American Horror Story: 10 Most Hated Episodes
3. Election Night (S7E1)
Politics will always be polarizing. American Horror Story decided to incorporate this polarization into its seventh season. In particular, the extremely divisive 2016 US election in which Donald Trump became the 45th President.
It could've worked, but ultimately... didn't. It wasn't so much that the writers went too far one way or the other (though many reviews claim that's true). The problem was: why bother?
Why include the real life politics? Ally and Kai became true satires of both sides and though politics and cults may go perfectly hand in hand, bringing real life politics only oversaturated the audience.
Perhaps it would've worked better to not include the real life election since the rest of the season doesn't seem to rely on the outcome as much as this opening episode. True, politics was probably always going to be part of the season's story, but somehow the divisiveness of the 2016 presidential election didn't add any nuance or interesting message.
Really, it felt more like taking two extremes and making them beyond caricature into outright over-the-top boring. Other themes seemed to be better executed (bad neighbors, phobias, etc.) but the addition of something many in, not only America, but the world were already exhausted with just made this opening episode a disinteresting, unappealing start to the seventh season.