WARNING TO THOSE WHO ARE SENSITIVE TO EVEN A HINT OF SPOILERS: TREAD LIGHTLY BEYOND THIS POINT.
WAY too much sorority. Not nearly enough massacre.
I had so much hope for this show, especially after such a fun pilot. They promised us The House on Sorority Row, and they gave us haute couture Scooby-Doo, instead.
I liked the cast, and there are enough fun scenes to maintain interest for twelve episodes. If I had gone into it expecting Clue instead of Halloween, I think I might have enjoyed it a bit more.
That last episode was a shit show, though. It's the kind of mess that happens when people decide to change the tone halfway through production, and are left with a lot of loose ends that would otherwise have been tied up if, say, everyone who miraculously survived for no good reason had died like they were supposed to.
I still think that having a show with a main cast of dozens of despicable characters whose deaths we're meant to root for, and actually killing those people off in fun and creative ways, rather than keeping them alive, and bringing no-name redshirts every week to serve as proxy gore, would make for a fucking brilliant show. Scream Queens, it turns out, did not dare to be so brilliant. And so, it is what it is -- a darkly-comic mystery instead of a real homage to slasher exploitation. If it gets a second season, I'll probably check it out, if only because I like Emma Roberts more and more. If it doesn't go any further than this, I won't miss it.
