**SPOILER ALERT**
Flashback to the ’90s to a party held by the sorority Kappa Kappa Tau. Everyone is dancing and drinking, when suddenly a girl runs down from the stairs, her hands covered in blood. She rushes to tell her sisters something has happened, and they go upstairs to find out that one of the girls has given birth in the bathtub. Yet they leave her when their favorite song starts to play, and the girl dies from blood loss. Now it is 2015, and a killer is rampant on campus. His or her motives are unclear, but one thing is for sure: this murderer has a vendetta against Kappa Kappa Tau and blood will be shed.
Chanel Oberlin (played by Emma Roberts) is your typical “mean girl.” She is rich, pretty, and popular. Her boyfriend only dates her because she is popular, and all her “friends” are her henchmen, calling themselves “Chanel #2,” “Chanel #3,” and “Chanel #5.” (#4 had meningitis and went home and died). She refers to the janitor as “white Mammy,” and her parents forgot her birthday to host a fundraiser for Jeb Bush. She bribes people to do her bidding with yacht trips to Cancun or threatens them by saying, “I would not get personal with me. I don’t fight fair.”
She seems to meet all the cinema cliches of an unlikable rich little snob, but she is more than that. Motives for her to be the killer are plenty as the previous head of Kappa Kappa Tau had her skin burned off after discovering that someone had put acid in her spray tan kit, and no one would have benefited more from her demise than Oberlin herself.
Kappa Kappa Tau has its head turned on its back when it is ordered to take in any new recruit. Along with this chaos, there is a serial killer on campus with his or her eyes set on ridding anyone involved with the sorority, Kappa Kappa Tau, and fraternity, Dickie Dollar Scholars.
The first two episodes jump straight into the action as “white Mammy” meets an unpleasant demise involving a fry cooker, and one of the pledges, “deaf Taylor Swift,” is decapitated via lawn mower. “Chanel #2” (played by Ariana Grande) has a texting battle with the killer donning the school mascot costume, the “Red Devil.” They text and then dance, and then the murderer stabs “Chanel #2” in the neck. She falls over but wakes up to crawl to the laptop and tweet that the killer is killing her. The “Red Devil” stabs her before she can send her tweet, and it seems that “Chanel #2” has died. But she wakes up one last time to send the tweet, then falls back down. The perfect death for the millennial.
The mystery thickens as Boone (played by Nick Jonas), a gay member of Dickie Dollar Scholars, is working out when the “Red Devil” appears before him. Boone says, “Am I supposed to be scared?” Then the scene then cuts to Boone’s corpse displayed on the fraternity’s dining table with candles surrounding him and his throat slit. Later on, the “Red Devil” appears in a morgue, where he pulls Boone’s body out, and Boone sits up and asks, “What took you so long?”
In this classic tale of whodunit, no one is safe from suspicion or being the next victim. This series is riddled with jokes and slight jabs at today’s popular society, as Oberlin’s favorite drink is the “Pumpkin Spice Latte, no foam.” Jamie Lee Curtis, dubbed the Scream Queen for her famous roles in horror films, acts as the dean of the school, a woman with an agenda against Kappa Kappa Tau and a secret relationship with a student at the school. Carrie Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, plays “Chanel #3” and she pays homage to her mother’s “Star Wars” character, Princess Leia, by wearing earmuffs that are allusions to Leia’s signature buns.
The production pays key attention to detail as each character’s costume is perfect for their personality. Oberlin’s pretty fur coats turn heads, and the Dickie Dollar Scholars are dressed to the nines with preppy pastel boy shorts, and bright button down tops. The show is not only easy on the eyes with beautiful shots of an alluring campus, but also horrific with graphic portrayals of death, as skin peels off of faces, or violent stabbings reminiscent of classic slasher films.
Creator of “American Horror Story” and “Glee,” Ryan Murphy, enters new waters with this TV show, and it is sure to entertain. With a stellar cast that is not only skilled at conveying their characters but also acting just the right amount of suspicious, audience members will be guessing who the “Red Devil” is. Murphy keeps true to his “Glee” origins as he introduces an exciting music score, but brings the macabre from “American Horror Story.”
5 / 5 low-fat margaritas
Catch this show on Fox on Tuesdays at 9/8c.
