American Horror Story: Freak Show – An Issue or Three

             Warning – contains spoilers.

I’ve been watching the latest series of American Horror Story on Fox recently. I was initially drawn to it when I read a description saying it was an anthology series, it sounded pretty cool and there aren’t too many of them around anymore. What Freak Show turned out to be was a season long continuing story; now this needn’t a major issue, in fact the characters and the story drew in and soon I was enjoying it as much as any other show.

However with the demise of Ethel Darling recently, I realised that a few things were beginning to grate on me. Let’s get the lovely Ms Darling out of the way first. Kathy Bates is a wonderful actress and is great in everything she does but…what the hell is the accent she’s trying to do. At first I thought she was trying to do, a very poor, English accent, like you used to hear bad American actors do in equally bad films. I quickly realised she was too good a performer for that and maybe she was trying something different, something my ear had never heard before.

After a bit of searching on Google (other search engines are available) it turns after that the consensus on the accent was Baltimore, in fact later reports quoted Kathy herself saying that is what it indeed was. Opinion was still divided though – those who found the accent utter brilliant and convincing and those who found it annoying and out of place.

Leading on from Ethel Darling, we have her son, Jimmy. Jimmy is a guy of conflicting ideologies. On one hand he thinks nothing of killing a detective, yet on the other he’s all for calling the police for Dell’s misdemeanours, and even wanting to get even with the police officer who he feels was responsible for Meep’s killing in a police cell. If he had such a hatred for the police, why would he always want to go running to them whenever trouble rears its head.

Considering it’s a series about freaks, crazy psychotic clowns and a guy who’s prepared to tattoo his daughter to look like a lizard (as punishment for wanting to bring shame on him by running away to the carnival to live with a freak – yep, doesn’t make much sense to me either), the one thing that’s really been driving me crazy (and this is after I rewound the recording twice to re-watch it) is how the hell Elsa Mars, in a 1952 back-water American town, manages to sing a David Bowie song. And oh does she perform it brilliantly.

Still, good viewing so far, I’m looking forward as it builds to a climax.