RECAP: ‘American Horror Story: 13’ Episodes 1-3
Just in time for Spooky Season, “American Horror Story” has returned to FX/Hulu after a multi-year hiatus. That was due in part to complications from the writer’s strike of 2023, as well as a need to shake up what was once a cutting-edge, culture-defining anthology series that had arguably grown stale or lost its way.
Honestly, I’m not sure I fully buy into that last argument. I have watched every season of “American Horror Story.” Most of them I watched as they were airing, though I held off on the most recent season, “Delicate,” and the second half of “Double Feature” — “Death Valley” — because they were widely panned by critics and audiences alike. In preparation for the new season, I went back and watched them. They certainly weren’t among the best the show has delivered, but I also think people were being overly harsh on both projects. There were elements I enjoyed in both of those seasons — and yes, some glaring weaknesses (especially in the last episode of “Delicate,” which was absurdly rushed). But I also think we are living in the Hater Age, and that people’s nostalgia for the first few seasons of this show blinds them to the fact that those had major faults as well. The quality of “American Horror Story” may have dipped over time, but I also think fans are overstating how bad it has gotten.
Regardless, Ryan Murphy and Co. have decided that to bring the show back to its former glory, it needs to get back to its core cast and most-popular concepts. So Season 13 — just subtitled “13” — features some of the most critical cast members from the most beloved seasons (Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates) along with some heavy hitters from more recent seasons (Leslie Grossman, Billie Lourd, Emma Roberts) and some new faces (Joey Pollari, Paul Anthony Kelly). As for the plot, three episodes in, I’m not still not entirely clear on what we’re doing here. Superstition is certainly at play, as is black magic and what appears to be Satan’s successor. But honestly the crux of the season so far seems to be lore, as the first three episodes were chock full of references to previous “AHS” seasons, bringing back characters and allusions from the earliest episodes of the show, for an ass-yet-unknown reason.
Read on for my take on the first bunch of episodes for “American Horror Story: 13,” and drop your own thoughts in the comments.
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Our protagonist for this season appears to be Ben DeSoto (“AHS” newcomer Joey Pollari), a rather milquetoast young man who works as a late-stage hospice caretaker. Three episodes in we don’t know a ton about Ben, aside from the fact that he suffers from triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13 — yes, this is allegedly a real thing, and boy, does this show beat you over the head with this in the first three episodes, in which Ben slowly and breathlessly counts numerous items and situations that total the number 13). Ben pushes through his fears by joining his deeply annoying girlfriend and her 12 friends on her big tropical birthday trip, with a flight that happened to take place on Friday the 13th, on a flight with the number 13, with Ben’s seat in row 13. And, of course, the plane crashes mid-flight, and Ben is one of only two survivors (I believe that’s what he said, that one other person in his row also survived, though we didn’t discover who that was).
The story picks up a month after Ben’s tragedy, as he takes on a new gig as a nighttime hospice caretaker role for an elderly man living on the — you guessed it — 13th floor of a luxurious but creepy Manhattan apartment building. The day caretaker is none other than Constance Langdon, the terrifying matriarch from Season 1 of “American Horror Story,” retroactively dubbed “Murder House.” The client is a withered old man referred to only as Mr. Nas, who Constance states suffers from lewy body dementia, a truly awful disease that leaves the patient essentially trapped in an unresponsive body.
Of course, that does not appear to be the full story of what’s going on with Mr. Nas. The apartment — which takes up the entire floor of the building — is decked out in various biblical and Satanic paraphernalia, including fireplaces that look like demon faces, portraits of the angel of death and of Baphomet, mummified remains used as objets d’art, and notably the reportedly authentic “Last Supper” painting by Da Vinci, capturing Jesus dining for the final time with his 12 apostles, with Judas Iscariot getting namechecked by Constance as being “grossly misunderstood.” As for Mr. Nas, in the dead of night he spews out thick black liquid, appears to have both small horns protruding from his skull and bony masses sitting atop his shoulder blades, literal hooves, and what appeared to be a tail. This show has never been known for subtlety, and it’s pretty clear that Mr. Nas is at least a demon, if not the actual devil. He also appears to be ending his time on earth, and time in the apartment appears to be moving in a very strange way (early on he is identified as 87, by the end of Episode 3 he’s apparently 90 — and only a few days have presumably gone by for Ben).
The show has played with concepts along these lines a few times already. The end result of “Murder House” was Constance orchestrating the birth of the anti-Christ by having the ghost of her dead son impregnate a mortal woman. That son came to power and ended the world in “Apocalypse,” before the witches from “Coven” rewound time and ended the anti-Christ’s rein before it ever began. In “Delicate,” a different coven of witches had been working for centuries to breed half-demon babies for centuries. Outside of the show, the first episodes at times brought to mind Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and possibly the story of the real-life occultist Aleister Crowley. So it’s not particularly new ground for the show, but I do think there’s still juice to squeeze there — especially since the Michael Langdon anti-Christ story was basically undone by the end of “Apocalypse.”
To be honest, not a ton happens in the first three episodes. I know some viewers are disappointed by the relatively short runtimes for the episodes, all between 30 and 45 minutes. I assume that’s to make it economically viable to bring back these surely very expensive actors, by paying them less money to film less content. I have no problem with it if it means for a tighter season, but I was already feeling the bloat in these first 100 or so minutes, and we’re nearly 25% through this 13-episode season. That’s worrisome. But here are some things we know for sure:
-Ben seems to be some kind of fated character, given both his miraculous survival from a plane crash, and Constance making more than one offhand remark that he doesn’t know who he truly is. I wonder if he’s one of the part-demon vessels that have been developed by the “Delicate” coven, or if he’s some kind of reincarnated figure. But it’s clear that Constance and Mr. Nas have an interest in Ben specifically, and him taking this gig is no coincidence.
-It’s not clear how/why Constance got from the Murder House in Los Angeles to New York City. I honestly can’t recall if she was still alive during “Apocalypse” — she may have been — but clearly she is working for Mr. Nas for a much more nefarious purpose that seems to relate to establishing some kind of new world order.
-At the time of Ben’s plane crash, Cordelia Goode from “Coven” experienced a vision at the magic academy, saying that she could foresee a harbinger of doom, and much death. It was also the first time we saw Mr. Nas vomit up his black gunk. So it seems like all of the crazy shit happening can be directly linked to that specific event.
-Speaking of crazy shit, that includes crypts of infamous people being defiled, including Italian Mussolini. It also seems to involve some kind of messing with the fabric of life and death, and potentially of time, as we see Twisty the Clown — the serial killer from the 1950s-set “Freak Show” season — alive and well in the present day, murdering a whole class at clown college. (Justice for Tig Notaro!)
-That merging of the dead with the living also led to a fascinating family reunion in Episode 3, taking place 13 days after Christmas and featuring Constance decorating a black Christmas tree with ornaments of the dead, alongside her very much deceased children, Adelaide and Tate. Joining them in decking out this Rauhnacht tree (I had never heard of this celebration, but apparently it is real) were Kai and Winter Anderson, the psychotic siblings from the underrated “Cult” season. All of those people are dead, and they acknowledge being called from the grave in uncertain circumstances. At first I thought the implication was that Kai and Winter were also Constance’s children, but ultimately I think they were just trying to show that the dead are now walking the earth again, and operating on behalf of some power they don’t necessarily know.
-Another dead returned to the living: Elizabeth Short, better known to the public as the Black Dahlia. Short was the first true-crime case included in “American Horror Story,” something that became a recurring theme throughout many of the seasons. She is summoned to the building but unclear by whom and for what purpose — but the other deceased in the situation seem to know precisely why she’s there. By the end of Episode 3, Elizabeth is being escorted to Club Hell — a space below the building — where Tate is prepared to sacrifice her. It sounds more complicated than that, as Constance begs Tate to be careful. But at the end of Episode 3, we see a group of hooded individuals swarm around the confused and docile Short, led by someone I initially thought was Cordelia Goode, but who I realized was actually Paulson playing the villainous Whilhemina Venable from “Apocalypse” instead.
Why are they sacrificing more ghosts? What does all this have to do with Ben? What has Mr. Nas promised Constance in “the new world”? Unclear. While I agree that the first three episodes were a slow burn, and things need to kick up quickly given that the runway is VERY short for this season, I still enjoyed coming back into this world, and especially enjoyed Jessica Lange once again delivering a masterclass in melodrama and pathos. She’s such a treasure and her coming back feels like a win regardless of anything else.
What do YOU think of “American Horror Story: 13”? Drop your comments below!
