Seeing as how the ninth season of American Horror Story—1984—started out with such satirical wryness, maybe it can be no surprise that it had to fizzle out by the finale, a study in the kind of “hooey” that Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk aren’t usually lazy about. For, despite the unanimous praise of a season that “gave everyone what they deserved, including the audience” (seemingly code for us deserving shite), the way in which it was approached tended to be, well, totally lame-o.
For a start, the monumental buildup to a major decade’s end music festival featuring the crème de la crème of one-hit wonders (including Kajagoogoo and Belinda Carlisle) wherein Richard Ramirez a.k.a. The Night Stalker (Zach Villa) is slated to slaughter everyone never actually comes to fruition. Maybe the budget wasn’t there to execute it (no pun intended), but why spend so many episodes building toward that major climax only to have it told in the form of a “when it all went down” flashback from Montana (Billie Lourd) and Trevor (Matthew Morrison)? Because, yes, rather than picking up where the penultimate episode left off, we’re saddled with a thirty-year jump to the present (already an instant sign of slapdash storytelling), with Mr. Jingles’ (John Carroll Lynch) now grown up son, Bobby (Finn Wittrock), rediscovering the camp on his own quest to unearth what happened to his patriarch.
As he takes pictures of the withered and decaying stage announcing “Your turn to die” (the tagline of the festival), Montana materializes, as usual, out of nowhere. In shock not only by his presence but by the magical apparatus in his hand, she notes, “No wonder people have been staying away,” in reference to how much more “amusement” there seems to be at the average person’s fingertips au présent. Eagerly asking questions like “Who’s the president?” (it seems Bobby doesn’t have the heart to tell her), she realizes that Bobby’s sudden appearance is about to trigger the ever-latent bloodlust of Ramirez, who, as she explains in one of the cabins, they’ve been suppressing for the past three decades by having one of the numerous lingering souls on hand at the camp be ready with a murder weapon (chainsaw, knife, what have you) every time he rises from the dead (miraculously in the same place, unlike the rest of the purgatory-bound souls, who seemingly resuscitate in arbitrary locations). It sounds (and looks) like a lot of responsibility to carry out with rapid-fire vigilance for the course of thirty years. But then, that’s one of the lesser elements requiring a suspension of disbelief in the hopelessly tacked on conclusion to what started out as a delightfully campy camp narrative.
Another disappointment on the stacking momentum toward a “whoa” denouement comes in the form of figuring out who the “final girl” would be. For the rules of 80s horror movies dictate that there can only be one survivor at the end. Typically the “virgin” of the group. That would’ve been Brooke (Emma Roberts), had she not lost it to Ray (DeRon Horton)–not knowing, right away, that her virginity was given up to a ghost (yes, an orgasm from a phantasm). Even so, it leaves her open to being killed–or rather, wrongly framed by Margaret Booth (Leslie Grossman) for yet another massacre at the camp. The first one having taken place in 1970, presumably at the ear collecting hands of Mr. Jingles and, typically, right when three of the camp counselors are about to get busy with one another while the non-authoritative campers are asleep (because, remember, sex equals death in all 80s horror movies). During her five years trapped in prison, running into the Night Stalker by the end (determined to get her to sign her life away to Satan instead of the death penalty), Brooke’s major takeaway is that she has missed the 80s. Her decade. Or what was supposed to be her decade. For no one loves acid wash jeans, tube tops and the roller rink with half as much gusto. The emblems of the 80s that passed her by while she was rotting in prison. The Camp Redwood Festival is her last chance not only to experience the end of the 80s in one voracious gulp, but also to seek vengeance. For the entire core of the show is about most of the characters doing just that, with everyone feeling wronged and slighted. Just like the general public of the era by the time the Iran-Contra Affair came to light.
The skewed moral logic of most 80s movies and 80s governmental decisions is present in 1984, though Donna (Angelica Ross) might be putting too much stock in the idea that killing Margaret will serve as penance for all the lives lost at Camp Redwood thanks to her own unleashing of Mr. Jingles from the asylum as a means to study a serial killer in his natural habitat. Call it a gamble on a psychological study gone horribly wrong.
With its allusions to aerobics, the Summer Olympics and “Where’s the beef?,” some might see 1984, at the surface, as an homage to the decade, but, if anything, it is Murphy’s undercutting jibe at the seediness of the period. The sinisterness underlying the cracked smile of Reagan as thousands died of AIDS and the drug epidemic in America escalated as a means to numb the dull pain of the modern age. So it is that the Night Stalker asks, “Isn’t it obvious? [I’m] evil, pure, uncut. You think it can be treated as an infection, but there’s no cure, no pill to take. The darkness resides in everyone, even you.” So was the 80s for everyone, beckoning with its frivolous temptations, its innovation of cable bringing on the “MTV age,” and with it a seemingly normalized disaffection that would solidify in the early 90s with grunge.
Despite Murphy and Falchuk’s thoroughness with emulating the horror genre of the decade, not even the lowest budget of slashers would have concluded on such an absurd note. Involving a significant bulk of its main characters going into hiding for the last thirty years, one in particular being Brooke (and not really for any viable reason), the utter letdown is palpable–and certainly not in keeping with a bombastic ending like the one the 80s itself got with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. And sure, while the 80s had no problem with cheesiness, there is something less than palatable about Brooke explaining of her motive for dipping off the map to Oregon instead of communicating with Donna (the only other final girl), “I needed to believe that a normal life was possible after Camp Redwood, a glimmer of hope after all that darkness. Your dad was that for me.” That last part being directed at Bobby, who has been receiving checks from her all these years. Also something of a non sequitur plot point. One that the viewer hopes Murphy and Falchuk will somehow pick up again as part of some greater twist. Alas, there appears to be no time within the confines of the regular fortyish-minute episode. Just as, perhaps, there was no time to fully enjoy the decadence of the 80s while being so coked out of one’s goddamn mind.
In any case, AHS: 1984 deserved a stronger, bloodier music festival-oriented ending considering what a tubular beginning it had. Then again, like the sputtering of Billy Idol’s career, not all art can transcend the decades (as Ramirez loosely puts it, only a great artist can thrive in any decade, is truly timeless as opposed to trapped within his own time like most of the musicians slated to play the festival). One certainly can’t help but think this season won’t, nor its ultimately lackluster representation of the 80s.
