American Horror Story: Hotel (Season 5)

[Johnny Scumm]

It's official.

[YOUTUBE]8lOpQfjV6b8[/YOUTUBE]

Fans of American Horror Story, here is your Season 5. It's called "Hotel" & will star Lady Gaga in one of it's lead roles (I assume). No more details have really been released, but we can safely assume that it'll be set, well, in a Hotel.

After I really enjoyed Freak Show & felt like after Asylum & Coven were pretty lackluster, it really got back on the right track last season, which gives me hope for this one.

I'm interested to see where this is gonna be set, what kind of characters we'll be delivered & which members of the casts we'll see on screen. Hopefully, Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange & Evan Peters haven't gone anywhere.

Any thoughts? Any AHS fans out there?

 

[Mighty NorCal]

I gave up through about 6 episodes of Freak Show. Edward Mordrake was fucking awesome, but after that, there was just little of interest going on and too much wheel spinning.

Look man, I get up at fuckin' 5am every day, if you want me to stay up til 1130 watching your show, it better give me damn good reasons to.


Hopefully a premise like "hotel" can give us a widely varying group of interesting characters, like 13 Ghosts and House On Haunted Hill.

 

[Dave]

I've seen until the end of Coven thus far. My girlfriend and I are currently working our way through Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Total Divas at the moment. But we will go back to American Horror Story at some point.

For my money, Asylum was the best if the three seasons as Jessica Lange just absolutely knocked it our of the park. That said, Coven was pretty good too. Cathy Bates made for a great character, too.

In terms of Freak Show, I haven't been able to find the time for it just yet. But it won't be long until I get that time and get caught up. Apparently it was one of the stronger titles in the AHS family; so I'm pretty excited to see how it goes. The new series looks promising too, having seen the trailer that you posted. I think it's got enough of a following to warrant new series and perhaps Lady Gaga might be a welcome addition to what has been quite entertaining thus far.

 

[Johnny Scumm]

I gave up through about 6 episodes of Freak Show. Edward Mordrake was fucking awesome, but after that, there was just little of interest going on and too much wheel spinning.

Look man, I get up at fuckin' 5am every day, if you want me to stay up til 1130 watching your show, it better give me damn good reasons to.


Hopefully a premise like "hotel" can give us a widely varying group of interesting characters, like 13 Ghosts and House On Haunted Hill.

Definitely. Having the "Freak Show" meant we had so many freaky characters that towards the end it struggled to introduce anyone completely different. Mordrake was great, but when your new character is just a morbidly obese woman, it was getting thin on the ground.

I'm hoping this is more about the people staying in the hotel than it is the people running it that's for sure. Views into the rooms, maybe one room is haunted? That sort of thing.

It does however come out in October...so we've not actually got that long to wait.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

American Horror Story: Murder House (season 1)- It's still the best season of AHS, easily. Continuity, cohesive storytelling, and a solid cast, with Kate Mara portraying one of the more memorable AHS villains.

American Horror Story: Asylum (season 2)- Darker and more sadistic than Murder house. Lange was great as Jude, a cold and genuinely evil protagonist with an arrogant holier than thou personality, and Lily Rabe did a good job filling Lange's spot, when Sister Jude's character made the transition from the overbearing and strict dictator to the helpless and apologetic victim. Although, the erratic plot twists and sudden character deaths towards the end of the season are kind of annoying.

American Horror Story: Coven (season 3)- If we're talking about the quality for the overall cast, Coven features the best cast by far, with Lange portraying a more narcissistic and pompous character. An unusual campy season for AHS with a promising start, but the show quickly devolved into a mess towards the end. Also, the constant resurrections killed the emotional impact for certain character deaths in the second half of the season.

I lost track of Freak Show during the last four or five episodes, but from what I remember, Freak Show was kind of dull, and I didn't care about most of the characters.

If the reports are true, Jessica Lange is done with AHS. She's the face of AHS, and she consistently delivered the best performances in each season, so her absence will leave a noticeable void in the cast.

Unless I'm missing something, Gaga's acting career (or lack there of) is limited to two short cameo appearances in Machete Kills and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, two underwhelming sequels for superior original films, so that's not a fair measuring stick. I don't listen to her music, but Gaga has a massive fan following, her name will create some buzz, and a lot of people will tune into the show to watch her out of curiosity.

The usual AHS veterans (Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson) should return, and hopefully they'll find a way to work something out with Emma Roberts, Kathy Bates, and Angela Bassett.

As far as the story goes, I'm guessing it'll have something to do with a haunted hotel. Dysfunctional families fighting amongst each other is a reoccurring trend in AHS, so I can see a storyline with a broken family owning the hotel and struggling to pull themselves out of debt. They'll do whatever it takes to keep the hotel open (luring innocent victims into the hotel, sacrifices, etc.), and they'll run into a problem, when someone is murdered (it's inevitable) in the hotel.

 

[Dagger Dias]

I still need to get caught up. I've seen every season, with Coven being my favorite. I only saw two episodes of Freak Show but plan on finishing watching all the recordings I have of it. Other recordings like Once Upon A Time, The Blacklist, The Goldbergs, and of course Raw/Smackdown all took priority so I fell behind. I have every intention of getting there though.

If the reports are true, Jessica Lange is done with AHS. She's the face of AHS, and she consistently delivered the best performances in each season, so her absence will leave a noticeable void in the cast.

I was thinking about that myself. This leaves me very concerned. When you lose the main person that a show is known for, it is VERY hard for said show to recover. Can American Horror Story survive without Lange? Possibly, but it won't be the same without her. I'll still watch it and give it a chance when the time comes. We'll see what happens.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

For anyone, who's interested here are some new plot details for Hotel:

Built in 1930 by the rich and charming but deeply psychotic James March (Evan Peters), the beautiful art-deco Hotel Cortez is, in actuality, a labyrinthine structure built to hide March’s murderous activities (think dead ends, secret rooms, endless shafts).

In present day, though, the Cortez is acquired by Gaga’s Countess, a glamorous socialite who attends art openings and fashion shows and maintains her looks not from a steady diet of kale but from imbibing human blood. The Countess is also insatiable when it comes to love and sex, which sets up a macabre love triangle between her, the similarly blood-hungry Donovan (Matt Bomer) and the newly turned male model Tristan (Finn Wittrock).

Also gravitating around the world of the Cortez are Ramona Royale (Angela Bassett), an actress/former lover of The Countess’ seeking revenge; Iris (Kathy Bates), Donovan’s mother and the front desk clerk; Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare), a cross-dresser nicknamed by The Countess; Hypodermic Sally (Sarah Paulson), a junkie and friend of The Countess; Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley), a cop investigating a murderer named the Ten Commandments Killer; and The Addiction Demon, a creature in the vein of Rubberman or Bloodyface, who has no eyes or mouth but does wield a nasty, conical drillbit *****

Ryan Murphy is using "hemophilia" to describe the characters in season five, but it looks like they're going with vampires. Also, Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson are supposed to portray more villainous characters this time around. That's a big change, because in previous seasons, Paulson and Peters are heroes, victims, or misunderstood characters more often than not.

Freak Show devolved into a tedious mess of mediocrity towards the end, so hopefully things will change with Hotel.