It’s Serial Killer Fall.
The year is 1981, and all is not well on the streets of New York City. American Horror Story: NYC, whose plot aside from location has been kept entirely under wraps, begins with a pile of trash lining a nighttime city street, a common enough sight even in today’s New York, and a symbolic gesture hinting at what’s in store for the 11th season of Ryan Murphy’s improbably successful horror anthology. This is an underworld story, one of death and desire amid the city’s castoffs during a particularly punishing period of time.
Wednesday’s premiere was two episodes long, and the show will continue with this release model every week, airing two installments until the finale. It’s a little bit punishing—you’re basically watching an AHS feature film every week—but it works for this season, as the plot, so far, prefers to meander.
We’re introduced to the key players in stages. Patrick (Russell Tovey) is a police investigator who stumbles upon what appears to be a dark pattern of gruseome murders targeting the city’s gay community. Patrick also happens to secretly be in a relationship with Gino (Joe Mantello), a writer for The Downtown Native whose work focuses on the gay scene—and lately has been consumed with what appears to be the same pattern of crimes Patrick is investigating.
Elsewhere, Hannah Wells (frequent Murphy collaborator Billie Lourd) is a doctor studying viral pathogens, who finds a disease mutating in the native population of deer on Fire Island. One slip, and the new virus could easily make its way into humans, so the deer need to be exterminated. Adam (Charlie Carpenter) is drawn into the fray when his partner goes missing after meeting up in the woods with a harness-wearing man in a leather mask. He takes his fears to Patrick at the police station, whose hands are tied by the 24-hour rule—and by the NYPD’s lack of interest in getting involved in crimes involving the gay community. As far as they care, they can sort it out for themselves.
That is exactly what Adam decides to do, sniffing out a photographer who once took a picture of a man who fits the leather daddy description, an artist named Theo (Isaac Cole Powell), who takes sexy photos for his partner Sam’s (Zachary Quinto, another Murphy loyal) high-paying clientele. While Theo is preoccupied with finding the artistic value in his subjects—“Exposing the perverted in what everyone else sees as beautiful,” he explains—Sam seems to have more sadistic tastes. And some sort of relationship with the man in the leather mask.
When Gino attempts to do some journalistic investigation, he’s kidnapped by a mystery man and nearly tortured (to death?), before his captor realizes Gino was in the military and releases him. Gino is a little shaken by the incident, and then decides to publish an article about his experience. In Ryan Murphy fashion, the truly messed-up shit doesn’t seem to affect his characters—at least, not at first. At one point, Sam visits Hannah’s clinic to get a prescription for a sexually transmitted amoeba. Gross? Certainly. Relevant? Who knows, at this point?
There is an air of unknown doom that hangs about the show even in its first episodes, with people repeatedly mentioning a feeling of ominousness permeating the city, muttering things like, “Something dark is coming.” Isn’t it always?
AHS: NYC has all the Murphy-esque signatures, and more: It’s sexy, it’s salacious, and it’s subversive—not least because of the era and the community in which it’s set. Like most seasons of this show, NYC starts strong, though it’s difficult at this point to say exactly what’s going on.
Who is the leather mask daddy with a murderous streak? Is this perhaps an origin story for the rubber man ghost from all the way back in Season 1? As a horror-tinged dramatization of the oppression that urban marginalized communities faced in Reagan’s America, it works, so far. Which is exactly what you could say about any American Horror Story season: They all work, until they go off the rails. Let’s hope NYC can stay on track.
