When FX first announced the title of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s third iteration of their deeply disturbing yet undeniably tempting “American Horror Story” series, “Coven,” which premiered Wednesday night, I’ll admit I had to stifle a yawn and a complaint: Does it have to be witches?
We gotta lotta witches these days — some in preproduction, some in post-production and some already outstaying their welcome on other networks.
The problem is, your modern TV witch is usually about as scary and/or interesting as a picked-over Halloween aisle at Walgreens; she’s all sexy spells, smoldering glare, plunging neckline, designer jeans and tousled mane — and sometimes she’s all that in the package of a sullen teenage girl.
Come back, Samantha Stephens, with your twitchy nose and immaculate living room!
Watching the first episode of “American Horror Story: Coven,” I began to wonder if, during our nation’s shameful history of witch persecution, any of them were ever charged with the crime of being boring?
It could happen here. “Coven” is the first time “American Horror Story” gets started with the unmistakable feeling of timecards being punched,
Jessica Lange has adeptly revivified her career. She first played a scary next-door-neighbor in 2011 and then, in last year’s “Asylum,” a sadomasochistic nun straight out of the worst Catholic-school stereotypes.
This time she’s Fiona Goode, “supreme” witch of a New Orleans-based coven that operates Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, a boarding school for witchy teens.
Murphy and Falchuk clearly treasure a retro-historical feel, reaching for a ready archive of nightmare fodder that includes old-fashioned sanitariums, asylums, convents, rectories, orphanages, laboratories, boarding schools, jails; they fetishize any place where one can imagine unmitigated misery dealt by authority figures and secret psychopaths.
The show is always better when it resembles a scratchy print of “Rosemary’s Baby” instead of some forgotten season of “True Blood.”
Murphy and Falchuk seem to think that overdoing it is the only way to do it. And the minute you express your revulsion, you’re instantly not cool enough to watch the show.
“American Horror Story’s” cachet continues to draw a dream list of talent, especially with this season’s demand for strong women: Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Patti Lupone, Frances Conroy, Sarah Paulson, Christine Ebersole.
I’m sure they’ll all have great fun horrifying it up and pushing our limits, but to what end, really? At some point, a discerning viewer needs something besides repeat trips into a bad dream.
“American Horror Story: Coven” airs at 10 p.m. Wednesdays on FX.
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