FX
Which is harder for a TV writing staff: Sustaining a single idea over the course of a serialized season, or coming up with enough ideas to fill a season’s worth of individual episodes? It’s a trick question: Each model offers its advantages and drawbacks, and the ups and downs specific to American Horror Stories’ one-by-one anthologizing are the unifying thread between its otherwise freestanding installments.
Bulk released Oct. 26 straight to Hulu just in time for the streamer’s Huluween, the generally strong four-part third season excels in setting up and developing premises too compact for multi-hour telling, but repeatedly suffers from anticlimactic fizzles that prove how difficult sticking a short-form landing can be. Like a wad of Hubba Bubba, the goodies in this grab bag of poison-laced treats start sweet, then lose their flavor all too quickly.
In “Bestie,” new girl at school Shelby (Emma Halleen) retreats from bullies, her well-meaning dad, and the persistent grief from her mother’s death by befriending the other lingerer (Jessica Barden) in the live chatbox on her favorite drag YouTuber’s channel. As codependence blossoms over video calls late into the night, the specific dynamic between online strangers—the fast-moving, liberating intimacy afforded by anonymity—takes on the same grimly coercive hue glimpsed in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.