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It’s been almost a year to the day since the 10th season of American Horror Story concluded, and now Season 11 begins with a two-episode premiere that is sure to draw a ton of controversy with its subject matter. Set in 1981, the new season is centered squarely in the world of gay men, in and out of the closet, in a story that seems to lean heavily on the controversial 1980 Al Pacino film Cruising (and maybe a bit of the 2004 gay slasher film Hellbent). The question is will the story alienate long-time fans of the show, or will it draw in new ones?
The new season, subtitled ‘NYC’, introduces a host of new characters whose stories are already intersecting. At the top of the list are Russel Tovey (doing a great American accent) as closeted police officer Patrick Read, and Joe Mantello (so fabulous in Ryan Murphy’s Netlifx series Hollywood) as Gino Barelli, the editor of a gay newspaper, The Downtown Native (based on the actual New York Native published between 1980 and 1997). The two are also a couple but with Patrick closeted, in the process of a divorce from his wife Barbara (Leslie Grossman), and Gino out and proud they tend to butt heads, especially now that it appears a serial killer is targeting gay men in the city. Gino wants Patrick to feed him information from the police so he can get the story out to the public, but Patrick can’t risk his career or being outed at work. Besides dealing with his relationship issues, Gino also has to deal with some radical lesbians, led by Fran (Sandra Bernhard), who feel the Native under-represents their community (Gino’s reasoning is that he’s a gay man so he writes about what he knows).
Also in the mix are Charlie Carver (who is serving as a producer and writer on the season) as Adam Carpenter, a young gay man who finds himself caught up in things when his roommate goes missing one night while cruising the park. Adam heard screams and saw a hulking figure in leather bondage gear who he assumes is the killer, but trying to get the police to take the killings seriously is a problem. When he sees a photo in a bar that resembles the man in the park, he tracks down the photographer Theo Graves (Isaac Powell), who takes specialized fetish photos for private collectors. Theo is also in a relationship, sort of, with Sam (Zachary Quinto), who also acts as his agent. Sam isn’t a good person, to put it mildly, and Theo finds himself attracted to Adam, but the twink is still just a little too innocent for his tastes.
On the fringes of the story, so far, is a young woman named Hannah (Billie Lourd), a scientist studying a new virus that is infecting and killing the deer on a nearby island. Her recommendation is that all of the deer must be exterminated before they spread the virus to each other, and possibly to humans. But she is also becoming concerned about several human patients who are being affected by a skin rash that won’t go away. Sam himself is infected with an extremely rare virus that Hannah has suddenly seen in four other patients, setting off some alarms that the gay community may need to be alerted to prevent further transmission. And then there is the great Patti Lupone, who so far has only appeared as a singer at the gay bath house so we don’t know what part she has in the greater story … but her rendition of ‘I’m Calling You’ is heart-shattering (even if it is an anachronism as the song first appeared in 1987’s Bagdad Cafe).
But there is a bigger problem and that is the bodies, the headless bodies, that keep washing up in the East River. Patrick is a lead investigator but he also has to deal with the homophobic comments of his colleagues without showing how upset that makes him. He just has to swallow his feelings and follow police procedure, and that only agitates Gino further because it makes it look like Patrick is adopting the same ‘it’s just some dead gay gays, so we don’t need to deal with it’ attitude of the police. But a surprise encounter with Barbara, who shows Gino a box of leather gear and colored handkerchiefs that Patrick had hidden at their home, make Gino suspect Patrick isn’t as innocent as he plays especially after he seemed to have no knowledge of the ‘handkerchief code’ that gay men used to signify what they were in to. But as the body count climbs, Patrick is able to feed Gino just enough information that sets him on a path to investigate the killings.
His first stop is a bar called The Brownstone where he meets a gentleman named Henry (Denis O’Hare). Henry has noticed a patron of the bar who always picks up guys drinking Mai Tais, but then he never sees them in the bar again. Gino doesn’t seem to notice he’s been given a Mai Tai while talking to Henry and when he leaves the bar he collapses on the street as people just walk by. When he wakes up, he’s restrained and can barely make out the man speaking to him, who is also jamming hot needles under Gino’s fingernails. The unidentified man is basically preparing Gino to be sacrificed but when he opens his victim’s shirt he sees a USMC tattoo — nope, veterans are off limits to him so he thanks Gino for his service, drugs him again, and Gino wakes up in a peep show booth at an adult book store. Collapsing again on the street, Gino is saved by two ‘angels’ (that’s what he sees but it’s two drag queens wearing huge white wings) and they go to the police station. Gino catches Patrick’s eye and Patrick takes off so he isn’t dragged into things. Which really doesn’t set well with Gino, who berates Patrick at home because he ran and the officer he talked to did nothing to help, not even take pictures of the wounds.
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Meanwhile, Adam is having no luck getting help with his missing friend, but he is directed to Theo who took the photos of the man matching what Adam saw. Theo won’t answer any questions unless Adam strips down and poses for him, but he really has no information on the model he only knows as ‘Big Daddy’. He later asks Sam, but he says he thinks the guy died a couple of years earlier. Theo does give this information to Adam at the bath house but it doesn’t quell his nerves. Adam also keeps having weird encounters with people who seem to be singling him out, whether it be on a subway or at a big event, with the words ‘something is coming, something evil, it’s coming for you’, which is more than a little disturbing. He doesn’t know that Theo is also an empath — he got his powers from his grandmother — and he also told Sam that he felt something bad was coming.
Over dinner, Patrick and Gino are discussing what happened to Gino and when Patrick says he will find someone at the station to help him, Gino says not to bother because the man who abducted him told him that he could tell the police about him but they won’t do anything because they don’t want to. Gino lays into Patrick about a madman knowing more about the police than he does, questioning why even with a perfect description of the guy no one has done anything. He knows the man must have been in the service, so there’s a clue. How about questioning the staff at The Brownstone. Anything? And when is Patrick going to tell people he’s gay? Gino decides that if the police aren’t going to do anything, he’s not going to wait around any longer. They know the guy is a sadist, so the number of bars he would feel comfortable in is limited. They know he likes The Brownstone, but where else could he be? He is familiar with the hankie code (and ‘bandana code’) because he stuffed a dark blue one into the mouth of one of his victims, and even though Patrick claims that’s not his scene, Gino says that for now they are. They head out to a local leather bar, and while they are trying to get information another patron at the end of the bar is given a Mai Tai, an unusual drink for this bar but he enjoys it. As the man who ordered it for him explains the origin of the drink, he suddenly stabs the man in the neck and takes off. On the floor next to the body, Gino sees the paper umbrella and thinks back to the one that came in the drink he had before he was abducted. But when the police came, and did nothing, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on except the umbrella. There was no sign of drugs in the drink.
Back at their apartment, neither man can sleep. Patrick blames the noise of the city, but Gino says when you’ve lived there all your life it’s the silence that you notice. And with silence comes secrets, and Patrick is the most quiet of them all. But the phone rings and Patrick is called to a crime scene. Except this time there is no body, just a collection of five different hands hanging from a wire.
On the fringes of the story, Sam has called a pay phone outside a leather bar and invited the young man who answered to come to his place for a private party … and the guy ended up locked in a cage, pleading with Sam to let him out because he’s not enjoying this. Sam reminds him that he did answer a pay phone outside of a leather bar so he knew exactly what he was getting into and he enjoyed every minute of it. Meanwhile Hannah gets a phone call from a woman who tells her she knows what’s happening to her patients and to the deer on Fire Island. She asks to meet by the equestrian statue in the park, and even though it is a bit late in the evening to be roaming around the park, Hannah agrees … and spots the hulking, masked leather man standing on the path. Terrified, she takes off and runs into Fran but the man has disappeared. Fran tells her she called about a group of vulnerable people in the city who are under attack. By whom, Hannah asks, and Fran replies, ‘The U.S. government.’
And that sets up Season 11 of American Horror Story. They gay scene of 1981, a mysterious disease, a serial killer … and who knows what else lies ahead. It’s certainly an interesting and tension-filled story thus far, but can Ryan Murphy and company stick the landing? A common complaint of the series are the often weak endings, so we’ll hold out hope that this one can nail it.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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