Is "AHS: NYC" For Real?????????????????? Girls, I Can Confirm It Is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                              Maybe not literally, but they certainly got the atmosphere right.  When I saw Patti Lu Pone doing a Bette Midler, in a gay bath house, with a Norma Desmond type headdress on, singing "Fever," I was hooked.  The year 1981 was my starting year in NYC; when I was just making headways professionally, socially and theatrically.  Though I was still commuting from my hometown of Highland Park, New Jersey, between work and graduate school, I was spending more time in the city, especially with occasional overnights at friends or relations.

                                   The wildness of what viewers saw last night was true to life, and while I never went as far as that, I recall so much.  I even recall, at the time, thinking that, in a future which I never thought would come, I would regret my antics.  And so that future has arrived.  But, thankfully, my regret amounts to embarrassment and retrospective shock, not physical debilitation.  

                                    But this is not about me, but the show.  Let me fill you in.

                                    The show's premiere night started, as it did last season, with two episodes.   The same was true for last night's premiere.  The bad news is that this will be the season's format--two each one, cutting the time in half to five weeks instead of ten.  The whole thing will end on November 16.  Better to drag it out, for more pleasure.  Unfortunately, I don't make the rules, here.

                                                                        

                                                                         

                                      Now, these two episodes--the first entitled, "Something's Coming" (having nothing to do with the "West Side Story" song) amalgamated the movie "Cruising," foreshadowing the coming of Andrew Cunanan, and, more important, but rather forgotten, the Bear Stearns exec who was never caught, but was known to cruise packed leather bars at late hours, where he would pick up someone, take him to some place on Madison Avenue right above a clothing cleaner's, so no one would hear the screams, and torture them within an inch of life, leaving them physically damaged or maimed, threatening them with his power not to reveal anything.  To this day, no one knows who this was.

                                         For the purposes of this show, I do.  But more on that later.

                                           The second episode, entitled "Thank You For The Service," served up a lot.

                                        Who was playing who?  Joe Mantello, giving one of his, and the show's most nuanced performances, is easily a Larry Kramer stand-in.  But who was Billie Lourd playing?  Could it have been Doctor Mary Guinan?  And what the hell do deer have  to do with contracting AIDS?  Is this just a metaphor for all the sweet young things out on Fire Island that did contract it or is there a deeper meaning?  In his excellent book, "And The Band Played On," by Randy Shilts--which I urge anyone who has not to read it--he attributes monkeys in Africa to the start of the epidemic. Check it out, if you do not believe me.

                                            Girls, if you like your flesh hot, this is the steamy show for you.  Russell Tovey, as Patrick Read, a divorced, NYPD member, who still communicates with his ex-wife Barbara, and is a great big closet case, even though he lives with Adam (Charlie Carver) is the stand-in for the Al Pacino character in "Cruising," meaning I am certain he is the leather killer known as Big Daddy!  Let's wait and see!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                            Midwesterners must have gotten a shock at TV's most graphic portrayal of the S and M scene.  Girls, I knew folks who were in it, and tried to entice me, but no thanks!  Zachary Quinto was doing a stand-in for Robert Mapplethorpe, with some subtle hints he may be Big Daddy, though I doubt it.

                                                 Even lesbians get their due. Sandra Bernhard was just playing herself, but I loved when she and the girls enticed Mantello to give them a voice in print!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                  The Brownstone?  Oh, come on, everyone who is of a certain age know that is a reference to The Townhouse, up on East 59th Street.  As for Denis O'Hare, wonderful as always, I could not figure out if he was doing a riff on Jordan Leslie, or Andy Warhol!!!!!  He livened things up, but how does he fit into the scheme of things?  And how about that wonderful homeless woman who would occasionally pop up and yell, "Something's coming for you!"  I would love to know who plays her, and hope she is seen more often.

                                                    Will Patti LuPone's character have a backstory?  Will Patrick come out of the closet and reveal his true colors?  Did any young gays today understand about "the hanky code?"  Did they even catch that reference? The one thing I worry about "AHS--NYC" is that only those of us a certain age will understand it, having been there.  Those who don't may not tune in, which would be a shame.  It is a scary look at New York history.

                                                         And so far, the horror is not a bit supernatural!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!