Gunnar Larson - Page 2

As a kid, carving pumpkins was an annual tradition. You go to pick one out, and look down a row of vegetables, all orange with little brown stems poking off the top, scouring the piles for the perfect pumpkin. You need one with a face that's flat enough to carve into, yet round enough to still resemble a pumpkin. And forget about blemishes! Those are always put on the back of the pumpkin. You take it home, and carve a face into it. A face that cannot be changed. SCREAM QUEENS takes us to a pumpkin patch this week, and the show hits its highest high doing what it does best: horror satire.

'When somebody dies, all that bad stuff melts away and you're left with the good stuff.' Gail says this line at Gordon's funeral, noting how in the wake of his death, she only remembers the good in him, forgetting his bad habits. This line is especially poignant given the post-apocalyptic genre THE LAST MAN ON EARTH resides in. With most of society dead to a plague, is all that's left good?

SCREAM QUEENS has always been a horror-comedy, but the first few episodes definitely eschewed the comedy in favor of campy horror. This week, however, the show embraces the comedy and brings forth some of the most biting satire on TV. In its fourth episode, SCREAM QUEENS begins its three week Halloween arc, while expanding the mystery, giving us more information, and staying consistent.

In the season 2 opener last week, I spent a lot of time discussing the renewed characterizations of Phil and Carol, and their new relationship. I'm glad I did that, because in this second episode, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH further explores these relationships, returning the show back to the equilibrium reached at the end of season 1.

“Aren't we all running from chainsaws in our past?” Wes asks his film analysis class early in the episode. SCREAM QUEENS in its third hour decides to preoccupy itself with the past. Who dated who last year? Who's the baby in the pilot? Who's Chanel #3's father? In doing so, the show manages to make wonderful forward progress in theme, plot, and character, maintaining a consistency with the two-hour premiere. 

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH returns to TV tonight feeling rejuvenated, and proving that what Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (THE LEGO MOVIE) and Will Forte (SNL) managed with season 1 was not a fluke. The show returns as confident as ever, proving in its first half-hour that season 2 will be bigger, funnier, and just like THE LAST MAN ON EARTH we fell in love with.

In the first two minutes of SCREAM QUEENS, it's obvious this is a somehow campier, meaner version of AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN with a brighter color palette. That SCREAM QUEENS will be compared to the AHS series is inevitable, sharing showrunners and genre. However, SCREAM QUEENS has a much stronger beginning than any of the seasons of AHS at all.

Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (GLEE, AMERICAN HORROR STORY), bring their newest anthology series to TV this year with FOX's SCREAM QUEENS. The show is a horror-comedy series, following a serial murderer on a college campus.