Happy Chanel-o-ween!
After watching (and rewatching, and rewatching) the two-hour premiere of Scream Queens, I was sure that the fun of the series would be trying to puzzle out who the killer is before the show revealed it. But by episode 4, “Haunted House,” I realized that the true joy of the FOX horror-comedy is Emma Roberts.
Full spoilers for Scream Queens continue below.
It’s Chanel’s world, and we’re all just living in it. The idea of Chanel-o-ween is perfection (and a riff on Taylor Swift’s Gift Giving of 2014, if you missed the meta mockery). Every scene Roberts is in pops with her exaggerated performance, from Chanel’s emotional breakdown while sharpening kitchen knives to giving up cotton balls for lunch to eat pizza. Though Scream Queens is starting to get lost in its own mythology a third of the way through Season 1 as the layers get peeled off previously established characters, the pure joy of Chanel remains constant.
Nothing highlights that more than the best scene in the episode: the Chanels’ takedown of misogyny. Scream Queens is striving to do many things, including satirizing horror films and teen comedies. But its strength has proven to be in its commentary on the way women treat each other, and in its attempt to empower them. Sure, scenes like the Chanels reclaiming “b—h” and taking down the patriarchy don’t further the plot much, but they are oh so fun to watch.
We want to hear it.
The more episodes that pass in Scream Queens, the more the series is delving into its own history, and apparently there is a lot there to dive into. Fortunately the twists are plentiful, from the revelation that mystery baby wasn’t a boy to the confirmation that Gigi Caldwell is, in fact, the former Kappa Kappa Tau who raised the baby. (I’m very proud I did call that twist after the first two episodes. She also probably is the girl who was institutionalized, right?) Other reveals include Denise Hempfield’s history with KKT and the confirmation that Miss Bean, Chanel #2 and the rest are actually dead. This episode laid plenty more groundwork for what’s coming next in the series than last week’s “Chainsaw” did.
Four episodes in, all roads seem to lead to Dean Munsch as the character to watch. She’s clearly much more than meets the eye, but it still feels too easy to assume she is the killer. If anything, the Red Devil murderer is probably someone trying to get revenge on Munsch, and for good reason; this is a woman keen on protecting herself first, and who has a dark past coming out more and more in each passing week. Though Scream Queens hasn’t been utilizing Jamie Lee Curtis as much as it did in the premiere, she remains one of the highlights of the show.
We want to hear it.
There were some moments that really worked for me in this episode, like the previously highlighted cafeteria scene and the blossoming lust story between Chad Radwell and Hester Ulrich (his lamentation about the lack of deadly diseases was fantastic in a week sadly lacking in Chad). But Scream Queens is getting to the point where it feels torn between reveling in its own snarky ridiculousness and servicing its need to be a plot-driven TV show. It’s more fun to watch when it’s the former, and I wish it could better find the balance between the two. It was able to do so with its two-hour series premiere, and maybe having movie-length two-episode blocks weekly would have been the best way to maintain its quality.
Those complaints aside, Scream Queens is still the most fun I’m having watching TV right now. Despite being inspired by many aspects of pop culture and society, it continues comes off feeling fresh. The writing is sharp, the acting is great and, most importantly, it stays funny. My biggest hope is it finds a better balance between plot and commentary in future episodes.
Scream Queens might have gotten heavy-handed with the exposition in its fourth episode, but it still delivered some exciting twists and remains a joy to watch. The strengths of the series have come to the forefront, Emma Roberts’ Chanel being at the top of the list, and here’s hoping Scream Queens continues to lean into them going forward.
