ASBO X-Men

It would be harsh to describe Misfits as ASBO X-Men (because that sounds fucking awful) but that’s pretty much Misfits in a nutshell, though imagine X-Men had a much smaller budget, no much much smaller, keep going, imagine the budget for the catering for X-Men, half it, half it again and that’s probably the budget for Misfits.

I was late to the Misfits party after initially dismissing it as Marvel Hollyoaks but after actually watching it I was thankful that it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as that description. For all its flaws (and there are many) Misfits is a surprisingly funny show, and guess what Phone Shop? It’s not even a comedy and it has more jokes than you! Much of said comedy has come from the depraved and amoral Nathan, whose dirty mind would make The Inbetweeners’ Jay shudder with fright and disgust, so much so that he’s the best thing about Misfits.

Or he was the best thing about Misfits. Upon hearing of his departure from the show every fan must have muttered “it’s not going to be as good as it used to be”, myself included, and now the third series has ended, it isn’t. The correlation shouldn’t imply causation however, yes Nathan has left, yes it’s not as good but there are other reasons for this, and Nathan’s replacement Rudy isn’t one of them. The writers must have been aware what the character of Nathan brought to the show as Rudy pretty much embodies the same degeneracy and delivers the same kind of dialogue. Either that or they based him, a sex crazed northerner, on Vernon Kay. As the series has progressed Rudy - much like Nathan - has quickly become one of the best things about Misfits.

So Misfits is still amusing but this series has been somewhat lackadaisical, without a direction the show has started to go round in circles retreading the same territory as the last two series. Surely there are only so many probation workers they can kill before it goes from tongue in cheek to absolutely ridiculous? The premise of the show, some naughty kids have powers, seems to have gone to the wayside and is more of an afterthought.

The powers have always been fairly low key, nothing that would result in expensive special effects, but they have been massively downgraded in series three from relatively heroic abilities to more pointless and humorous ones. It might be funny to juxtapose the “chav” stereotype with the ability of a rocket scientist for a scene but there’s not much you can do with it afterwards. Curtis’ ability to change into a woman produced an entertaining Woof! style episode accurately answering the question “what would men do if they had a vagina?” but again there is only so much you can do with it.

This has been a common problem with Misfits with the protagonists’ low key abilities offering little in the way of character development. How long could they really go on for with Alisha’s ability to be susceptible to rape? The introduction of Seth - the man with the ability to change abilities - has to an extent allowed Misfits to remain fresh and full of ideas though the bell end with the dragon neck tattoo is as dull as February. He was initially very mysterious and powerful looking sat in his weird office like he owned a club in Eastenders but as soon as we saw him sat in the world’s shittest bar he just looked a bit pathetic, and boring.

Despite these niggles I’ve still enjoyed Misfits, with the exception of one episode in particular. Doctor Who had a go at killing Hitler this year (and quite frankly a shit attempt) so why couldn’t Misfits have a go as well? When an attempt to kill what looks like Ricky Gervais dressed as Hitler goes wrong, the Nazis are left with a mobile phone and the subsequent advances in technology lead to the modern day misfits living in a Nazi nightmare. An intriguing and ambitious concept is turned into a series of events that just don’t make sense. Respect the space time continuum! Why is that dude back from the dead but no one else is? Why are they still doing community service? Why does that Nazi officer keep switching between German and Irish accents? The whole thing left me confused.

This series may have given the impression that it was wandering aimlessly without a “BIG PLOT!” but just as the final episode looked to be finishing it broke away from its “fit more sex scenes in than an episode of True Blood” record attempt to tie up that whole time travel thing I forgot about. The show had been begging for a direction but it’s only when drama is introduced into Misfits that it feels a bit silly. Zombie cats and gender swaps strangely go together but throwing in any serious drama feels out of place, just as a cancer scare would in The Mighty Boosh. Seeing death after death with no consequences has desensitised the whole thing, we can’t have an emotional response to a death of a main character because like every other death, it’s just another grave to dig, and another murder to get away with (is there such thing as the police in this show?).

Maybe I expect too much - I have my cake and I’m bloody well going to eat it, all of it, I like cake - but Misfits has bent reality and it can’t…unbend it. How are we supposed to believe that these characters who have been caught by the cops for minor offences can evade the five-o for a string of murders that they have all been connected to? I can believe the powers thing, that’s fine but this? no no no, this is shit, and is the whole world contained in a community centre and a bar?

We’ve been given three good series of Misfits but its future is looking bleak. With another two cast members leaving and a rapidly dwindling stock of low budget super powers it surely won’t be long before Misfits’ plug is pulled. Let’s just hope series four doesn’t turn out to be Marvel Hollyoaks.

Camp Twisted Razzle Dazzle

What’s better than a good old fashioned American horror story? If you’re me, just about everything. Horror isn’t a genre I dabble in all too often, I don’t want to spend ninety odd minutes watching unpleasant things in a wilful attempt to be scared, it’s irrational. I live by myself, I’m scared enough as it is, it only takes the fridge to spontaneously come to life at 1am to get me going.

Despite this I still felt compelled to watch American Horror Story which seems to have garnered quite a reputation for itself judging by the internet and my twitter feed. Hey, I could like it, I didn’t think I’d like guacamole and I did. So with this newfound optimism I set out to watch the pilot episode of American Horror Story.

The first thing that became apparent about American Horror Story was that it was created by the folks who gave us Glee, which should have been enough to turn it off there and then, but persevered I did. It doesn’t take long to realise that you’re basically watching The Amityville Horror in a serial format, it’s a haunted house where weird stuff happens and some idiots move in because they’re idiots.

Idiots are a hallmark of the horror genre but this is a series, we’re going to have to live with these dickheads for a long time, at least make one of them likeable. I think they want us to like the daughter what with her “brash and quirky” dialogue but I can’t like any girl who wears a trilby. The husband cheated on his wife and instead of getting a divorce they move into a creepy looking house where she spends all of her time hating him. We know he’s a bad guy for cheating and that she’s even more of a dick for staying with him and stating that she doesn’t let her family drink out of plastic bottles.

It feels as if the idiocy of this protagonist family is quite tongue in cheek and they’re supposed to be dicks but it could also be that they’re just accidentally that way, it’s impossible to tell. As a drama American Horror Story is boring, the family are going through some incredibly mundane problems and are incredibly mundane themselves, so the show is reliant on the horror side of things to be interesting.

The house does indeed look very creepy which only further amplifies the family’s stupidity because who would move into that house, let alone let the defining factor be the knowledge that the last owners were murdered? But hey, that’s horror for you. There are many moments intent on frightening you throughout this pilot episode but it feels somewhat like a ghost train, plenty of frights but without any narrative or context, and by the end of the credits I was still not sure what the show was about.

Having been made by the creators of Glee there are inevitably a few parallels between the two shows. American Horror Story could be considered as the anti-Glee - for every sparkly smile and song in Glee there’s a weird and ghastly fright in American Horror Story - if it wasn’t so much like Glee. The biggest flaw of Glee is its insistence on cramming as many musical numbers as possible without any regard for context and the same can be said for American Horror Story’s “weird bits“. There’s no reason for finding a gimp suit in the house just as there’s no reason to break out into song every five minutes.

American Horror Story might be saturated with mystery and weirdness but it comes in such regular and expected beats that it’s rarely shocking or exciting. It’s greatly disjointed and incongruous while its characters are tedious and two dimensional. It’s unclear whether American Horror Story is supposed to be a parody on the horror genre or just camp twisted razzle dazzle. For a true American horror story you’re better off watching the Kardashians.