American Horror Story: 10 Worst Characters
2. John Lowe
Every criticism that was levelled at Jack Samuels can be dialled up to eleven and applied to John Lowe. Worse, while Jack Samuels was a supporting character in a season stuffed with the likes of Kai Anderson, Winter Anderson, Beverley Hope and Ally Mayfair-Richards, John Lowe is a star. Hotel still has fantastic characters (The Countess, James March, Liz Taylor...), but Lowe gets far too much screen time in amongst them.
A cop investigating murders he himself is committing is a hugely intriguing angle, but unfortunately the show doesn’t deliver on that potential. Wes Bentley is flat and monotone throughout, so his mental unravelling and ejection from the police force has no weight whatsoever. Compared to Finn Wittrock’s loss of sanity in Freak Show, Bentley’s is a distant second best. They’re different characters, but if anything we should feel more sympathy for Lowe. With Bentley’s performance though, we don’t.
If they had stuck to just The Ten Commandments Killer arc, rather than complicating the narrative with Lowe, we might’ve gotten an incredibly powerful villain. As it is, they didn’t, so we didn’t.