Posts Tagged ‘american horror story’
Last night, tens of thousands of hearts were broken all across the American Horror Story viewing world as we found out Tate is The Rubber Man. You could almost hear the collective “NOOOOO!” from all the lovestruck teens and Tate-smitten women.
I personally never had a crush on Tate, but I can see why so many were taken with him – Evan Peters has oodles of charisma, but as far as the character, as soon as the dead breakfast club made it pretty clear in Halloween, pt. 2 that Tate had gone Columbine on his classmates and then especially in the next episode when we actually see it (mainly hear it) no way could I feel the same about Tate any more. For those whose hearts were broken last night, I ask – you can forgive the guy for shooting a bunch of innocent classmates, but he slips into a suit and has sex with Vivien and now it’s unforgiveable?
I mean, I get it, when girls dream of Prince Charming fairy tales and the perfect love, the prince is faithful to his princesses in every degree, but still seems a bit incongrous to me.
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You know the last time I’ve been this hooked on a show was the re-airing of Twin Peaks on Bravo? (We’re talking the pre-Internet era here!) What’s made it so much more fun to be hooked on a show this time around is the Internet and the ability to seek out a community of fans who are just as obsessed as you are.
So I’m checking out the reaction to Tate revealed as Rubber Man, and it’s interesting to see the different reactions.
People aren’t watching AHS anymore because Tate is Rubberman? Good. GTFO. You aren’t wanted in this fandom anyway. Because news flash, This isn’t the American Tate Show. There is more to it then just Tate. And if he was the only reason you watched it, I don’t want you clogging up my tags with your stupid fangirling anyway. This is the reason why I hate when Tumblr gets ahold of something and blows it up. Because you get fake ass fans that whine and bitch when something happens to the hot guy.
Source: ahs-obsessed on tumblr
I didn’t want to rip off the gifs, but it’s pretty funny if you click the link above and check the original.
Now here’s the interesting part, not only are fans split on either loving it or hating it, we see fans who are themselves torn in two with the exact same ahs-obsessed fan posting this hours later:
dear ryan murphy,
stop writing episodes for american horror story. you just fuck shit up. do you realize what the episode rubber man did? it fucked up everything…everything. i don’t even want to know what was going on in that brain of yours when you wrote that shit, so leave the writing to the others. thanks
- ahs fandom
p.s. stop leaking spoilers
Source: ahs-obsessed on tumblr
When I asked which of the two mindsets they were of, ahs-obsessed explained these two seemingly divergent thoughts thus:
My Mindset is that I hate people that are only watching the show for one reason- Because Tate is hot. It aggravates me to no end and they really need to GTFO, but the reason I did not enjoy this episode was because Ryan Murphy really messed it up in many many ways. I do not agree with what he did with Tate’s character. I think It was very lazy for Ryan to make Tate the Rubber Man. I feel like he thought “Hey, This kid is already messed up, let’s screw him up a little more.” Personally, I think Tate’s character already had a lot going on ,so why not give it to another character that is not getting any attention at all? Maybe even bring in more characters. That way more could have been done with Rubber Man.
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Source: whentheworldclosedin on tumbler
Next Wednesday, the identity of the Rubber Man will be revealed, but as a certified American Horror Story addict, I have pondered and watched and re-watched every episode, and I feel quite confident in saying, I know who the Rubber Man is.
This is the ultimate spoiler, right up there with “Who shot J.R.” and “Who killed Laura Palmer“, so I’m stacking the page with some images from the show . . . This is your last chance to bail out before I let you know who the Rubber Man is.
The Rubber Man is Satan, he is The Devil Himself.
The truth of this hit me last night, in a twitter conversation with the high priestess of AHS fandom, Kelsey Y. With over three million viewers each episode, certainly a ton of people are already thinking this (and a google search confirms it) but I can take pride in knowing I got to the conclusion all on my own (with a little help from my friend.)
First a few assumptions:
From all I can tell, every detail has meaning in this show, there are no red herrings, no attempts to confuse the viewer with false clues, so if it’s in the show, we can make use of it. (One of my favorite details so far – Tate making mention of the genius of Kurt Cobain. I love Nirvana, but it seemed a little strange that a teen of today would reference a band that peaked 20 years ago. Makes perfect sense a few episodes later when you find out he was killed in the aftermath of his rampage back in 1994.)
The idea that every detail matters is an important assumption.
Ghosts don’t impregnate. This is more of a gut feeling, but while I can imagine a ghost killing, it takes human life to make human life seems a pretty good assumption. It’s a hunch, the theory of Rubber Man as Satan in the living flesh doesn’t depend on it, but this narrowed things down for me and helped me arrive at my conclusion.
But first, let’s shoot down the two most popular theories:
Knowing that the Rubber Man’s identity was going to be revealed in the next episode, the topic of “Who is the Rubber Man?” blew up all across the Internet over the last week, but I made a conscious decision to avoid all the forums and discussions because I wanted to figure this out for myself. After it hit me and I felt confident I knew who Rubber Man was, I finally felt free to see what other people were saying and I found out that the two most popular suspects for Rubber Man are Tate and Constance, with a healthy dose of people saying it’s a character we’ve yet to meet (*cough* Satan *cough*) but let’s look at the two characters we can identify:
Why not Tate?
On Halloween, when Tate was messing with Violet and wearing the suit, his body looked totally different than the bigger and more buffed up Rubber Man we see in ever other scene. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have a beautiful sense of detail throughout this series, and this is no mistake.
Again, there’s also that gut feeling that a ghost can’t get a woman pregnant.
Constance?
She certainly loves that baby as if she were the baby’s momma, but is she the baby daddy? This is actually a popular theory, and for the craziest show on television, we can’t rule this out completely – could Constance be a shemale? A hermaphrodite?
Way too much of a stretch, even for this show. She’s given birth to three, let’s call them “special” children and then her golden boy, Tate. Hermaphrodites are sterile, and even if she were to have gone Chaz Bono after the births, she’s still shooting blanks.
Also, Jessica Lange’s no “a” cup, and Rubber Man has no boobs.
Here’s the kicker, though – call it cheating, but I didn’t find out this detail until after I came to the conclusion, but there’s an actor named Riley Schmidt playing Rubber Man. If Rubber Man was one of the existing characters, they’d just put that actor or actress in a suit for the Rubber Man scenes. There has to be a reason someone else is playing Rubber Man, you have to assume that Riley Schmidt will be showing his face next episdoe, so you can rule out ANY character that we’ve already seen on the show.
Why Satan?
All that talk of hooves – the nurse faints at the sight of the ultrasound, next episode, Vivian tracks her down, the lady mentions “hooves” and we find out she was so devistated by what she’s seen, she abandoned her career in nursing to join the church as a nun. I don’t think any details in this show are meaningless, but if that didn’t say enough, in the next episode on an ob/gyn visit, Vivian underscored it by asking about hooves again . . .
(Update: on a tip from Chris, who runs the biggest Tate Langdon group on Facebook, just watched episode 6, “Piggy Piggy” again, not only does the nun mention hooves, she says flat out the baby is the unclean one, the beast. I’d also forgotten the scene from that episode where Leah (former Bully, basement victim) asks Violet, “Do you believe in the devil?” . . . “No” . . . “I do. I’ve looked him in the eye.” and she goes on to talk about Revelations, a pregnant woman, the beast and the Red Dragon.)
Then there’s also the way Rubber Man tossed the gay man across the room before killing both him and his partner. That was far beyond human strength. Again, this show is all about the details, and this detail cannot be ignored.
It’s just three clues, but three clues too strong to ignore.
One of the most awesome things about this show is the way it pays homage to so many great horror movies of the past, it’s fun for the fans of horror, it’s also pretty cool to see Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk showing themselves as true fans of the genre.
(Side thought – What’s the difference between a rip off and a homage? A rip off is an inferior work that steals because the writers don’t have any original thoughts of their own. An homage is a wink and a nod to the readers and viewers, an homage is a tribute paid to a great work from a work that is also great itself.)
We’ve seen so many American Horror Story homages to great horror movies of the past – The Shining, Re-Animator, The Changeling (the original one), The Strangers . . . prepare yourself next week for the father of Rosemary’s Baby to be unveiled.
If intrade had a prediction market on it, I’d be sinking a nice chunk of change on it, but looks like we’ll just have to wait and see if I’m right. It’ll be fun to see and I welcome your ridicule if I was wrong.
When was the last time I was so completely sucked into a show that as soon as the episode ended, I was immediately wishing I could just fast forward through the week to make it to next week’s episode? It’s been a long time, I can tell you that and I can hardly wait for Wednesday night to roll around again.
American Horror Story is not for the faint of heart, but as a true devotee of horror films, I can tell you from the first two airings, despite being made for television, this is horror that’s as good as it gets. From the time period flashbacks which have started the first two shows, to the opening credits, to the wild visuals, the creepy crawlies and the outright shocks, it’s all top notch, but where most horror flicks fail, this show’s strongest suit is with the characters. Every character in this show is disturbed, but in an everyday, (almost) normal sort of way, and the actors and actresses are all spot on. They started out with a great cast of characters that pull you in and each time they introduce a new character, you get hooked in even more.
Something I’ve gotten a real kick out of is all the elements they’ve been pulling from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Shining. Surely the writers / producers have that movie near the top of their all-time favorites, too.
I made a little list of allusions to The Shining through the pilot and episode one, did you catch them all? Did I miss any?
- Starting off with a bit of a hunch here, but judging by the house’s previous history, it’s a pretty good bet that just like The Shining, this house is ultimately going to try to work through the husband & father and use him to kill the family.
- The guy with the half burnt face, Mr. Harvey, he’s the connection and communication link between the house and Ben Harmon, just like Grady was the Overlook Hotel’s connection to Jack Torrance in The Shining.
- Both Harvey and Grady killed their own families, then attempted to guide the new man of the house down the same path. (First part is fact, second is a pretty good hunch . . . )
- How about the vandalizing red-headed twins from the pilot? Another little nod to The Shining and those unforgettably creepy twin girls in the blue dresses.
- The old maid is viewed as a sexy hot vision in the lustful eyes of Ben Harmon, straight out of that that bathtub scene in room 237.
- Watching Adelaide roll the ball down in the basement, you just knew after they left, we’d get one more shot of it rolling back, just like red ball rolling down the hallway to Danny.
- Tate giving that Squeaky Fromme lookalike chick the axe to the gut, that was straight-up how Jack Torrance did Mr. Hallorann.
Now if it had been some half-assed production with weak writing and cardboard characters, I’d be all over them for stealing from a great movie like The Shining, but when they’re doing horror as high art the way they’re doing it, call each of these examples a nod or a tip of the cap to The Shining, and it only makes the show better in my opinion.
If you haven’t caught the pilot, it’s free for the viewing at the FX website. I’m sure episode 1 will be getting posted shortly as well.