Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Step right up and see the wonders of Fraulein Elsa’s Cabinet of Curiosities! It will amaze and astound you like nothing you’ve ever seen before, well unless you’ve already seen this season. Tonight is the premiere episode of the fifth season of American Horror Story and I thought before we check into Hotel with Lady Gaga that we should take in a bit of the old Freak Show, especially since the series just came out on dvd and blu-ray this week.

I will admit that Freak Show was not one of my favorite seasons of AHS. Yes, I know that makes me a horrible person, but I did watch the whole thing and tried to keep myself from getting picky and irritated before the finale. I may have Twitter ranted during the finale though, but I wasn’t alone. I liked the idea of Freak Show and I’ve always thought carnivals were exceptionally creepy. This might have to do with The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series, but whatever the reason, I’m a sucker for a carnival plot.

I loved the start of Freak Show, especially the Twisty story line. All of the different characters introduced were interesting and had flaws as well as redeeming factors. We even got a tie in to Asylum and Pepper’s backstory. The idea of Freak Show was great, but while I was watching it on tv I found myself getting annoyed by some of the writing choices. Twisty, whose plot I thought was meant to last the entire season, was gone in four episodes and that was just when I’d started to like him. I also began to feel like what I was watching was more character studies and not really a plot driven piece. There was sex, murder, and madness going on, but what was I learning from it? There was the idea of accepting who you really are and how you shouldn’t trust a person by their appearance, but that’s more a theme than a full plot.

The connection to Asylum, while giving us a ton of great details about Pepper, felt a bit off to me. I’ve rewatched Asylum a lot, I really like the Bloody Face plot, and the connection between Pepper and Mary Eunice isn’t there. Sister Jude is the one who spends time with Pepper, while Mary Eunice seems afraid of her. Maybe I’m reading too much into the connection, but I just didn’t understand why Pepper was shown bonding with Mary Eunice, when that isn’t in Asylum at all. The finale of Freak Show also confused the heck out of me. I know Elsa died, but does this mean that all the other member of the Freak Show went to hell or were forced into Mordrake’s sideshow? I was literally so confused by this.

I recently rewatched Freak Show and the ending still confused me, but I did like the show a bit more when I didn’t have to wait a week between episodes or have to deal with all the commercials. The characters are really well acted, but I still am not sure of what the overarching plot of the season was. I’m really excited for Hotel, especially since Finn Wittrock is going to be in this season again. I really liked him as Dandy and I’m looking forward to seeing what his character will be like this time around. I also feel like it will have echoes of Murder House, which is my favorite AHS season.

I’ll be checking into Hotel tonight and I hope to see you there. If you want to let me know your thoughts on any of the AHS seasons you can comment here or tweet at me, @kleffnotes.

Also an extra update, next week we will be moving to a different site. We’ll make sure to give you all the info once we have it all set up.