I am very new to this horror series, horror in general really.  I binged the entirety of this show in one month (averaging two seasons a week, I may need help), and now that I am completely caught up on the show, I need more of it, and I need to talk about it.  Right now.  My feelings about just about all of these seasons are fresh and raw, and I am still reeling over some of the deaths.  What I really love about American Horror Story is how every season has its fans and haters (some more than others), but that there is no real, true consensus on the quality of each season.  It’s anthological approach greatly helps this, and I adore it for it.  This is not an objective view of each of the seasons and ranking it thus, it is just how I feel about each of the seasons both during and after I watched them.  Now onto the countdown, and full spoiler warning.

8. Cult

The second most recent season of American Horror Story was an interesting case.  I don’t dislike it for trying to take on the many issues that the 2016 election brought up, or even being too political for my taste, I’m just not the biggest fan of the result that came out of it.  I enjoyed Cult watching through it the first time, but the more I look back at it, the less I was genuinely engaged.  A cult is an interesting and potentially amazing topic to tackle, especially with the background of the election, but it didn’t really feel very cult-like to me, especially at first.  It didn’t feel very cult-like to me until the second half of the season, which made the cult itself feel a bit rushed and underdeveloped.  This was also probably the least gory of any season of AHS, which I don’t think would be a problem, but it was also the least scary of all the seasons to me, both in themes and actual horror.  I barely cared for any of the characters, and Sarah Paulson’s character had such an extreme case of going from a meek, petrified, damaged, interesting character to  amazing, cunning Lana Winters too quickly that it gave me whiplash.  I can barely remember most of the characters names, but that’s an ongoing thing in AHS that just happens sometimes.  I really didn’t care for Kai Anderson as the villain.  He never felt particularly threatening to me, though I’m not sure why.  He just didn’t do it for me.  It’s probably the blue, disgusting hair; I was staring at it whenever it was on screen.  The entire storyline with Valerie Solanas is pretty much entirely pointless, adding nothing to the narrative or theme, and was overly long like the first two episodes of Hotel.  There are good things in Cult, though, especially in the middle of the season, and if you’re looking to have no idea what’s going on, the first few episodes.  The clown masks are very effective and a great idea for how Kai instills fear.  Billie Lourd is great as Winter, and I love her, and will support her in anything she does, but even she can’t save everything.  This season was just too nonsensical for me, but I would by no means consider it bad.

7. Hotel

Hotel is a very mixed bag, is pretty much neck in neck with Cult, and Jesus Christ it’s LONG.  The first two episodes are over an hour long each.  It’s sort of the opposite of how I feel about Cult.  I enjoyed Cult much more while watching it, but looking back it was mostly uninteresting.  I absolutely despised watching Hotel at times, but looking back, it was much more interesting to me, and introduced many more elements that I actually liked.  I think the lowest lows of Hotel are far worse than Cult, which is much more consistent, but the highest highs of Hotel are better than just about anything in Cult.  Hotel had the Devil’s Night, Liz Taylor, Iris, James March, and Lady Gaga as its saving graces.  Cult has the clowns and Winter for me.  Hotel also had vampires, which is not a good thing.  At least to me, vampires are so drowned in non-American folklore that they don’t feel like an American Horror Story to me.  I know that not everything in AHS is pure American, but vampires just don’t do it for me in this series.  The only time I was interested in them was when the vampire kids were introduced, as I was intrigued by the premise of a possible vampire epidemic, but they had maybe two episodes which they were barely even in.  I also absolutely detested the Ten Commandments storyline, at least after like the third episode.  It started off relatively interesting, but as soon as John got his first invitation to Devil’s Night, I knew that he was the killer.  That coupled with he fact that pretty much no one else could be the killer makes it a pretty easy guess.  The episode where it was “revealed” was torture to me.  It was an extended flashback episode, which I don’t particularly care for, and the execution of the twist was just so poorly handled in my opinion.  The only reason I enjoyed Lady Gaga’s character in this season was simply how fabulous she was.  Her actual character was incredibly bland to me, but good god those outfits were impeccable.  Hotel also has incredible cinematography, some of the best in the whole series, and all of The Shining references, which I am totally okay with.  The production design is probably AHS’s best, which is saying quite a lot.  James March, Hazel, Liz Taylor, and Iris are also all fantastic to watch, particularly James March and Hazel with their pitch perfect early 20th century accents  At least Hotel also ended on a high note with Liz Taylor essentially telling all of the ghosts “You can’t just kill all the guests” during a genuinely funny floor meeting, before bringing back Billie Dean Howard only to get terrorized at Devil’s Night, another genius addition.  There are diamonds in every rough.

6. Coven

I really, really, really, really hate having to put Coven down this low on the list.  I really do, because I absolutely adore Coven, but there are just a few things that keep it from being any higher.  The Axeman is one of those things.  I love the Axeman of New Orleans and his historical story, and I was so excited to see him come into this show, but he just felt so squandered in this season.  He was mostly there just to act as a love interest to Fiona, and to kill those witch hunters, who were also extremely wasted.  There just felt like there were too many villains in this season to me.  The witch hunters could have been interesting, especially with their relationship to Cordelia, but they get taken out so quickly it almost seems like a joke.  Fiona is a fantastic villain, as is Marie Laveau, played by my queen Angela Bassett, and their dynamic is full of so much disdain yet admiration it feels like high school all over again. Kathy Bates is also an absolute treat.  Somehow she managed to make me sympathetic to her absolutely unsympathetic character, while still remaining one of the best parts of the show, although her racism getting fixed by watching Roots raises more than a few eyebrows.  The young witches are also a joy to watch.  Queenie is a gem unto this earth and should never change.  Her wit is incredible and irresistible.  Madison Montgomery is a gloriously devilish terrible popular person, and her wit is almost as great as Queenie’s (so great it pretty much convinced Ryan Murphy to have her play the same character again in Scream Queens).  Nan is just pure and amazing, and I will always support Jamie Brewer.  There’s so much to love about this season, which is why it pains me so much to place it this low.  This season easily had the most potential for a continuation, what with its rich and expandable world building, and some of the best characters AHS has ever offered.  Not you though, Kyle, you sucked.

5. Roanoke

Roanoke makes it this high for pretty much one reason: it was legitimately terrifying.  This is easily the scariest season for me, and I had to cover my eyes for a great deal of this season, seeing as I’m a huge wuss.  The mystery of the first half of the season is what truly scared me, and the realness of the second half just continued it.  I know a lot of people hated the documentary and found footage format, and most of that comes down to personal taste, but I loved it.  It was a great change of pace, especially coming after the overly long Hotel, and I thought it worked well.  The found footage aspect of the second half made everything feel so much more real to me.  This season is also Kathy Bates at her very best.  I just love her so much, especially when she’s violent and gets far too into character, like I tend to do with my obsessions, though I usually don’t get quite as violent as she did.  There are subpar elements of this season too, though, don’t get me wrong.  The finale for this season kind of sucked even for AHS standards, the pig boys served no purpose whatsoever, and the suspension of disbelief for the second half really makes you go a bit too far with it, but there is so much to adore about Roanoke that I look past most of these (not you though, finale).  The scares are consistent, the cinematography, particularly in the second half, is raw and unnerving, and the characters, while not totally likable all the time, are real and you root for them anyways.  Roanoke is divisive yet effective.

4. Apocalypse

Apocalypse was the first season that I watched as it came out, as opposed to binging, and I believe that it hurt my opinion of it.  Directly after finishing the finale, something felt off. It didn’t feel complete to me, but looking back after stewing in it a little while, it is a much better season than I first thought.  I adored the first three episodes.  The aesthetic of the underground bunker was simultaneously claustrophobic and overwhelmingly hot, and the reveal of the witches in the third episode was truly something to behold.  There was plenty of mystery for fans to chew on during the weeklong breaks between episodes (too much, really).  Michael Langdon was a fascinating character to see develop.  The addition of male witches was something genius that for some reason never occurred to me, and seeing Billy Porter, BD Wong, and Jon Jon Briones on screen filled me with a slightly questionable over abundance of joy.  Venable was easily one of my favorite Sarah Paulson characters, and seeing Cordelia and the other witches again was some of the best fan service I’ve ever seen, not to mention the Return to Murder House.  There is so much to love about this season, although it does drag a bit in the second half, mostly because it goes for about three episodes without really answering any questions that it had raised (which was quite a lot).  Then the finale was a fast paced, wonderful fiasco, but I think that there should have been at least one more episode to this season.  The finale was so stuffed to the brim that it was a bit overwhelming, though ultimately satisfying.  That being said, however, Apocalypse is a perfectly solid season in every sense of the word.

3. Asylum

I know that it’s a bit of a sin to put Asylum anywhere below the number two spot, but I just did, so get over it.  Asylum is a wonderful season that I truly do love, and is easily the most consistent of all the seasons in quality and tone.  It is constantly overflowing with horrific imagery that made me feel every ounce of pain that the characters were, and I love it for it.  Lily Rabe as Mary Eunice is utterly inspired, and easily the best part of the whole season, but nearly everything else is almost just as good.  Sister Jude is a wonderfully complex character portrayed flawlessly by Jessica Lange, Lana Winters is an absolute badass, Oliver Threadson is a threat that actually feels threatening (I’m looking at you witch hunters), along with his son, and all of it being set amidst a 1950s insane asylum, where the understanding of mental illness pretty much didn’t exist, and a place of some of the most horrific acts ever seen in America, is just icing on the cake.  There are a few weak spots, but there is nothing that I actually dislike about this season.  Kit Walker is a character that I always rooted for, but I never found particularly interesting, although his relationships with other characters made up for it.  That’s mostly it really, there’s just so much good in this season.  The aliens are a bit weird though.

2. Freak Show

Freak Show is divisive to say the least.  It meanders and wanders, has a great deal of one-off episodes, is Jessica Lange’s worst role, and doesn’t really have an overarching story other than just a lot of freaks trying to live in a freak show while everyone hates them.  But there is just something about this season that sets it above the others, and that it is the villains (other than Stanley, who was threatening, but uninteresting).  Twisty the Clown essentially invented the word scare, and Dandy Mott was always entertaining to watch as the big, unpredictable, man-child that he was.  Contrary to relatively popular belief, it was a good idea for them to kill Twisty when they did.  The reason Twisty was so bone chilling was because of how enigmatic he was.  We had no motive for his crime spree, no explanation of his appearance, and every reason to be afraid.  We knew nothing about him.  Then we got his gut-wrenching backstory.  Then he wasn’t scary anymore, he was just sad.  Then Dandy became the real threat, one even more so than Twisty.  His death paved way for Dandy to spread his wings, culminating in easily the most depressing finale of AHS there is.  Dandy is easily my favorite villain in all of American Horror Story, all because of his pure insanity.  He was never boring to watch, as you never knew what he was going to do next, and seeing Finn Wittrock act like a petulant child was absolutely captivating.  I was always interested in this season because I was genuinely engaged with the story of Dandy and the freaks.  Speaking of the freaks, they are a wonderful ensemble cast.  They aren’t as complex or deep as many other AHS characters, and some of them are relatively boring, but I loved them nonetheless.  I felt every single one of their deaths at the hands of Dandy (especially you Eve) or Dell (Ma Petite may you rest in peace you precious being) or whoever killed them, and that much should amount to something.

1. Murder House

I don’t know why I love this season most of all.  I truly don’t.  Maybe it’s because it’s the first one that I ever saw.  Maybe it’s because I started it at 11 at night and proceeded to watch it until 4 in the morning with a 9am class the next morning.  I really don’t know.  Something about this season hooked me into its universe and then consumed me for an entire month.  I love the slowly unraveling mysteries surrounding each and every one of the ghosts and living characters.  Constance Langdon is my favorite Jessica Lange character, as she will not stop chewing the scenery.  Tate is my favorite Evan Peters character, and his relationship with Violet is genuinely engaging for a teen romance, and the twist where it is revealed that Violet succeeded in her suicide is actually effective (yes, I’m looking at you, Ten Commandment Killer) with subtle clues that I didn’t notice until afterwards.  This season managed to blend melodrama, horror, and the grotesque in a way only really matched by Asylum and Roanoke, both of which I just don’t love as much as I love Murder House.  It’s very hard for me to get my feelings for this season across, but you just have to trust me when I say that it’s a huge reason that American Horror Story is still going to this day.