American Horror Story: Cult Episodes 9 & 10 Review

Recently, AHS: Cult has hit a few bumps in the road. The past few episodes haven't been as good as the rest of the season, but I'm hopeful. The show's still way better this year than it was in the past few seasons, so I think it can turn itself around. Let's see what goes down in the two most recent episodes.

Episode 9, "Drink the Kool-Aid"

My Score: 10/10
My Grade: A+

Episode 10, "Charles (Manson) In Charge"
After last week's notable death, AHS returns for its penultimate episode where, excuse my French, sh** is certain to go down.

As with most seasons, the purpose of this penultimate episode is to set up the grand finale. IT serves that purpose well. And that's honestly all this episode does well. I really didn't enjoy much of it at all.

The Manson Family scene wasn't entertaining for me at all. It was just disturbing. The fact that these were real people that actually died, and that their deaths were being used simply as plot points just didn't sit well with me. The scene also just seemed really unnecessary to me, and it just distracted from the actual storyline. Sure, it helped make sense of the later appearance by Manson, but that part of the episode honestly just kinda sucked.

This episode also had another deep-rooted problem. And that is that most of it was just completely nonsensical. Gary's death was just really stupid. Why they would kill him outside of a Planned Parenthood in order to frame a pro-choice senator makes is beyond me, but the writers probably just didn't think that one out. Ally shooting Bebe instead of letting her shoot Kai was weird, because I see no world where she would do that. She could have been free! But they need something for next week, so alas.

A fundamental problem with this season is that all of the characters are just so unlikable. There's never been a season of AHS before where zero characters have any redeeming qualities whatsoever, and it's a really issue I'm having. And that issue really was amplified tonight. Kai has always been awful, but his awfulness was never as clear as it was this week. And there's nothing wrong with the antagonist being completely awful, but he's not really a character. He's a caricature. There hasn't been much development with Kai all season, he's just been evil through and through. Ally, who I guess we're supposed to root for, has changed. Not for the better, but she's changed. She started out relatable: someone having a tough time accepting that Trump would be POTUS. Obviously her "tough time" was extreme, but she was still semi-relatable nonetheless. But now, she's just as bad as the rest of these monsters. If she had let Bebe kill Kai, we would have at least had someone to root for. But now she's just seemingly so dumb I couldn't care less.

This episode also killed off Winter, who was pretty much the only interesting character we had left. Kai and Ally may be the leads, but Winter has been the most fascinating crazy person since Meadow died, so it's unfortunate that she's gone. But unlike most of what happened this week, it actually made some sense. So, yay???

But Leslie Grossman was in this episode, and Ivy wasn't, so that's something.

My Score: 6.5/10
My Grade: C

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