In line with Ryan Murphy’s typical formula, Scream Queens kicks off with a pretty good start, though has room for improvement.
Ryan Murphy has a reputation.
He smartly creates a new show that is unlike anything else on TV — there weren’t nearly as many anthology shows until American Horror Story blazed onto the scene — and lets it thrive for a few years before throwing it to the flame for a new project. He ditched Nip/Tuck for Glee then Glee for American Horror Story and now AHS for Scream Queens and American Crime Story.
The man gets bored.
Though the fate of the shows is disheartening, it doesn’t mean the early seasons can’t be enjoyed. American Horror Story: Murder House and the first season of Glee are still excellent, even if they both faltered heavily after their respective third seasons.
Scream Queens is new for Murphy, so his passion and enthusiasm for the project are obvious. The dialogue is quick and sharp, à la how Glee was in its first season. The horror is there, but it isn’t as fundamentally terrifying as AHS. It is a solid show, and it’s quite impressive how its tone and voice are already set after the pilot. Most series take time to find their footing. That’s the one thing you can always depend on from Murphy — he knows where he’s going with a show.
Scream Queens opens in 1995 at a Kappa Kappa Tau house party where a pledge channeled her best I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant and unexpectedly has a baby in a bathtub upstairs. But she’s fine. She just needs “to get some Gatorade.” Instead of helping, her sorority “sisters” choose to jam to TLC’s “Waterfalls,” leaving the girl to bleed out in the bathroom and the baby to be a plot device for the main action of the series.
Jump to 2015, and Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts) is president of Kappa and the resident HBIC. In the style of Heathers, Chanel’s minions share her name, with only a number as a distinguisher. Shoutout to Billie Lourd for being the best Chanel with that deadpan monotone performance. And the earmuff homage to her real-life mother Carrie Fisher is amazing.
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Roberts does well to be the outlandish bitch Murphy wants her to be. It’s essentially a reiteration of Madison Montgomery of American Horror Story: Coven, only this time it isn’t as fresh or even as funny. She constantly says mean things but they don’t exactly fly well. She called the sorority house’s maid White Mammy, threw a tantrum in a coffee shop and said a deaf pledge had halitosis. It’s not being mean to be funny. It’s just being mean and unlikeable.
However, when she later tells the pledges, “You’re about to get hazed harder than a suburban banquet hall during bat mitzvah season,” I lost it. Truly, it was an unbelievably great line.
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While Chanel No. 2, 3 and 5 — No. 4 died of meningitis — might worship Chanel, the same cannot be said for Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis). She admits to hating sororities, and specifically Chanel, accusing her of having a hand in replacing the former president’s spray tan chemicals with hydrochloric acid. Yeah, that was a brutal scene to watch, and the first one to involve the Michael Myers or Ghostface — or Rubber Man of AHS, if you will — of the season: the Red Devil.
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Enter Grace (Skyler Samuels), the nice-but-boring protagonist of the series who just wants to connect with her dead mother and join Kappa because all she has to remember her mother by is her Kappa sorority pin. Really? That’s ALL she has to remember her by? She didn’t grow up in the 1900s. It was the ‘90s. There were cameras back then.
Lucky for her, Kappa must accept all pledges this year thanks to Dean Munsch and Gigi Caldwell’s (Nasim Pedrad) from the sorority’s national chapter agreement to help move Kappa into the modern age. Though, Gigi — herself and her fashion — is stuck in the ‘90s thanks to some sort of trauma.
Cue the montage of the oddballs pledging to Kappa. Lea Michele plays the nerdy, neck brace-wearing Hester. It’s amazing. Michele steals every scene she is in, but she surprisingly wasn’t in that many.
Grace’s roommate Zayday (Keke Palmer) also tags along and rushes. Zayday easily becomes a favorite, for she is not afraid to speak her mind in any moment. However, the way the show uses her is problematic. She is a prime example of the token black character trope. She’s a sassy black girl. She is one of the three women of color on the show. Chanel makes very racist jokes toward her. Palmer is hilarious in the role, but it seems very unfair to only be giving her this much.
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There’s also “deaf Taylor Swift” (Whitney Meyer), “predatory lez” and Jennifer (Breezy Eslin), a candle vlogger.
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Chanel goes to complain about the pledges to her boyfriend Chad Radwell (Glen Powell). Doesn’t that name just roll off the tongue? It certainly is said in full enough that it sticks in your mind pretty quickly. Chad is initially unlikeable because of his ego, but during the two-hour premiere, Powell makes this character his own and makes him hilarious and likeable. The over-the-top quality subsides to become a true satire of the pigheaded, fraternity “bro.” Plus, his deadpan delivery is delightful.
Where Chad is, so is Boone (Nick Jonas). Like Michele, Jonas stole every scene he is in, especially when he claimed that Michael Bay is the best director.
Next in the show’s introductions is Pete (Diego Boneta). Only two actors fail miserably in the show: Abigail Breslin as Chanel No. 5 and Boneta as the “investigative journalist.” Breslin attempts to be as menacing and powerful as Roberts but cannot even come close. She needs to play to her minion role and be less terrible. Boneta is unappealing and annoying, though the dislike might be because he’s playing a journalist stereotype. He needs to go. He ruined Rock of Ages for me and he’s doing the same for Scream Queens. Grace instantly becomes less interesting when she’s around him, and it seems like she’ll be around him a bit because they get paired together pretty quickly.
To make a point to the pledges, Chanel concocts a plan to pretend to burn the sorority’s maid Ms. Bean’s (Jan Hoag) face in the fryer — only someone turned the fryer on and she actually burns off her face and kills Ms. Bean. This death was rather brutal and not kind to the squeamish. It was a bit much to have Bean peel off a layer of her skin.
Her death scene brought the first of what will be many screaming girls montages. The camera zooms in on everyone’s face as they shriek. This is to remind you of the title of the show.
Instead of going to the police, Chanel cons everyone into keeping Bean’s death a secret, and they hide her body in the walk-in freezer. Only, she doesn’t stay there for long. Chanel tries to show Chad the body, but it disappeared. Oh! Ah! Intrigue! Actually, that’s what happens when nine people know about a crime and the evidence is in a pretty accessible place.
Chanel No. 2 (Ariana Grande), who had been criminally underused all episode long, is freaked out and wants to leave. But a text message from the Red Devil stops her. The villain enters her room. What ensued was actually one of the funniest moments of the two-hour premiere. Instead of immediately lashing out against her, the Red Devil texted Chanel No. 2, and she TEXTED HIM BACK. They awkwardly flirted before the Red Devil texts, “I’m going to kill you now.” Chanel No. 2’s response was instantly a classic and will probably be one of the most-GIFed moments of the night: “Wait whaaaatt??!!” He stabs her, but she is revived long enough to craft a tweet pleading for help. How millennial, am I right? It was an especially poignant moment that truly showed the purpose of the show and why it will be an intriguing season.
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Though her death seemed pretty final, Murphy tweeted Grande will be back.
As a part of “Hell Week,” the pledges endure the “sexy gopher whore head challenge,” which actually seems terrifying. They buried the pledges’ bodies and only left their heads above ground. It really doesn’t end well for Tiffany, who was too busy singing Taylor Swift to see that the Red Devil was riding toward her on a mower. You can guess what happened next.
Jamie Lee Curtis thrives in her role as Dean Munsch in the second part of the series premiere. Sure, in the first part, it’s revealed that she slept with Chad and yearns for her more liberal, activist days. But the second part is when she hits on Grace’s dad (Oliver Hudson), who is concerned about his daughter’s safety now that a killer is on the loose and is menacing as hell.
Curtis is by far the greatest addition to the cast — next to Niecy Nash, of course.
