American Horror Story's signature characterization style was met with masterpiece performances, all based on each character's ups and downs, their moments of triumph and shame.
'Coven' focused on Fiona Goode, an aging witch who was desperate to restore her fading life force. Her daughter, Cordelia, was a kindhearted potion maker who taught at Robichaux Academy, a school for young witches in New Orleans.
Cordelia had a strong moral compass and a love for the girls, so fans connected with her when her husband betrayed her, and she was blinded by a vicious acid attack. It's hard not to imagine the sound of her crackling flesh or her empty eye sockets.
Near the end of the season, after Fiona had attempted everything from drowning a student to sacrificing an infant to keep herself alive, we found her sitting in a chair, decrepit and fading, so wrinkled she looked like a skeleton with flesh melting off of her bones. Viewers could almost feel how weak she was.
We followed these two through every moment of their journey, watching Fiona play out her anguish and desperation, while Cordelia fought to keep her students safe.
They showed us everything--from stake burnings to slit throats--in vivid, memorable detail, focused entirely on each witch's individual path. The series did the same with 'Murder House,' 'Freak Show,' and 'Asylum,' always accompanied by the series' characterization formula.
At its best, American Horror had two traits: labels and an intimate portrayal of each character's journey. This trend matches the numbers. When the show excluded these two elements, viewership dropped.
'Roanoke' split each of the characters into two. There were the actors portraying them and the actual characters themselves.
The actual characters narrated a documentary about the time they spent living in a house in Roanoke, Virginia, while the actors played out a dramatization. It was hard not to identify with the actors because they were the ones experiencing all the of the horror, and the characters seemed bland--boring, almost.
At a certain point, the documentary ended, and the actors that we identified with started acting like their 'real selves.' They turned out to have funny accents, strange attitudes, and ways of being. It completely shattered the connection we thought we had with these people.
When we entered the Roanoke House for a second time, under the pretense of a reality show, everything was different. We were shown that the universe we had connected with was mostly fake, Hollywood magic--detaching us entirely from the storyline. It was like breaking the fourth wall and ruining the mood. It knocked the viewers out of their trance, something writers and filmmakers are constantly working against. Everything is supposed to be based on sucking the reader into the scene, not throwing them out of it. It was an experiment gone wrong.
'Roanoke' characters did not have the usual labels, though they were identified by who they played, or their part in the events that inspired the documentary.
We did get decent character arcs. Each character had a struggle, which we followed throughout the season. Some of them were good. But that didn't matter because they had dispelled the magic by showing us behind the scenes of the documentary, making it difficult to connect with them on their path.
The goal, regardless of how it's accomplished, should be to make us feel the plot. In order to do that, we have to feel something for the characters--love, hate, disgust, envy--anything that will tug at our emotions as the show moves forward. Otherwise, we'll be numb to whatever is going on, and we won't care long enough to watch.