American Horror Story: Death Valley

[WombWithAView]

Given the episode before last I held out some hope one might survive. Or the Alien Scientist would come and wave their hands helping them.

And while we're at it why wouldn't that room be sealed off? Seems dicey you'd allow a room like that open for the abducted people to sneak off to. (I know it's for plot purposes.)

I was a bit shocked Kendall was turned into a human incubator... sans her head. I thought at least one of the kids would make it.

Given the ending it could've been alot better as others have said. Even a few years later scene would've felt better. They really should've just focused on one story this season. 4 episodes is not enough. The storyline had alot of potential. No more Double features please.

Honestly feel bad for the Cast and Crew and the very nasty comments made about "Death Valley". I doubt they'll ever tackle Aliens or Mpreg again on this show.

But I am thankful for the Mpreg content we got. And the behind the scenes stuff. Despite the shows flaws.

[rdalh]

I watched the final episode of AHS Death Valley last night. In case you're wondering, there are no more mpreg scenes, except for some extras that walk for a few seconds in the background.

I'm going to write a little about what I think about the series, you can omit me if you like, it's just that I wanted to articulate some ideas I have about the show. I recommend that everyone try to watch the show and draw their own conclusions, this is just my opinion on the series as a whole.

The ending uses a classic sci-fi trope: humanity is something that doesn't deserve to exist due to the destruction it has caused and its self-centered nature. And before the power of an extraterrestrial superior race, humans perish.

Interestingly, in the end it comes down to the women's struggle. Although everything begins by male orders, the end is driven by the women and their decisions. So apparently women are shown to have some decisiveness, but they also become part of the damsel in distress trope (the two pregnant girls are only excuses to advance the plot, even one of them simply dies without contributing something else to the story). The women are pretexts to advance the argument raised by men (the center is still Eisenhower and the pregnant gay boys, they have more development). The series shows an apparent progressivism with its main female leads, but their actions are still conditioned by what happens to men. Nevertheless, the performances from all the actresses are great (especially Sarah Paulson). On the other hand, it seems that much of what is shown in the series remains in small notes of topics that do not go anywhere. Topics such as the sweet relationship between a gay couple and motherhood, dead cows, Steve Jobs, Amelia Earhart, the false moon landing and other elements like those do not appear again, they are mentioned and discarded from a script that doesn't seems to know what to do with them. The central narrative is about finding a perfect species that mixes humans and aliens, the rest becomes disposable and is discarded. This is the first time I've seen AHS, I have no idea what the other seasons are like, this season has good ideas, however it seems that the writers don't really know how to put them together in a consistent script. It is worth adding that this part of the season only has 4 episodes, which are full of things that are not completely developed. Maybe that's the problem: too many stuff. Although some of these ideas are taken from other fictions, they could have been better articulated with the various themes that I listed at the beginning.

However, looking at the mpreg part of the series, it is very different from what I have seen before: the intimate connection between a gay couple and their desire to become parents through pregnancy is something really unique. And we see various parts of that process: morning sickness, ultrasounds, belly growth, very realistic births. Also, the great performances (Nico Greetham and especially Isaac Cole Powell) and the prosthetic bellies made everything feel so authentic. As a fan of mpreg, I liked all of that (plus we've had a lot of behind-the-scenes photos and videos that have been ... well ... hot hehe). I think it a really good mpreg content (probably one of the best we have ever had). But, like I said, the rest of the series is not as good as the mpreg part.

P.S. I noticed that AHS did not release a season in 2020 because of the pandemic. However, the seasons of the show are usually annual, so maybe they had two ideas for this season piled up (one from last year and one for this year), which they necessarily wanted to use. This is clearly a mere assumption. If someone has more information about it, it would be great if they could post it here. What I am going with this last comment is that the fact of condensing so much in a single season has made that many of the elements do not add to the main stories and become only themes that are discarded. The number of episodes of Death Valley could have been duplicated, with which there would be more space for the development of the subjects that were not approached properly. This is just me guessing, but maybe the idea of Death Valley originally had to cover an entire season, but due to the absence of a season in 2020, the ideas of last year and this year had to be compacted into just one season, all in order not to waste. Remember that TV seasons are planned months in advance, perhaps the actors and production members of Death Valley had schedules already established for the future - there may even be contracts in between that require filming with said actors - so the AHS's producers couldn't waste them and decided to merge both seasons into one. With this, the quality of the Death Valley script fell due to not having enough space to develop all the themes. Again, I say this without having a fully understanding of the AHS production processes, so it is a mere hypothesis that can be discarded. But in case it has some truth, it would be interesting to know what were the original plans for Death Valley and thus find out what it could have been. I reiterate, if anyone had any additional information on how this season's production was carried out, please comment because it would help to get a global idea of the season.

[KYpreg]

I think too many in this community are quick to project their love of mpreg on to others…”civilians” if you will. Insisting that this director or that actor MUST have a thing for mpreg but are then let down when things don’t end or progress the way they fantasize. Sorry guys, but in all likelihood most talent aren’t into mpreg as a fetish, rather it’s just an interesting plot device or fascinating vehicle for some for social commentary or comedy. It’s just good to bear in mind when catching mpreg content in the wild like this.

[mprego2]

I think too many in this community are quick to project their love of mpreg on to others…”civilians” if you will. Insisting that this director or that actor MUST have a thing for mpreg but are then let down when things don’t end or progress the way they fantasize. Sorry guys, but in all likelihood most talent aren’t into mpreg as a fetish, rather it’s just an interesting plot device or fascinating vehicle for some for social commentary or comedy. It’s just good to bear in mind when catching mpreg content in the wild like this.

I agree, and this goes for any fetish.

Also, I think Ryan Murphy does have a genuine interest in getting pregnant, but not for sexual fetish reasons, this was made evident in Cal and Troy’s dialogue in episode 9 about wanting to have children of their own, I feel like that was Ryan genuinely speaking on his own personal feelings because it was so touching and personal. I also feel the same way, and there have been other men who genuinely want to become pregnant, again NOT for sexual reasons, like Deontay Wilder, Mathieu Johann, Jamie Grayson, Sidney Karger, Lee Mingwei, Miguel Bosé, and Kurt Cobain to name a few.

I think many in the fetish community can be very narrow sighted and unaware on these type of things.

[Takarimpreg]

For those who don't know American Horror Story is an anthology series that deals with different characters/themes every season. Sometimes those characters may cross over but for the most part seasons are independent from one another (Apocalypses- season 8 being the exception to this rule). But each theme will deal with the horror tropes that tend to surround it, sometimes subverting expectations sometimes just running straight through.

Double Feature in and of itself could have been the gimmick of the new season but reading some interviews and stuff it seems IRL events with the pandemic and the inability to film during the proper months really screwed things over. Taken from Wikipedia it states:

'Following the interruption, series co-creator Ryan Murphy told in an interview with TheWrap that the delay could potentially change the season's theme, since his initial idea needed to be filmed during the warmer months of the year.'

This is pure speculation but I can't help but wonder if Red Tide was in the initial idea seeing as it ran for 6 of the 10 episodes and Death Valley was an in develop season. 4 episodes to develop a cohesive plot and characters while each episode is split into two different time eras seems an almost impossible task. Especially more so when you consider the vast amounts of trope aliens have in horror media. Again a single episode more to help develop the leads from the modern story would have really helped.

I could write pages upon pages on what I thought would happen or plot ideas that seemed dropped but who would it benefit? I'll take what we got (the leads were super attractive IMO) and I will be forever grateful for the amount of behind the scenes stuff we got.

[Klayko]

I just saw this, but I wanted to say you are right: Back around 2019, it was announced that Macaulay Culkin would be in AHS Red Tide, so it was certainly in development while Death Valley was most likely the lesser of the two, production wise. It’s unfortunate because of the pandemic, but all we can do is keep the ball rolling as his next season focuses on a dual theme as well.

[lukehull]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I was wondering of anyone had a link to where I could watch Death Valley for free? Regardless of reviews, I'd love to see it. Alien mpreg is and always has been my biggest fetish haha