American Horror Story: Coven

It's distinctly rare that I watch something and immediately think, "I wish someone would remake this." But that is my exact reaction to American Horror Story: Coven. There is little about the show that is actually a bad idea, in fact a strange form of brilliance permeates the ideas the show is built upon. It's just that it was executed in the sloppiest and accidental way possible.

The season has a stake, and it is just one stake: who will be the next supreme witch of the coven. That is hardly a bad premise for a season of television. Placing a group of characters in a contest with a prize they all want is to see what they are willing to do to get that prize, is one of the oldest premises in the history of literature. But in order for that premise to work, the audience actually has to care about the outcome of the contest. The supreme is nominally the leader of the coven, which means we actually have to know who the best leader is and what they actually want to do with the coven. Over the course of the series, the minor character Nan says, "If I was the supreme, I'd only do good things," which is the total extent of any of the characters discussing what they would actually do as the supreme. Madison is clearly supposed to be the worst candidate, but she is not measurably worse than the current supreme Fiona and no one seems like they would lead in a particularly better way than she would. Perhaps that is the point, a group of girls is so focused on attaining power that they are completely blind to what they actually want that power for, but if that is the point, it is so buried, malnourished and indecipherable it never comes through.

Similarly, the existential threat to the coven seems to be that the members were willing to put their own selfish interests ahead of the coven as a whole. The ease with which the (unexplained) division between the voodoo practitioners and the witches was healed, and the simplicity with which the witch hunters were killed off, should have served to highlight that the only real threat was the membership's own ambitions and greed. But ultimately it never even came close to touching upon that blatantly obvious theme. Fiona murdered a witch she thought was the future supreme, and only a few episodes later everyone is sitting around, happily eating dinner, seemingly forgetting the incident ever happened. If the whole point of the series was that the various witches ambitions were out of control, then the events of the series needed to be painted as gross violations proper order when they languidly seemed like simply routine when the supremacy was being passed. If the characters do not seem to react as if killing each other is abnormal, then why should the audience assume it is?

Frankly, this story is incredibly compelling, but it was done in the least compelling way possible. A story about an apathetic leader who is going to extreme, extraordinary lengths to retain her position is a good one. A centuries old feud between two rival, marginalized groups being healed by an external threat to both, is a good one. A group of people so caught up in a contest they loose sight of themselves and their ultimate goals, is a good one. Two marginalized people who are credible, potential leaders of a largely traditional society, is a good one. But the show never actually followed any of these potential stories, even mildly. They introduced them, either intentionally or unintentionally, and allowed them fester like putrid corpses, while the season meandered slowly and stupidly and chaotically. Every major element of this season fundamentally works (okay, every element not Delphine LaLaurie, and even that had moments where it could have, potentially, worked), it is only in the hands of Ryan Murphy that it breaks into an incoherent mess. American Horror Story: Coven began as a poorly conceived knock off of the X-Men, and ended as a poorly conceived knock off of the X-Men, and squandered anything interesting or intelligent about itself in between.