Review: Scream Queens

Holy Hell, that was the most bizarre show I think I've sat through (and tolerated) in years. Perhaps ever.

Imagine one of the vapid sorority girls from Buffy The Vampire Slayer ... the movie ... and imagine one of them narrating a serial killer movie. If you think it's going to be bizarre, yeah, that's about right. Including one victim who sent out a tweet as she's being murdered.

Statements I've made during this program included "Off the wall insane," "deranged."

Let's start with Jamie Leigh Curtis as Dean Munsch, who hates the local sorority, Kappa Kappa Tau. In her efforts to crush them, Munsch insists that Kappa let in everyone, without filters. The head of Kappa is named Chanel, and her minions are Chanel #2, #3, etc. And oh yes, Chanel is the narrator.

Our heroine -- I assume -- is Grace, whose mother, a Kappa sister, died giving birth to her. Grace discovers this hate-filled mean girls reunion, and plots to take them down after an incident kills their maid / cook (nicknamed "White Mammy").

Meanwhile, you have a man in a red devil costume murdering at least four people over the course of the first hour. And, yes, I stopped watching somewhere after an incident where a lawnmower decapitated "Deaf Taylor Swift" (yes, really). This doesn't include the acid bath for the first corpse. And ... well, murder #2 had the killer (in full costume) having a face-to-face text conversation with his victim -- the last text being "I'm going to kill you now." And of course, "White Mammy" had her face burned off after being thrust face first into a deep fryer.

Random line: "I Googled blood oath and this is what came up."

Sigh. Just ... part of the problem is that none of these people are really likable. Grace has some virtues, but not much of a personality. She's noble and virtuous and is going to make Kappa about sisterhood once again! (Even though it's clear from the opening prologue in the 90s that it wasn't).

The Kappa girls are strange varieties of "conservative" (backing Jeb Bush? Really?). Jamie Leigh Curtis' Dean is a former leftie who hates the Kappa girls and how "they bitch about being objectified while dressing like sluts!" ... while at the same time, she's sleeping with a male student.

Yeah, don't worry, politics aren't really a reason to stop watching. The (deliberately, and caricatured) vapid characters, an overdose of insanity, or gruesome murders, might not be your cup of tea. And oh, yes, we've got a narration peppered with enough slurs to be distracting (referring to new pledges as "gashes," sluts, the Dean as "Box-Munsch-er") unless you're really used to men's locker rooms (and I might be insulting the men's locker room.)

This might be someone of interest for people who have a high insanity threshold, or really enjoyed the satirical aspects of the Scream films. I'm keeping a wide berth of this one. And this one? I'll happily never watch again.