Submitted by postscarce t3_101n5tv in television
I've started watching AHS from the beginning, and it feels like a sprawling mess with many "filler" characters, monsters, and subplots. Watching it, I'm reminded of Chekhov's gun. It seems AHS just doesn't care about narrative efficiency?
>Chekhov's gun is a narrative principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed.
In Season 1 >!they just kept piling on new ghosts. I think there were 25 or more by the end of it? With so many ghosts, most of them were barely developed.!<
In Season 2 >!the protagonists were faced with threats by at least 6 different "big bads": aliens, zombies, nazis, demons, the angel of death, and psychopaths / serial killers. Like Season 1, because there were so many characters, they all felt half-baked.!<
Does the writing get more cohesive and focused in later seasons, or is this just the "style" of AHS?