Is American Horror Stories a *deliberately* bad TV show?

American Horror Stories spoilers follow.

However you might feel about American Horror Story these days, there's nothing else quite like it on TV. Except, there actually is now. Before season ten crawls out of the ocean and into our nightmares later this year, the powers that be have given us a spin-off series that tells new stand-alone stories set within the same universe.

By taking this approach, American Horror Stories had the potential to circumvent Ryan Murphy's very worst storytelling habits. As fans know all too well, killer seasons of the main show usually start out strong only to descend into madness by the end. Condensing each story in the spin-off to just one episode provided this franchise with a chance to avoid these pacing issues and deliver something far more consistent.

FX/Hulu

But of course, that didn't end up happening because American Horror Story is a messy bitch and that will always be true, whether we're talking about the spin-off or the main show. Yes, the four episodes that we've seen so far are certainly better at telling complete, coherent stories, even if they still go off the rails by the end, but overall, it's been a mixed bag regardless.

The first two episodes crossed over with Murder House for a more melodramatic take on season one, complete with ghostly plot holes, grisly deaths, and a whole lot of rubber. Unfortunately, nothing about this two-parter lived up to the legacy of Murder House, and instead, these episodes were simply a lesser retread of what's come before.

The next chapter delved more into the horror of American Horror Story with a cursed film that sent anyone watching into a murderous frenzy. But the same could also be said for anyone who couldn't bear this episode's cringeworthy teen dialogue. Still, episode three was definitely better than what came next.

'The Naughty List' casts Charles Melton, Nico Greetham, Dyllón Burnside and Kevin McHale as four influencers who are collectively referred to as the "Bro House". Up to this point the group have slain on social media, but after they film a man take his own life, things take a turn for the worse. And that's before Danny Trejo shows up as Santa and decides to murder each one of the four "homie-sexuals". Yes, that is a sentence we just wrote.

As is often the case with American Horror Story, there's no such thing as subtlety here. And depending on how you look at it, good writing and good acting seems to be a tad lacking as well. Rotten Tomatoes isn't the be-all and end-all of criticism by any means, but it's rather telling that the spin-off has been rated far lower than the main show by critics and users alike – 33% and 48% respectively at the time of writing. In comparison, American Horror Story's least popular season is Hotel, which comes in at 64% with critics.

Four episodes in, that's pretty damning, but – and hear us out here – what if American Horror Stories is supposed to be bad? Even the very best episodes of American Horror Story are chaos incarnate, veering wildly between genuine scares and camp hilarity. In fact, pretty much the entire Ryan Murphy catalogue is arguably an exercise in mainstreaming bad taste, aside from Pose and perhaps American Crime Story.

Hulu

That's no insult though. Yes, guilty pleasures should always be a vital part of our TV lineup, but more than that, shows like American Horror Story take great delight in the melodramatic joy that unfolds where horror meets camp.

In her seminal text, Notes on "Camp", a famous academic named Susan Sontag once discussed the appeal of truly awful cultural objects, explaining how fans of bad culture enjoy the extravagance of art that reaches a certain kind of "failed seriousness". Just like horror, camp pushes the boundaries of taste and acceptability, holding up a funhouse mirror to heteronormative ideals. And that's why the pair make such natural bedfellows in shows like American Horror Story.

Ryan Murphy's flagship show has toyed with this sensibility across all nine seasons released so far, although some do of course lean more heavily into that than others. Think the decadence of Hotel, or the kitsch appeal of 1984. But based on what we've seen so far, perhaps none of these seasons delve fully into the melodrama of camp horror quite like this spin-off.

When Scarlet argues with her ghost dads, or the Bro House lads lick ice cream off each other ("No homo"), we're not supposed to be impressed by the writing on an intellectual level. Through excess and exaggeration, American Horror Stories goes out of its way to mock societal ideals with a knowing wink and smile.

So is this deliberate? Are the actors in on the joke, or are they trying their best to elevate the material at hand? Supreme stars like Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson revel in the messy drama of it all, but we're not so sure if everyone in the spin-off is on that same page.

Either way though, it doesn't matter. If you can just let go and embrace the midnight movie madness on offer, there's plenty of fun to be had with the spin-off's shocking and often outrageous levels of bad taste. Because for better or worse, there really is nothing else quite like American Horror Story right now, and that's even more true of its twisted sibling.

American Horror Story airs on FX in the US and FOX in the UK. Catch up on series 1-8 on Netflix, with seasons 1-9 available to buy on Amazon Prime Video.