Scream Queens: Season 1

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 The second season of Scream Queens just started. So, I thought I would go back and review the first season. In a lot of ways, the show did hit the ground running. The actors are all having fun in their roles. Emma Roberts nails the mean girl stereotype to a tee. Jamie Lee Curtis also deserves as much praise as possible. She plays the university's no-nonsense dean of students, and is equal parts funny, creepy, and suspicious. The creators of the show have said that they grew up with slashers of the 1980s, and I feel it shows. Someone dies in every episode (a point I wish the first season of Scream would have followed), which racks up the average body count a normal slasher flick might have. The use of the Red Devil (the school mascot) as the killer's costume plays to the tropes of 80s slashers as well, much to the show's benefit. Many of the deaths were also fairly creative and violent. Someone gets their face burned with frying oil. Another person gets dismembered with a chainsaw. However, the show's freshman season wasn't perfect. The main flaw of the first season has got to be the tone. A lot of the time, the humor of the series isn't dark enough. Moreover, the tone is just inconsistent. It feels like they just didn't quite know a lot of the time how to make the horror and comedy gel (something the season 2 premiere seemed to fix). While there were characters I enjoyed, some of the others just didn't do anything for me. I felt like they were there for cannon fodder, even if the actors did good in the roles.

B+