Image Credit: Sergei Bachlakov/ABC
ABC’s Once Upon a Time series premiere debuted to the best numbers for a new network drama this season, and this week, with an episode that revealed the backstory for why the Evil Queen cast her curse, the show was also No. 1 with EW.com readers. The alphabet network is having a great week all around, with three of its shows in readers’ top five. Check out the complete rankings below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: NBC
Since the start of the fall TV season, only two shows have been tops with EW.com readers: The Vampire Diaries and Breaking Bad. To that storied list we can now add NBC’s wily and weird Thursday night cult comedy Community, which tickled and (perhaps) terrified viewers with a Halloween anthology episode. Meanwhile, Once Upon a Time‘s series premiere landed just out of the top five. Check out the complete rankings below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: FX
Rubber Man! The flukeman! The Man from Another Place! Television has a longstanding history of giving viewers the heebie-jeebies, whether it’s via a bald, nearly-silent observer who can seemingly read your mind, or a posse of desperate humans covered in guts so they can safely pass through a pack of zombies.
But what TV show has been the absolute best at slithering underneath our skin and haunting our slumber for days after it airs? Is it the newest addition to the horror show coterie, FX’s American Horror Story? Is is a short-lived-but-no-less-sinister mid-’90s show like American Gothic (with Gary Cole) or Millennium (with Lance Henriksen)? Is it the show that helped inspire The X-Files, the 1974 cult favorite Kolchak: The Night Stalker? Or is it a death match between the grandpappy of hair-raising television, The Twilight Zone, and its upstart cousin The Outer Limits? Vote in our poll below and then defend your choice in the comments! UPDATE: The poll is now closed, but let us know what you think of the results in the comments! READ FULL STORY »
Do you like scary movies? Then you’ll love FX’s new series American Horror Story, the craziest new TV series of the fall season — and perhaps ever. Created by Glee’s Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, AHS is a feverish, sexed-up reimagining of one of the most reliable tropes of the genre, the haunted house. And in this week’s issue, EW goes behind the scenes of the fabulously freaky frightfest. The Harmon family — father Ben (The Practice‘s Dylan McDermott), mother Vivien (Friday Night Lights‘ Connie Britton), and daughter Violet (newcomer Taissa Farmiga) — move from Boston to Los Angeles for a fresh start, but end up moving into a house that makes the Insidious abode look like a trip to Disneyland. Despite a warning that the previous owners have died in the house, the family still moves in and that’s when all hell literally breaks loose. Pretty soon, Vivien is having sex with someone/something in a rubber fetish suit, Ben is sleepwalking naked around the house, and Violet is encountering a basement-dwelling creature nicknamed the “infantata.” And that’s just in the first 50 minutes. “I read the script and I was like, ‘Um…whaat? I don’t understand,’” says Britton. “I kind of took a leap of faith.” READ FULL STORY »
Ray Mickshaw/FX
Tonight, American Horror Story co-creator Ryan Murphy answered EW’s questions and also a few queries from EW readers in a Twitter interview on EW’s Twitter feed, @EW. Will the Harmons ever get out of that house? What’s the deal with Constance? Will there be a season two of AHS? Find out the answers to these and more in the full transcript of our interview below. Warning: SPOILERS FOLLOW! You can also tune in to watch tonight’s episode, titled “Murder House,” at 10 p.m. ET on FX, and open up a second screen at EW’s ViEWer to chat about what unfolds, live or even if you catch up with it later on DVR! READ FULL STORY »
It’s probably scary how much you enjoyed tonight’s Scream Awards on Spike TV. So, if you didn’t get enough, we have more thrills to pair with your chills: EW was backstage at the event, speaking to some of your favorite movie and TV stars. Click the jump to watch True Blood‘s Joe Manganiello discuss his upcoming Two and a Half Men stint, TNA wrestler “Abyss” tell us which celebrity he wants to fight in a steel cage match, American Horror Story‘s Dylan McDermott talk about what’s in that basement (just kidding, he won’t say), and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol producer J.J. Abrams tease “far and away the best Mission: Impossible movie yet.” That’s news so good, we could scream: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Ray Mickshaw/FX
A few weeks into the new TV season, we’ve already seen a few new shows fall victim to low ratings and overall stink. (Sorry, Free Agents.) But on the glass half-full side, we’re also slowly learning which shows have a strong pulse, and subsequently — if you’re one of those who waits to get invested — which ones we should be jumping on board.
Admittedly, that’s still a crap load of shows to sift through. Personally, three have floated to the top of my must-watch list (at least, this is the standing until Once Upon a Time premieres in two weeks): American Horror Story, 2 Broke Girls, and Hart of Dixie. My most controversial pick is easily Dixie — and not because Rachel Bilson’s microscopic shorts are basically illegal in Alabama. But it’s not a critically adored new show and hasn’t garnered huge ratings. (It has, however, gotten a full season pick up. WOO!) Whatever. I like it. And that’s the attitude we all have to adopt when talking about our new faves. Hold the torch even when it seems like there’s no one else who likes it. Spoiler: There’s always someone else.
That’s my official pep talk. Now, ‘fess up. What are your three favorite shows of the season, readers? READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Robert Zuckerman/FX
When I first watched the pilot for American Horror Story one week ago, I found myself possessed by an unsettling demon: Indecision. Did I love it? Did I hate it? The birth of bloody brilliance… or the crowning of something rank? Part of my agitation had to do with the frantic, feverish sensory experience crafted by Ryan Murphy, who co-created the show with his Glee collaborator Brad Falchuk. The pilot left me wrung out by its battery of shock images and strung out from its jittery editing schemes. The show’s not scary – it’s punishing. Which, actually, might be the point, the more I think about it. And I have thought a lot about American Horror Story over the past seven days. (I will be recapping the show, after all.) I’ve also watched the pilot three more times, and each time, I’ve enjoyed it more, and seen more in it. The matter is now settled in my mind: American Horror Story is my favorite new show of the fall season.
You may disagree. It’s certain that many of you will. READ FULL STORY »
Robert Zuckerman/FX
One of the freakiest moments of FX’s American Horror Story, premiering this Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 10 p.m., is its debut’s opening sequence, which depicts one of the multiple murders that have occurred in the show’s house over the years (Dylan McDermott’s and Connie Britton’s characters move into the house in the present day).
Set in 1978, the opener finds two twin boys entering the house and proceeding to basically destroy everything in sight with their baseball bats. Then, they pay a visit to the basement and that’s where all hell breaks loose. I don’t want to spoil the rest. Watch the terror below… READ FULL STORY »
The website for the chilling new series American Horror Story is called YoureGoingToDieInThere.com. Sure, it doesn’t have quite the same easygoing panache as, say Facebook.com, and it sounds like it could also possibly be a thinly veiled threat from Tamar Braxton, but it’s still a pretty cool site.
Upon entering the site, visitors are informed they can “go behind closed doors to discover the secrets of the American Horror Story house” where you’ll find “artifacts of murder, lust, perversion, and betrayal.” (So, sorta just like your Sims house!) After a stop at the mailbox (you can sign up to have trinkets sent to you via email or snail mail to unlock parts of the website), you’ll be greeted by ghost children, Jessica Lange, and a man on fire who crawls up into the fireplace. Hey, you can’t say they didn’t warn you. This website is called YoureGoingToDieInThere.com, after all. READ FULL STORY »
