Ryan Murphy's “Grotesquerie” finale is reminiscent of “The Killing” and infuriates viewers [Spoilers]

In 2011, the idea of ​​a full-season series on a detective series was groundbreaking. The audience had gotten used to such procedures Lock or Bone. There were shows like Veronica Mars that played with serialized elements and mixed case-of-the-week formats with overarching stories, but the idea of ​​dedicating an entire season to a single crime story was almost unheard of (Twin Peaks is a notable exception).

AMC's The killing burst onto the scene during the AMCs mad Men And The walking dead Heyday, and it was exciting for that very reason. Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos played detectives in Seattle investigating the murder of local teenager Rosie Larsen. Frankly, it was exceptional television, and a huge, intelligent audience loved the investigation. AMC was enjoying massive success, and this was still weekly television – while we only watched Netflix discs mailed to us.

And then The killing did the unthinkable. Viewers became obsessed with the case, and we all watched the finale desperate to find out who the killer was. But The killing didn't reveal the murderer. It ended with a cliffhanger that insisted we go back for season two to find out.

The outrage was real. Many viewers discovered it The killing Years later and were able to release the series within a few days, but we had to wait a whole year – and we did only just adapted to the concept of a season-long crime thriller. Renewing it for a second season felt like a betrayal.

Rarely have I seen a show lose its reputation so quickly. When she returned, much of the audience was gone, and honestly I can't even remember who killed Rosie Larsen (though I do remember the show finding its creative footing again in its fourth and final season).

The lesson here: Don't mess with your audience like that. Even in 2024, when single-season crime dramas are commonplace, stretching a crime drama over two seasons is still a terrible idea.

And that's why I'm so relieved that I skipped Ryan Murphy's grotesque In the middle of the first season. The show attempted to emulate a David Fincher-style serial killer investigation. The first two episodes were promising and I was hopeful that Murphy would actually deliver a cohesive season without any breaks. This hope lasted until the third episode; until the fifth episode, which had become bizarre Twin Peaks Territory, I was outside. The show was a mess and not even Niecy Nash could save it.

If I had If I stuck with it, it would only have been about finding out the identity of the murderer. That would have been pointless. Nash speaks here deadline about the final (Spoilers, so to speak):

“I've had so many people call me and say, 'What's going on?' I don't understand what happened. Wait a minute. Is that real? Isn't that real? Wait, what happened?' So I've had a lot of people think about it and theorize what they think. There are some groups that are all dialed in and have large chat rooms dedicated to the show and their theories on the show. I feel like we definitely geared our ending towards a second season so that the audience would stay tuned.

“I guess the main thing I'm looking forward to is who is grotesque, because especially in therapy the doctor says grotesque is an amalgamation of all the evils that have happened in the world in (her) head, but then those crimes start in the head to happen in the truest sense of the word. So wait a minute. What does that mean then? There are still a few questions I'm waiting to answer, and if everything is perfect, we'd have a second season to unpack them. If not, that means I’ll be sitting at dinner with Ryan for hours telling me where he’s going with this story.”

So not only did Murphy fail to identify the killer in the first season, but whatever Is is known a confusing mess? I can't imagine that fewer Interested in picking it up again. I've even checked social media for reactions, and all the poor Swifties who tuned in just because the show features Travis Kelce are lost, frustrated, and upset at the thought of waiting a year and having to sit through another To have to torture relay.

Again, as I wrote about the Ryan Murphy paradox: never watch any of his serialized shows.