Ryan Murphy's Grotesquerie feels caught between camp and realism

It wouldn’t be fall without a few shows produced by Ryan Murphy, and he’s everywhere this months with the launches of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story, and now Grotesquerie, a standalone horror tale that’s garnered most of its attention for being the acting debut of Travis Kelce (who doesn’t appear in the show’s two-episode premiere). Somewhere between the camp of the American Horror Story franchise and the more grounded Murphy-verse projects like Monster exists this tonally confused drama, a series that was almost certainly pitched as “American Horror Story meets Seven.” It contains so much of the thematic and narrative DNA of the David Fincher hit, but that kind of dark procedural doesn’t exactly play to the strength of the Murphy brand, leading to a show that already feels like it’s spinning its wheels after just two episodes. 

Niecy Nash, who won an Emmy for her work on Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, returns to the Murphy tableau as Detective Lois Tryon, who’s going through a pretty rough chapter in this thing called life. When she’s not drinking or caring for her comatose husband Marshall (Courtney B. Vance), she’s investigating a horrifying new case. It starts with a call to an unimaginable scene where a family of five has been viciously murdered, tortured in a manner that would make most sociopaths recoil. Tryon later reveals that the patriarch was cooked, cut, and fed to his own family before their deaths. No wonder there was a cop puking on the flowers outside (which might be the most Murphy-esque image in the show, a blend of the beautiful and the gross). 

The premiere goes on to reveal a bit more about Lois’ personal life, including a daughter named Merritt (Raven Goodwin) who is trying to gain enough weight to get on a reality TV show. Mom drinks, daughter eats, and the stabilizing force in the family lies in a hospital bed. Every scene in the two-part premiere wherein Lois goes to visit Marshall feels disastrously atonal with the rest of the program, and these moments are the closest the series gets to camp. That’s where we meet the insane Nurse Redd (Lesley Manville), a character who seems to have wandered in from Murphy’s Ratched, a health-care provider who could politely be called abusive. In her first scene, she talks about wiping her patient’s ass, and she later appears to be “manipulating” him during a sponge bath. Despite the undeniable talent of Manville, these scenes are truly weird, likely setting up Redd as a future victim, but they’re awkwardly written and poorly paced, where the show seems most caught between camp and realism.

More effective is the introduction of a young nun named Sister Megan (series MVP Micaela Diamond), who becomes the religious advisor to Tryon when the case starts to reflect religious beliefs and concepts of sin. Megan is a true-crime junkie in a nun’s habit, someone who’s almost excited by the details of the case that Tryon unrealistically reveals. (In one bit, she calls Megan to basically give an exposition dump on the way to a potential arrest, which is just one of a few points wherein any attempt at realism here gets punctured.)

Sister Megan represents a form of modern religion wherein a religious figure can not just use a smartphone but drop the word “orgasmic” in a conversation with a priest. She notes that the family that was murdered believed in social justice, embodying a more progressive branch of the church that may have offended the killer. She doesn’t just fill in Tryon on the religious details of the crimes in these two episodes; she offers a balance to Tryon’s world-weariness, playing someone who seems nearly exhilarated by the crimes and their connection to a religious world at war with itself.

Of course, there’s another murder before the first episode is over: A few junkies are mutilated and pinned to the wall like crucifixes for the cops to discover. There is once again a mysterious fluid at the scene that’s revealed later to be sulphur dioxide, a.k.a. brimstone. How very John Doe.

The second episode opens with a flashback to happier days in the Tryon family…well, barely happier. Merritt is starting her gluttonous reality TV show campaign while Lois is already a full-time alcoholic. Into this den of everyday sin, the writers reveal that Marshall was having an affair just before he went into a coma. Weaving gluttony, addiction, pride (trying to get on reality TV), and infidelity through one of the few scenes of domesticity doesn’t feel accidental in that this show is about sin, atonement, and religious violence.

Just as it seems like Grotesquerie is about to build thematic steam, it starts that common issue of Murphy shows: wheel spinning to obvious conclusions. Tryon thinks that maybe the killer is connected to the university where the cannibalized dad worked, but what would then be the connection to the trap house? Procedurals take on a granular level of investigative detail that this show is just uninterested in developing. Even Sister Megan basically derides Detective Tryon’s half-assed investigation, noting that she needs to think about all of this in more biblical, expansive terms. “To understand this monster, you must reach the ecstatic,” she says.

More effective is the introduction of a new priest (suspect?) named Father Charlie (Nicholas Chavez), who is giving a sermon about hubris and faith, foregrounding some of the themes of the show again. Sister Megan is drawn into the handsome man’s worldview, maybe not taking enough notice of lines like “I want to remove the cancer from their souls.” Hey, No. 1 suspect! And our suspicion is supposed to intensify when we see what Father Charlie does in his free time, which includes flagellating himself after masturbating. Before then, Charlie and Megan reveal themselves to be true-crime junkies, complete with a nod to Ed Gein, a bit of early promotion for the next installment of Monster. Megan’s favorite serial killer is a clever deep cut, Sister Mariam Soulakiotis, a Greek nun who allegedly murdered hundreds at her abbey. Is this the writers’ way of telling us to take a closer look at Megan herself?

The cops get a hit on a suspect but arrive at his house to discover another vicious scene, this time with a survivor who quotes Psalms on her way out. “The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man” allows Megan to theorize that the killer believes in a hateful god. In the closing moments, Lois takes a puzzle box found at the scene to her daughter to solve—chain of evidence, lady!—and then we get one final gruesome tableau, this one containing the bodies of a dozen homeless people arranged to look like The Last Supper. It is certainly a striking image in a show that’s lacking in them, and it reveals the name of this series’ maniac: Grotesquerie. Is that you, Travis?!

Stray observations 

• • Even the credits feel a bit muddled on this tonally adrift show. Remember all those awesome AHS credit sequences? This one is just a red backdrop that quickly runs through cast and crew like a half-hearted obligation.
• • The first episode includes a lot of shots of eating, highlighting the sin of gluttony in a manner that feels like clever foreshadowing.
• • There’s a dim, dark color palette here that gives it more of a Monster than AHS feel. 
• • There are words on the wall under the victims in the trap house. It’s hard to make out most of them, but the flashlight passes over “dereliquisto,” which means “forsaken” in Latin, if you’re curious.
• • Sister Megan says that the killer playing Mozart’s Requiem the night of the family murders is important because it’s a song about death, including Mozart’s own. If you’re curious about that, this is an interesting read about the origins and meaning of the famous piece.
• • Lois claims she’s never seen Dateline. Don’t you think most cops have at least a few times? Just to compare techniques? 
• • These episodes were directed by Max Winkler, who has become a reliable part of the Murphy-verse, helming chapters of The Watcher, American Horror Story, Feud, and Monsters.
• • A show that’s dense in true-crime vernacular drops a reference to the Chicago Ripper Crew, a group not as well known as someone like Gein but one that’s absolutely terrifying. You can read more about their cannibalistic rituals here.
• • Father Charlie closes his sermon with a hymn that feels important called “There Is Power In Ihe Blood.” It’s about how Jesus sacrificed himself to save us. Is Father Charlie going to do the same or is he the one leading people to “a cleaning to Calvary’s tide”?