Fall TV 2015 Follow Up – Scream Queens
Hand down my favorite new show of 2015. Quickly moving up the ranks as one of my favorite shows on TV. It is just so refreshing, well written, and hilarious. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since the network ordered 13 episodes before the pilot was even shot. The show was pitched as Heathers meets Friday the 13th and the idea for the show was to spin off Emma Roberts’s bitchy character from American Horror Story: Coven. What a strong start.
My initial thought on the show, before it aired, was skeptical. Twenty minutes into the first episode I changed my fool mind and fell in love with the show. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan have created something truly amazing. The show is funny, the horror aspect is real. The show walks the line of self mockery and good storytelling as perfectly as Cabin in the Woods did in 2012. It makes fun of the genre while being firmly embedded in it.
The story so far…
20 years prior to the main storyline of the show there is a mysterious death on the campus of Wallace University. The story picks up with Grace Gardner (Skyler Samuels) starting her first term at Wallace U. Grace decides to pledge Kappa Kappa Tau sorority since her mother (the girl murdered in the beginning – my theory but there’s no way I’m alone on that) was a member. The sorority is run by an iron fisted blonde monster, Chanel Oberlin. Her minions, all numbered versions of Chanel, are equally as disgusting. Dean Cathy Munsch (infamous Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis) detests the students, especially the sorority. She forces the sorority to take in what the KKTs consider undesirables.
A serial killer starts running amok on campus once again. The more people look into it the more bodies line up. The more poor decisions are made, the more characters are called out for making these typical horror movie inconceivably bad choices. It’s wonderful.
The talent in Scream Queens is staggering. A mostly female cast (the name makes that pretty evident) has the women running the show and the few male characters get to take the roles of doofy idiots. Emma Roberts, Lea Michele (both Ryan Murphy vets), Abigail Breslin, and Jamie Lee Curtis should be household names at this point. If they aren’t, watch more. Familiar faces but new to this type of acting are Nick Jonas and Ariana Grande who play hilarious supporting roles. In fact, there isn’t a weak link in any of the cast members regardless of the size of their role. Skyler Samuels’s Grace Gardner, who is something of the lead of the show has just as many stupid moments as anyone else and the story only follows her loosely. Lea Michele plays a creepy girl with dark desires suffering from scoliosis who will do anything to fit in.
I could do a full page write up on every cast member, but you should just watch the show instead. I do have to mention the real scene stealer, Niecy Nash’s Denise Hemphill. At first Denise seems like an idiot. She talks in the third person, repeats obvious statements, and is kind of a joke by trade, a security guard playing at being a cop. Nash’s performance is outstanding. She fully embraces the character and swings for the fences on the delivery of every single line. To make things even better, this strange woman is the only character in the show with any real sense.
The Red Devil costume may be the new Scream mask, it should be. The costume is silly in itself, but so is the twisted ghostface mask if it wasn’t so iconic by now. The Red Devil is definitely making mockery of the mask while paying homage to it at the same time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check the chainsaw under my bed that my grandma sent me for protection and get my white noise machine set to baboon attack before bed.
