Gunnar Larson - Page 2

SCREAM QUEENS's forward momentum has come to a halt. After a couple weeks of forward momentum, the show slows down this week. The show is simply fanning the flame in this episode, underlining scenes we've already scene and relaying information that we already know. 

There are seven people on Earth. The rest of society died during an unknown plague. After spending months alone, they find each other and create a small community in Malibu. These people know isolation. They lived it, watching the world around them die. Even together, isolation pervades their lives. 

SCREAM QUEENS has always been a horror satire, playing off the genre's obvious tropes and pitfalls. Some episodes even have blatant references to classic horror films (the Shining, Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho the most obvious). Tonight, SCREAM QUEENS is at its sharpest, honing on three ghost stories that emphasize the show's strengths.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is, above all, a show about recovering after loss. Society as a whole is destroyed after a plague, and a few people have to come together and rebuild. This week, everybody takes baby steps in their own personal problems, as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH walks on the dramatic side. 

The ramifications of the past and their bearing on the present has always been the core of SCREAM QUEENS' logic. The show constantly concerns itself with what happened 20 years ago, flashbacks, the past, and the divide between adults and children. On a more micro level this week, karma bites everyone in the ass.

With THE LAST MAN ON EARTH returning to equilibrium with its last episode, tonight the show is finally able to make forward motion, propelling the plot in shocking ways while staying true to the show's larger themes. THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, still in its 19th episode, manages to pull the rug out from under the audience with impossible-to-guess twists in ways that deepen the show in its second season.

After SCREAM QUEENS narrowed its focus two weeks ago to one plot, the show maintains a tight focus this week. There are two plots here instead of then, though. Grace and Pete go and search out Heather, a former Kappa sister, and the Chanels use a Ouija board to contact Chanel #2. These two threads both follow the main theme of the episode, and the show itself: surrounding danger drives normally innocent people to do bad things.

Tonight on THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, the survivors found another alive animal: crickets. Along with the survivors and the cow, this is the first sign of other life. The whales were beached; we haven't seen anything else. Given the short lifespan of crickets, these are likely newborns—survivors after the plague. The crickets bring nutrients to the cul-de-sac, and they also bring hope for the future. 

This week the three episode Halloween arc of SCREAM QUEENS ends. The show spends little time messing around and gets to the core of this episode immediately. The sisters vote, and it's revealed that Zayday and Chanel tied for President, meaning they co-rule Kappa. The rest of the episode is a slumber party gone awry. SCREAM QUEENS boils down its plot to its core main characters, locks them in a house, and sees what happens. It's glorious.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is a show that works in equilibriums. It starts in one normal, throws everything into disarray, and then returns to the old normal or reaches a new normal. The fourth episode this season is the end of the first part of the season, returning our characters to the new normal. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (THE LEGO MOVIE) and Will Forte (SNL) knew they had to go from Tandy in the stockade to Tandy being part of the group again. Going from A to B (or in this case C to T) works to the show's detriment, resulting in a treading water episode.

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.