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Don't be silly and read this if you haven't watched the finale yet. But if you do, don't be mad about the spoilers.
In spite of its shallowness, American Horror Story is and always will be an unavoidably entertaining, beautiful tornado of a show. Cordelia got a blowout and became the new supreme of the Salem witches; Fiona went to her knotty-pined hell in District 12; and Myrtle got the fiery, diva-stating death she deserved. So much beautiful hair, so much Stevie Nicks, so much masticated scenery, and so many umbrellas .... and, unfortunately, so little logic. Wednesday night's season finale highlighted the show's best qualities, its worst flaws, and made us question if something this fun really needs a brain behind it.
The question that's haunted Ryan Murphy's past two seasons of his dark, melodramatic anthology, and Coven especially, is how much we are supposed to care or how much of this is all supposed to matter. The first season taught us about love (we think), and the second season played with horror of being a powerless woman. But if you measure the weight of this particular season by the amount of care and logic that the show's creator has poured into it, then you're left with not very much.
Murphy created the science and rules of Coven's world. And the show stuck with those rules for about three episodes. Characters died, went blind, shot themselves in the face, went to hell, and were burned at the stake, only to come back in two more episodes with a careless explanation: new witch powers. By the time Queenie resurrected, there was barely a flinch when she said she manifested one of the "Seven Wonders", supposedly the greatest feats a witch can perform.