BWW Recap: A Sugary 'Hell Week' on SCREAM QUEENS Overwhelming

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.

The first two hours are a sugar rush. There are so many bright colors, hilarious one liners, wacky camera angles and zooms, and the show moves at such an incredibly fast pace that I often felt overwhelmed while watching it, particularly in "Pilot." The fact that eight characters die across the first two hours is testament to both the show's ruthlessness, its fast speed, and its large cast.

"Pilot" does a phenomenal job of establishing the tone, characters, and themes of the series. We start in 1995 when a sorority sister dies during a party after bleeding out while giving birth. We jump cut to 2015 where sorority Kappa Kappa Tau (KKT from here on out) president Chanel, played by Emma Roberts (AHS: COVEN) with a fierce, commanding callousness, finds out from Dean Munsch, played by Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN) with an equally commanding screen presence, that her sorority must admit anybody who wants to pledge it. We get a variety of oddball characters who pledge including Predatory Lez, Deaf Taylor Swift, and Neckbrace (real name: Hestor), played by Lea Michele (GLEE) who really comes into her own in "Hell Week." Also pledging KKT are Zayday, played by Keke Palmer (AKEELAH AND THE BEE), and Grace, played by Skyler Samuels (THE DUFF), who are really the genuine heart of the show.

"Pilot" also sets up the two major themes of the series: the awful nature of college Greek culture, and the power structures that operate in these closed systems. All of the sorority girls spit humorous, vitriolic, and often offensive one liners. Some viewers will be put off by the sheer nastiness of almost all of the characters. Chanel gets the vast majority of these lines, but her "minions" (Chanel #2, Chanel #3, and Chanel #5 respectively-Chanel #4 died from meningitis before the show's history), are equally as mean. This is all part of showrunners Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's plan. The major theme of the series is satirizing Greek culture on college campuses and showing how groupthink is bad. In the first two episodes, we are shown over and over again how the desensitized behavior, offensive insults, and overall bad behavior is a learned result of their environment. This is exemplified in the flashback scene to when Chanel was just joining KKT. In the flashback, she is a shy, mousy version of the Chanel we know up to this point, but the current KKT president is just as loud-mouthed and vile as current-Chanel. In an emotionally shocking scene at the end of "Pilot," we actually see the real heart of Chanel come out when she admits the reason for her behavior ("I have a boyfriend who cheats on me and parents who miss my birthday for a Jeb Bush fundraiser.") to newcomer Grace after realizing and admitting Grace is her equal. The scene is an impressive one for Roberts to act, switching from Chanel, to a real, emotionally resonant girl, and then back to Chanel.

"Hell Week" is where the theme of power structures really starts to take form. The episode begins with a Dean Munsch voiceover stating "There was a time when college deans had real power on campus." This is an overt statement of her lack of authority, and it gives her a motive for her actions in attacking KKT in "Pilot." I found three groups of people in three different areas of power in the first two episodes: the innocents, the Greeks, and the adults. At the center of the show and the power are the Greeks. They're the offensive ones, the desensitized ones, and the ones that are self-obsessed, image-obsessed, and money-obsessed. Next to them are the innocents, Grace and Zayday, who claim they want to change the sorority to be about sisterhood and real issues, and Pete, the investigative journalist/school mascot who helps Grace investigate the accidental murder of the KKT maid by Chanel. The last power group are the adults, Dean Munsch, Grace's dad Wes, and the not-a-cop security guard Denise, played by Niecy Nash (Reno 911!), who along with Lea Michele steals "Hell Week." This is where the show gets its narrative threads, switching between the Greek culture, the investigative plot, and the adults.

After KKT is forced to accept all pledges, the murder mystery plot is set to begin. The first time we see the villain, Red Devil, in the 2015 plot, is when Grace is walking up to KKT for pledge night and she sees them around the corner watching. In a plot to scare the newbies from joining KKT, Chanel plans to jokingly dunk the KKT maid's head into a cold vat of oil in front of them. Red Devil sneaks in, turns on the oil, and the maid is the first 2015 casualty. The rest of "Pilot" follows the sorority plot to cover it up, and Grace and Pete start to investigate.

"Hell Week" is more laid back than "Pilot." Where the first episode goes a mile a minute with several deaths, "Hell Week" tones it down and steps back, allowing all the pieces set forth in the first episode to fall into place. It's easily the superior episode. The main plot follows innocents Grace and Pete investigating the history of the KKT murders as they begin to find out if what happened 20 years ago is connected to what's happening now (it is-but the audience does not know in what capacity). While snooping in Dean Munsch's office, Pete is hit across the head by Red Devil, then made an example of in front of a campus building with a "Mind Your Own Business" tag. Grace then finds the costume in his closet (he's the school mascot; it's the mascot's costume) and assumes he must be involved-but the audience knows he isn't from the previous scene.

In traditional Ryan Murphy fashion, he brings in guest stars to lure in viewers. Ariana Grande (VICTORIOUS), is there in "Pilot," and then murdered in the show's most hilarious scene (she dies while tweeting). Second is Nick Jonas, who plays Boone, Chanel's boyfriend Chad's roommate and fraternity brother. Boone ends up murdered (after a scene where Jonas works out shirtless--classic Murphy gaybaiting). In the episode two cliffhanger, Red Devil goes to the morgue and removes Boone's corpse. Boone wakes up, saying, "What took you so long?" This is the first we see of any direct connection between a character and Red Devil, and it has me excited.

All of this makes for a very olverwhelming first two hours of SCREAM QUEENS, to say the least. "Pilot" is jam packed with information, characters, lines, and plot, but "Hell Week" brings the show to a focus and expands on characters at the periphery of "Pilot." Based on Murphy and Falchuk's history, SCREAM QUEENS has by far the most promising start. The first two hours are insanely confident, the tone is kept perfectly on the line between horror and comedy, and the show is ruthless in its commitment to plot and genre and theme of Greek life satire.

Who's the Killer?

Each week I'll do a segment analyzing who I think the killer is based on given information. From the first two hours, I'm going to say Grace's dad Wes, based on the fact that he is absent for most of the pilot and all his lines about "protecting his daughter" read incredibly fake to me.

Scream Quotes

"It's a white party where everyone is encourage to wear-slash-be white."

"I got my first boner watching Faces of Death."

"You don't get STD's from blood oaths. You get them from dirty toilet seats or drinking water in Mexico."

"If we touch her, she won't haunt our dreams. And if her eyes are open she'll take one of us with her."

---

What did you think of the Scream Queens premiere? Loved it? Hated it? Can't wait for more? Let me know in the comments below, or on Twitter @gunnar_larson. Also, don't forget to follow @BWWTVWorld on Twitter and Like us on Facebook for all of the latest TV news, reviews, and recaps.

Photo Credit:

1) Chanel #1, Chanel #2, Chanel #3, and Chanel #5: Michael Goi | FOX
2) Chanel #5, Deaf Taylor Swift, Grace, Zayday: Michael Goi | FOX
3) Red Devil, Chanel: Michael Goi | FOX
4) Grace, Hester, Zayday: Michael Goi | FOX