Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween Special: 2 scary series for the price of basic cable

Holidays seem to bring out the best in TV and Halloween is no exception. Each season a handful of series get dressed up and show off their spooky sprits, the most popular being The Simpsons -Treehouse of Horror (xxii) episode. For those of you who would like to be scared more then once a year the following series are perfect for you.

The Walking Dead-Sun. 9 AMC
Zombies, zombies and more zombies! I wasn’t a fan of these walking decaying corpses but then curiosity and good reviews, got the better of me so I had to watch the premiere last year and was immediately sucked in. Just four episodes into its second season and they have aped up the anti. A herd of walkers, a missing kid and a zombie autopsy (The grosses TV autopsy I have ever seen). With all that has happened so far it’s not just dramatic and scary but very tense and with a high gross out factor. The autopsy was bad but in its first season The Walking Dead had a scene in which Rick, the “leader” of the central story’s group of characters, had to walk amongst the “walkers”. To do this he had to smell like them so he can travel undetected. The way they did this was by chopping up a truly dead “walker” then covers themselves with the rioting, smelly insides. It was bloody and gross but worked. It aired a year ago but the image is still burned in my mind. What I like most about the series is how I have come to care about these people, including this one man who helped Rick in the first few episodes and hasn’t been seen since. Each member of the small group have there own reasons for being there and have lost someone they loved to the zombies but for the most part those that are left are still fighting, looking out for each other and just tying to stay alive.

Warning before you dress as a Zombie be aware of the consequences. Recently in Hollywood another movie was being filmed when there was a major accident and multiply actors playing fake zombies were injured and while at the hospital it was difficult for the doctors to determine real wounds for the make-up ones. There was also a recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy were this happened, I’m just saying be careful out there.

Another amazing series to start watching now if you haven’t already is

American Horror Story-Wed. 10 FX
This new series brought to us by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (yes the men who brought us Glee and Nip/Tick) have done it again with another fascinating story. If you haven’t heard of it then you don’t look at entertainment magazines and wouldn’t be reading this anyway. Months before the series premiered it was the talk of TV junkies and now that I have seen the first few episodes I can finally add my two cents. Finding the right words to describe this crazy and weird new series isn’t easy but it is worth giving it a try.
I should start at the beginning. The House. The house is a character all its own, I would even call it the most important and main character. Each episode (so far) starts with a scene from the past. Each scene has a character from a different period of time in the houses history, including the 1920s, 1960s and 2010. I’m not giving anything away if I say these characters usually have an untimely horrific ending. This brings me to the present and the human characters. We start with a family. To make a long and confusing story short and simple after the husband, Ben (the wonderful Dylan McDermott) cheats on his wife, Vivien (Friday Night Lights’ Connie Britton) they move with their teenage daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga) across the country for a fresh start. Then I’m afraid to say things get weird….we are quickly introduced to other intriguing and complicated characters. There is Constance the eccentric southern neighbor (the always fabulous Jessica Lange), Larry a ex-resident of the house and burn victim/ex-convict, the maid who came with the house played creepily by two women Frances Conroy and Alexandra Breckenridge and a handful of actors that add to a already questionable mixture of well written characters. If I go into anymore detail I will be giving things away. All in all in the end I have to say this is the creepiest and strangest yet exceedingly satisfying series on TV right now.       

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