Season 4 of the hit TV series, American Horror Story, was a success! It aired October 8, 2014, in perfect timing for Halloween, breaking the show’s record of viewership with 6.127 million people tuning to see the first episode of the series. This was a 10% increase from last season, American Horror Story: Coven, which received a 5.5 million viewers on air date. The returning characters from previous seasons are: Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Jessica Lange, Denis O’Hare, Frances Conroy, Jamie Brewer, Lily Rabe, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Grossman, Kathy Bates, Angela Basset, Gabourey Sidibe, Danny Huston, and Grace Gummer.

The season takes place Jupiter, Florida, 1952. It follows a set of the last remaining “freaks”, as labeled by the town, who struggle for both a normal life and survival. Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) who runs the show, has a set of freaks named by herself, which include: The Bearded Lady- Ethel Darling (Kathy Bates), her son Lobster Boy- Jimmy Darling (Evan Peters), strongman Dell Toledo (Michael Chiklis), his three-breasted wife Desiree Dupree (Angela Basset), and conjoined twins Bette and Dot Tattler (Sarah Paulson).

The season starts off with a milk man discovering Bette and Dot badly injured along with their mother, dead. The episode continues to show Elsa finding the girls at the hospital and threatening to turn them in for their crime, murdering their mother, if they did not go back with her to the carnival of freaks and become a leading act. The girls agree to tag along with Ms. Elsa. They begin to meet the rest of the freaks, not expecting them to become their new “family.”

During this time, there is a string of mysterious murders and disappearances. The culprit is unknown by the townspeople, but the audience is shown that Twisty the killer clown is behind the murders and disappearances. He keeps a young boy and girl locked away in a cage within a small trailer in the middle of the woods. During this time, a pretentious, rich kid Dandy Mott tries to buy the twin girls, saying how beautiful they are, when that doesn’t happen he offers to buy the show but is turned down by Elsa.

“Sobbed my heart on the last episode of American Horror Story” said Paige Roberts (taken from her twitter page @paigerobert24)

This season was rated one of the most freakiest and satisfying yet.

“Season finale of American Horror Story Freak show was just awesome #roundofapplause #misselsamars Jessica Lange is just simply brilliant” said Ashley Ronald Serrao (taken from her twitter page @popcorn_boi).

This season is completely strange and has had a lot of misunderstanding or just straight up backstabbing liars.

“It was extremely weird, like I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was strange, but it’s really interesting and good,” says Natalya A, a local American Horror Story fan.

It consist of people doing the wrong thing to protect one another, or not to protect another. Although those are the things that make the entire series exciting and having people scream at the TV from their living room couches.

“Lies and deceits. But it was super addicting, I couldn’t stop watching it. I got excited for each new episode, and that’s what we need out of every single season” said Jami Moon, a local American Horror Story fan.

While others may have loved the weirdness and strangeness of season 4, others may have split emotions for it.

“I wouldn’t say it was my favorite of the seasons because of all of the different plot lines, but I did like how all those plot lines came and tied together and how it connected with season 2. I feel like American Horror Story is going somewhere after season 4,” said Carolina, a local American Horror Story fan.

FSA Connection

1. The author seems to offer what main idea?
2. Select the best two sentences from the article that best support the main idea.
3. What is the purpose of this article?
4. From the index clues given, you can assume the word pretentious means what?
5. Select the best two sentences from the article that summarizes the text.