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Hi, I'm Hunter and I will be reviewing
Scream Queens this season, unless either I give up on the show because I don't like it or it is pulled from the schedule. I don't expect either of those to happen, though, so here is my first of hopefully many reviews of
Scream Queens!
And, of course, spoilers from the first two episodes ahead!
The internet has been very ready for
Scream Queens to premiere. It is sure to be popular due to the popularity of series creator Ryan Murphy and many of the series stars' popularity. But is it any good? After watching the trailer I thought this could be good, so I decided I would check it out, and here are my thoughts.
S1E1 "Pilot"
The first episode started out in 1995, where during a party at a sorority, a girl who didn't even know that she was pregnant gave birth. Except for one girl, the other girls in the sorority only cared about making sure the new mother and her baby didn't go downstairs to the party. The other girl stayed with the mother and child, and later the mother was dead. This beginning seemed a little bit odd to me, with a lot of things not making much sense like the unknown pregnancy and the random death of the mother. But, then, we skip ahead to 2015.
The show has a huge cast, for now at least, so it took a while to introduce all of the characters. There are three characters that seem to be the most important to me. Obviously, one of them is Emma Roberts's character Chanel, the president of the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority. She sees herself as queen over everyone else she meets, though flashbacks reveal she was not always this way. The previous president of the sorority treated her cruely, and Chanel appeared to have a much lower self-esteem. The second character is Jamie Lee Curtis's Cathy, the dean of the university. She hates the sorority system, and it is revealed that despite what her life looks like on the outside, her life is a mess. Both of these characters are shown to be very complicated, unlike the other, the sweet freshman Grace, who wants to be in Kappa because her mother, who she never knew, was, and one of the few pictures she has of her mother is of her in the sorority and she looks very happy in the picture. Chanel sees Grace as the next president of the sorority, and wants to shape her to be like her, but Grace is not interested in being Chanel #6, she wants the sorority to be what it is really supposed to be about, sisterhood.
The first episode also does a great job leaving little hints along the way. Could Chanel have killed the previous Kappa president? Could Cathy have killed the previous dean? The show hints at these being possibilities, but obviously doesn't plan on answering either of those questions yet. The show is also not afraid to kill off characters, as evidenced by the murder of Chanel #2 (Ariana Grande). This show does a great job at being scary.
But, scary is not the only thing the show does well. I think that the best part of the show is how funny it is. It's like one big satire on culture of the 2010s. The obvious highlight of the first episode was when #2 and the Red Devil were texting each other, a scene as hilarious as they come. They are standing in front of each other, yet instead of talking, the text. Then, they dance, the Red Devil says he or she is going to kill #2 to which she responds, in a text, with "wait, what???". After momentarily escaping the Red Devil after she was stabbed in the shoulder, #2 types up a message on some sort of social media website, but before she can hit send, she is killed. Luckily, she is able to momentarily come back to life to hit send, which makes no sense but was totally worth it.
One thing that I couldn't help but notice was the show's similarities to the ABC sitcom
Suburgatory. It's like a scary version of that show; Grace is very similar to Tessa, and Chanel is like a psycho Dalia. Both shows have a similar sort of humor, the biggest difference is
Scream Queens is outrageous and scary, while
Suburgatory was more realistic and normal.
At the end of the first episode, my guess is that the Red Devil is either Chanel or Cathy. Both are very complicated characters, and it is hinted that they are each responsible for past murders. At this point, the only people we can cross off though are #2, because she was killed by the Red Devil, and the new pledges, minus Grace, as they were there as one of them, "Deaf Taylor Swift", was killed by the Red Devil on a lawnmower. The show could also pull a big twist and Grace could be the Red Devil, but the show would have to put a lot of work into convincing me of that one.
S1E2 "Hell Week"
The second episode started with an awesome narration from Cathy. The Chanels needed to get rid of #2's body. Neckbrace showed up and came up with ways to dispose of the body. The security guard then showed up and she was hilarious. She didn't have a gun or anything and it was a complicated process that she said how to get a hold of her. Grace went to the basement to get soap and she discovered a locked door behind a shelf. Suddenly, one of the Chanels showed up and told Grace that only Chanel has the key.
Cathy met with Grace's dad and tried to seduce him, and during that scene, she seemed very suspicious, as she really wanted Grace to stay living on campus and how she said she could guarantee that Grace would not be targeted. Grace went snooping in the basement again and Chanel told her the myth of the death from twenty years ago, the one that started out the first episode. In the flashback shown here, Cathy showed up, and she knew about the death. She is seeming very suspicious right now.
Chanel broke up with Chad, and then Chad's friend, who is apparently gay, wanted to get in bed with him. But, Chanel went back to Chad, and it looked to her like the two were having sex. Then he broke up with her, because, as he says, she can't handle that everyone, which apparently includes animals and probably plants, wants to have sex with him. After that, Grace's love interest went searching for things, and the red devil caught him, but instead of killing him, he just knocked him out. Then, Grace discovered the red devil suit in his closet. Is he being framed or is he working with someone else?
Nick Jonas's gay character told Chanel that he wants to join Kappa and Chanel supports the idea because it will help her with the gays in her future career. I enjoy Chanel logic, it's entertaining. Later, the red devil showed up in Chanel's room (or at least that's what she said) and all the Kappa girls went to the room to get the killer, but the security guard insisted that was crazy, something she was very right about. Then the red devil killed her guard friend. Since Cathy was seen outside right before the red devil showed up, I think that she is behind it. But that could also be what the show wants us to think, and it could be someone completely different.
I was then thinking about which people could potentially be the red devil. I was thinking that Nick Jonas's character could be it, but then guess what, he dies next. Other guys found him laying on a table with his throat slit and they screamed like the Kappa girls. But then the red devil went to the morgue and pulled him out, he wasn't really dead. He is obviously behind this in some way now, but who is working with him? This show is going to really keep us guessing until the end and I think that we are going to be shocked at the end of the season.
There are a lot of funny moments in
Scream Queens and it has proven in these two episodes to be both thrilling and crazy. I enjoyed the first episode more than I thought I would, it was good, and the second episode was really good. I am very excited for the rest of the season.
What did you think of the two-hour premiere of
Scream Queens? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
