This is so much fun.
We still don't know exactly what the theme of American Horror Story season 6 is, or maybe we do? We're so unsure and we're having the greatest time just having no idea what's going on.
Tonight's premiere was called "My Roanoke Nightmare." Or maybe that's what the season's called? We don't know, but at least this first episode played out like one of those ghost documentaries, with a couple describing some horrific thing that happened to them while actors reenacted it.
That couple was played by Lily Rabe and Andre Holland, while their reenactors were none other than Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr. That's right: Sarah Paulson played Lily Rabe.
After a traumatic experience where "Matt" was attacked and "Shelby" had a miscarriage, the couple moved to Roanoke Island in North Carolina and bid $40,000 against a rather trashy gang of dudes (including Chaz Bono?!) for a big old totally haunted farmhouse.
From the beginning, Shelby "felt danger there," but she and Matt stayed in the house anyway, even through her seeing teeth fall from the sky, and seeing ghosts in the hallway, and being attacked in the tub, and even through Matt discovering and burying a dead, skinned pig.
The next cast member to be revealed was Angela Bassett, who was playing the reenactment verison of Matt's sister Lee, who was actually played by Adina Porter, who Matt employed as a sort of babysitter for the terrified Shelby while Matt was at work in Raleigh.
So just in case you're having trouble keeping up: Lily Rabe is playing Shelby, Sarah Paulson is playing Lily Rabe playing Shelby, Andre Holland is playing Matt, Cuba Gooding Jr. is playing Andre Holland playing Matt, Adina Porter is playing Lee, and Angela Bassett is playing Adina Porter playing Lee. This. Is. The. Best.
Lee started seeing things too, and thought Shelby was messing with her, but obviously it wasn't Shelby.
Together, they looked for an intruder, and found a Blair Witch-sort of home movie playing on the TV. Denis O'Hare appeared to be starring in the home movie, where he was being attacked by some unseen thing, later revealed to be...a man wearing a pig head?
Matt arrived home to find Lee and Shelby terrified by creepy stick men tied up on the ceiling. Everyone thought it was the trashy gang of men who had tried to bid against them on the house.
Shelby wanted to move, but Matt didn't want to give up the life savings they had spent on the house, so Shelby just took off in the car, before promptly running over a person. She got out of the car and we discovered that she ran over a woman who looked an awful lot like Kathy Bates. We never did get to meet the woman Kathy Bates was playing in the reenactment, however.
Shelby, who had forgotten she was in some sort of horror situation, ran into the woods, found more stick men hanging from the branches, and suddenly realized that the damn ground was breathing. She tried to run away, but was then swarmed by corpses, and Wes Bentley?
So...is the theme A Haunting? Or will we be watching My Roanoke Nightmare play out over the whole season?? Will it be a documentary all season? We literally have no idea, but we welcome all your theories!
Also: All of the actors whose names appeared in the credits were obvious in the episode, except for Cheyenne Jackson and Evan Peters...unless they're just unrecognizable in one of these two pictures?
Help us, please.
American Horror Story: ??? airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.