Hotel: This is the season that took me the longest to get through by far. I had a really hard time connecting with most of the characters, and found the plot to be totally all over the place. Jessica Lange's absence was really felt in this season, and John Lowe didn't get interesting for me as a protagonist until the last few episodes. Lady Gaga and Angela Bassett were great, and so was Denis O'Hare. Hotel had like 100 plotlines and I felt like it was both hard to follow and not super engaging.

Double Feature: I totally get that this season was dealt a really bad hand by the pandemic. Its downfall is that neither half of it feels finished. I honestly would have been fine with a whole season of Red Tide or Death Valley, but having half of each leaves both feeling undercooked. Red Tide does horror better than a lot of seasons do, but its episodes tend to focus on the wrong characters and ideas. Finn Wittrock saves the season though. Death Valley could have been decent if given more breathing room. We hardly spend any time with the characters in the modern day, and the flashbacks feel like exposition for exposition's sake. Not connecting these aliens to those in Asylum was a mistake too. Both halves of Double Feature have a lot of missed potential, but at least they were enjoyable to binge through.

Murder House: I'm gonna get people mad at me with this one for sure. From this point on the list, I think they're all strong seasons. But Murder House is really tonally jarring for me. All of the actors are playing up the melodrama to such a high level here that I can't take them seriously. It's not as campy as later seasons, but the growing pains of Ryan Murphy as a writer are on full display. I just don't like most of the characters either. Ben is hard to root for because he's such an ass, Tate and Violet are pretty insufferable, and Hayden gets old quick. I think Connie Britton is really excellent, but apart from her, this season doesn't do too much for me aside from some good scares here and there.

Cult: This season tried something really different, and I have to give credit where credit's due. Like NYC, Cult goes for the "real" horror, just letting the audience watch how awful human beings can be to one another. Cult is politically charged but effective. I don't feel like it beats you over the head with the MAGA stuff, but draws enough parallels between Kai's cult and Trump's real life supporters to be chilling. Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson are really great in this season too, definitely some of their best performances. Billie Lourd is great, and just seeing everyone become slowly unhinged is quite scary. Having a lesbian couple front and center is important representation for me too, even if their relationship is insane.

Apocalypse: A beautiful mess. This season is almost purely fanservice. After seven seasons though, I think that's deserved. Seeing all of the witches come back is pretty amazing, and I guess the return to Murder House is fine, although that episode didn't do too much for me outside of Jessica Lange coming back. Cody Fern makes a great villain as Michael Langdon, and I buy that it takes all of the witches to stop him. The first few episodes of the season are honestly still really intriguing even before the witches show up. I think the season just has an interesting view of what would happen in an Apocalypse. Having Stevie Nicks back for a cameo is a joy, and I feel like this is a proper last hurrah with the full original cast.

NYC: So I just finished this one, and I'm conflicted. On the one hand, it's very very out of the ballpark of what American Horror Story typically is, but on the other hand most of it is excellent. So it lands in the middle for me. I'm a queer woman who wasn't around in the 1980s, but really enjoys learning about gay and lesbian history from that period, so getting a full season about the gay community in NYC is pretty awesome. Despite being newcomers, Russell Tovey and Joe Mantello are absolutely amazing. Gino and Patrick tracking down these killers makes for great TV. Mr Whitely is absolutely terrifying too, and seeing him get his comeuppance is well worth the wait. The looming dread of the audience but not the characters knowing that AIDS is coming is really well done. NYC just really loses me in the two part finale. Part one is too heavy and too real for me. This is what my queer elders endured and it is really painful to watch Patrick die like that. Part two just feels tacked on to me. I think the allegorical nature of Big Daddy only sort of works, and I don't think blurring the lines so much between reality and hallucination/allegory works in the season's favor.

Coven: This season just gets to be fun! Every once in a while that's needed, especially because the previous two seasons had been comparably dark. Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates make exceptional debuts as Marie Laveau and Delphine LaLaurie, and Jessica Lange is great as Fiona. The stakes feel a lot smaller, and really it's just a bunch of witches being catty with each other. All of them have such strong personalities though that it makes for a great watch. Neither Kyle, the Axeman, nor Spaulding really worked for me though. Coven is best when it focuses on the women. I love Misty Day to pieces and her death broke my heart.

Freak Show: Speaking of breaking hearts!! This season definitely has the best and deepest emotional journey in my opinion. I fell in love with my family of freaks, which made the last episodes absolutely gut wrenching. Dandy is a character that is almost too scary. Obviously I watch this show to get scared, but like episode 9 of NYC, Dandy is just too much at times. But he is an effective villain, and it makes the freaks even easier to root for. Having Evan Peters as a full on protagonist is one of this season's best strengths. Evan does a great job at playing crazy characters too, but he really anchors the cast as the hero. Neil Patrick Harris coming in at the end hurts the season overall, but when you have characters like Bette and Dot, Jimmy, Desiree, Ethel, Pepper, Eve, Penny, Suzi, and Ma Petite with you on screen it's perfect. The Pepper backstory episode is absolutely heartbreaking, Twisty makes a terrifying misunderstood villain, and I dig the modern music that gets used. And I love Elsa Mars so much. Definitely my favorite Jessica Lange performance after Sister Jude. She's kind of awful sure, but Elsa still has a lot of heart, and she clearly cares for the freaks. The whole season feels like Elsa and Jessica Lange's swansong, and it's perfect.

Roanoke: I feel like this is going to make people mad too but I loved Roanoke! One of the most bingeable seasons for sure and it's so creative and meta too. Adina Porter is a real star, and so is Kathy Bates. This felt like proper AHS again after Hotel was so rocky. It's really scary, it does the slashing and the gore but also the suspense and mystery very well. The found footage works for me, and the ending with Lana Winters is great. There are some seasons that I love that I connect with really deeply like Freak Show, and there are some that are just really entertaining AHS that hits all the right buttons.

1984: That latter description is true of 1984 for me too. It's just fun! I absolutely adore the 80s setting and soundtrack, and the costumes are perfect. I love Montana so much! I want to be her and kiss her at the same time lol. Emma Roberts is so great, and so are John Carroll Lynch, Angelica Ross, Zach Villa, Leslie Grossman, and even Matthew Morrison! I feel like 1984 has a really tight and satisfying narrative, and takes some of the most successful themes and tropes of past AHS seasons to make the perfect one. It's another really bingeable one and just gets everything right.

Asylum: Cliched answer, but it's that way for a reason. This season is soooo heavy though, I don't know if I'll be able to revisit it. Everybody in this cast gives an emmy winning performance, and there's really not a single weak link. This season is fucking terrifying, not just for the subject matter, but also for seeing the rawness of the emotions drawn out of every actor. Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Lily Rabe, Zachary Quinto, Joseph Fiennes, and James Cromwell just give out of this world performances. The desperation I had while watching to see if Lana and then Jude would make it out of Briarcliff was palpable. Then that last episode is just disgusting. Seeing the conditions in Briarcliff when Lana goes back for her expose is terrifying. The aliens, the angel of death, Anne Frank, santa claus, all these crazy things work really well too. The body horror and the psychological horror is peak AHS here, and so are the performances. Undoubtedly the best.