells Matt, who seems more worried for her sanity than her safety, seeing as, in true horror fashion, there are no remnants of teeth to be found when he gets home.

Matt then has a business trip he must go on, the traveling salesman that he is, leaving Shelby all alone in the house that she didn't really want to live in in the first place, yet, according to her interview, she was happy about the solitude. She welcomed being alone in the creepy, way-too-big for two people home, needing some space from Matt who she thought has been hovering lately. On her first night alone (these hauntings really do not take their time), she is cooking when she hears a noise and sees two nurses staring her down and walking right by her in the hallway. She is spooked but cant find them, so her all-too-calm persona (Surely even yoga can't make you that calm?) decides it's a good idea to go for a late-night dip in their outdoor hot-tub completely surrounded by eerie, wooded, vast emptiness. Of course this doesn't go well and she gets pushed underwater, almost to the point of drowning, by people she claimed were carrying torches and dressed in old-fashioned costumes.

This season might have changed the format of the series and the frequent inter-cutting of interviews mostly ruins the suspense and anxiety of the characters fate, however the setting is absolutely chilling; The large old house that has too many rooms to count and too many spaces for things to hide, the surrounding wood promising darkness, mystery, and fear, as well as the sheer isolationism of the property and the country. It's a perfect formula for A HAUNTING and an horror story, something that AHS has been accused of forgetting it is for the past few seasons.

This episode played into all the horror tropes and the hillbilly cops don't believe her. Even Matt is slightly questioning of Shelby's description of the events as the police said they found no torches nor evidence of footprints near nor around the hot-tub. Events continue to escalate though when Matt finds a dead pig, so that when he must go away on his next trip, he has his sister, Lee (played by Adina Porter in the documentary and Angela Bassett in the reenactment) stay with Shelby. The two do not see eye to eye and are completely opposite personalities, but the two actresses (Paulson and Bassett) play off of each other effortlessly. If they are the focal relationship of the season, or for the rest of AHS's run on television, the show will definitely remain at it's peak and the material will continue to be elevated in a series post Jessica Lange.

Lee, we find, was a cop but PTSD from a horrible on-the-scene event caused her to lose her job as she began turning to pills for comfort. That addiction also causes her to lose her husband and custody of her daughter. Now sober, but still packing (best line of the episode right?) Lee stays in the house and soon becomes privy to the weird going-ons when an incredibly rude ghost or haunting rolls a bottle of wine towards her, something that is the biggest middle finger towards a recovering addict. Lee initially blames Shelby, but while the two are fighting, they realize they are not alone in the house and go to investigate a noise in the basement. Matt is watching it all via his phone, horrified, as the security camera set up he previously installed are live-streaming straight to his mobile. People with torches are marching their way towards the house and there's nothing he can do about it.

In a moment of perfect Hitchcock-esque suspense, as we wait for the mob to reach the house, we are watching completely the oblivious Shelby and Lee arguing over Matt and their familial problems. It's so tense and suspenseful, and oh-so satisfying. The two, after looking around, discover the noise in the basement is merely a creepy Blair Witch-eqsue home video where we see what looks to be a sort of pig-man thing and the man recording going mad. Disturbed but determined to get out, Shelby and Lee are terrified to find they are trapped in the basement, as the people have reached the house and are just upstairs.

They painstakingly wait for them to go away, and eventually, yet slowly, they make their way up the stairs. Sarah Paulson's performance, as usual, is astounding and such an incredibly realistic portrayal of someone panicking out of fear and seeking solace in someone as capable as Lee, with every hand grab, nervous sentence, and apparent panic every time Lee makes the move to go anywhere but by her side.

The two find a weird voodoo set up of crosses strung all along the stairway that looks as if it should have taken more time than the mob had in the house, which Matt, who drove all the way there as soon as he saw an angry mob enter his home, points out. All of this convinces Shelby that she can't hold back anymore and they need to just give in and abandon the home. Matt reminds her that they have no money to go anywhere else, so, for the time being, they are stuck there.

Not listening to any of that and deciding to flee rather than fight, something we all would probably choose to do, Shelby drives off, taking action to just get away, a plan Matt wont concede to. While driving and speaking to Matt on the phone, she accidentally hits a woman who looks like she's ripped out of the 1700's carrying a butcher's knife, and, out of worry for the creepy woman's health (who is portrayed by Kathy Bates), she follows her into the woods...where of course she gets lost. She can't find her way back to the road or the car and true panic, claustrophobia, and sheer fear, she runs and runs, only to find herself in the middle of more stick crosses and the mob with torches.

With no preview for next week, one can guess they are keeping this entire season under wraps, even after the first episode's airing, which makes one think they must be leaning towards an anthology season where a teaser would completely spoil these possibly contained episodes. However, the ending of "Chapter 1" suggested that we are to see more of Shelby and Matt possibly next week, so who knows. Perhaps every two episodes are different anthologies? Different hauntings? We will have to wait to find out. What we do know, however, is it takes place in North Carolina, in an area related to Roanoke and it's mysteries, and there's an odd something going on with pigs.

The season premiere was a refreshing change for AHS, which was starting to get stale, and brought back the fear and horror elements that made people so attached to it in the first place. However, while the tropes they are tackling are horror staples, one would prefer it if either they really decided to completely challenge them, or, if there's no commentary to be had, they would be dismissed altogether. Contrary to that, even though the story wasn't anything new or exciting, the feel and the all-star performances being delivered by this incredibly cast, completely sell it. A season of AHS hasn't been this frightening or exciting since the first two seasons, and this season surely ramped it up, playing on the pure natural fears that crop up when brought face to face with prime-haunting grounds like the farmhouse Shelby and Matt decided was a good idea to live in.

In a season clouded in mystery, this opening episode lived up to the hype and was completely refreshing, reinvigorating the series. When the documentary format should stunt and retard suspense, it didn't really. The homages, which previously felt like artistic theft in the past, feel like true homages this time around. There's nothing new about this story, but it feels like a new step for AHS and that's why it works. Some things are too cliche and Lily Rabe is definitely the most convincing in her on-camera interview as Shelby despite some cringe-y lines, but that doesn't takeaway from the positive. For the first time in forever, we're excited and planning to tune back in next week. For the first time in forever, there was genuine scares and suspense. The first episode might have opened more questions than it cared to answer, but some of these questions are quite exciting, and anytime one can spend an hour straight marveling at the talents that are Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe, and Angela Basset absolutely smash it on screen is an hour of television worth watching. Now the biggest question is; are we still joining back up with Shelby, Matt, and Lee next week and if not, then where are we off to next?

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