Something about seeing a bunch of tiny teenage chicks holding weapons makes me want to watch something. Is it because there’s something subversive and empowering about this image? Maybe so! Either way, I loved Spring Breakers. But would I love Scream Queens?
To find out, I became one of the network-boggling millennial viewers who only watch this show on Hulu, because I no longer have actual T.V. Apparently this show majors in “delayed” (i.e. digital) viewers over people watching it live, and this has put it at risk of cancellation already. But should it be cancelled? Let’s all vote with our remotes!
My first impression of Scream Queens was that it’s a lot of fun. It’s kind of like if Heathers had been rewritten nowadays by Diablo Cody and five people who work at Thought Catalog, which would annoy some people but delight others. The casting is fun, the action is fun and hey, even the font on the show is fun. No one is taking themselves too seriously here.
Emma Roberts is a fabulous actress, and now I will finally stop getting her mixed up with Emma Watson. Ariana Grande is there for awhile, but not for long enough. I hadn’t realized I wanted more Jamie Lee Curtis in my life after Freaky Friday and lots of Activia commercials, but I did. The cast is full of fun people, very diverse and full of LGBT characters too.
I have, for the most part, enjoyed Ryan Murphy shows. Glee I stuck with until Kurt got an internship at Vogue and Sarah Jessica Parker was the editor-in-chief, which was just too stupid for me. I watched the first season of American Horror Story and loved it, but felt really creeped out by the first episode of Asylum and exited the series. I even watched The New Normal, which was like a less-good version of Modern Family, which isn’t a show that people who care about comedy care about at all, but seems to get nominated for a lot of Emmys.
Ryan Murphy knows how to make a show fun, scary and somewhat addicting. The big sticking point with him is whether or not you can tolerate the “hipster racism” or whatever you want to call his habit of having characters say un-P.C. things a little too “glee”-fully. I think for the most part he uses this as a device that reveals that shallowness of the character. For example, we’re not supposed to agree with Chanel when she talks about not wanting “ethnics” in her sorority, but instead infer that she’s a bitch. This is a risky business though, because it shows when you’re having a little too much fun writing those lines, which he probably is.
I saw a tweet about how Scream Queens is anti-feminist, which made me look for blatantly anti-feminist moments. The biggest one I identified was Jamie Lee Curtis’ characters rant about modern feminists versus feminists in “her day,” but I chose to interpret that as parodying the scandal about the college professor who wrote this essay. Yes a lot of the characters are stereotypes, often negative ones, but it’s still novel to see so many ladies share the screen.
So is Scream Queens worth watching? Or should you hate it already? I would say, ask yourself how much you like Ryan Murphy first. If you love him and you also like watching tiny teenagers murder people, watch it live. If you kind of liked Glee, watch it on Hulu. If you hate all those things, watch True Detective or something.
I rate Scream Queens so far as 7 Ariana Grande ponytails out of 10.