Kim Kardashian’s American Horror Story season is the best in years

With a heavy burden, I am forced to inform you that: American Horror StoryThe world is a better place.

Last season’s AHS NYCIt surprised me that I thought this show would be able to continue for a second season. But five episodes in — and part 1 wrapped up — it’s safe to say that American Horror Story Delicate is continuing the show’s turnaround.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Delicate part 1.]

Eric Liebowitz/FX

It was evident from the first episode that DelicateThe season is more subdued this year, with less gore and serial killers. But just because it isn’t visually graphic doesn’t mean it’s not unsettling. DelicateIt is slow-burning, building tension and anxiety.

This season follows Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts), an actress whose career is finally taking off just as she’s trying to get pregnant. As she prepares for the awards season she begins to notice figures who are following her, and she experiences increasingly strange pregnancy symptoms. She begins to notice that the more frightening the stalkers are and the symptoms, the less people believe her.

The seasons are different. AHS past, Delicate’s horror is psychological. Anna’s anxieties spiral, growing worse and worse as no one listens to her concerns, till it all spills out of her in erratic behavior. Anna, in the fourth episode for example, eats the maggoty flesh of an decaying raccoon she had formerly swaddled and lovingly tucked inside an old cradle. What percentage of it is her imagination? It’s hard to tell how much of it is her imagination.

Image: FX

By the mid-season finale, she’s at a crossroads. Unlike seasons past, it’s not an ensemble show, but every side character and their connection with Anna is its own unique type of unnerving. Her husband (Matt Czuchry) clearly doesn’t believe her, and she’s constantly suspicious that he’s still in love with his dead first wife. Debra Monk (her mother-inlaw) is openly hostile to her. Her doctor (Denis O’Hare) constantly undermines and trivializes her pain.

Siobhan Kardashian, Anna’s manager and friend, is her most treasured and delightful relationship. When Siobhan was first introduced she was passive-aggressive and ambitious, but still pretty benign, with Anna’s best interests at heart. Siobhan initially felt like Kardashian portraying a surface-level, image-conscious version of her own self: social media savvy and image-conscious. But that was a misdirect, because it’s now clear that Siobhan is more ruthless than Anna even knows — and that Kardashian is actually pretty masterful at subtly turning that shallow pettiness into escalating manipulation. Siobhan seems like a bigger part of Anna’s miseries than we’ve been made to believe, even if I don’t know exactly How to get started yet.

It’s half way through. Delicate is perturbing, tense, and dare I say it… good? This show still has much to build up, and is keeping its cards close to the chest. But there have been enough skilled plays — disturbing scenes, unsettling characters, and bizarre connective tissue bringing them all together — that it’s shaping up to something promising. I was really hoping I’d tap out of this one, but dammit, AHSOnce again, it has me in its grip. I’ll be holding my breath till part 2 — which unfortunately for me, doesn’t drop till 2024.