Heathonistt

As a career restaurant worker for over 15 years from Chicago who managed similar style restaurants to the place featured in this show, I was excited to see this show. I've miserably pushed through the first season, and really wish I wouldn't have wasted my time. This show manages to simultaneously give the vibe that it was written by someone who grew up watching scripted bad reality tv shows about manufactured kitchen nightmares and has no idea what it's really like to run a restaurant like this, while it depicts everything wrong about restaurant work that CAN be changed and fixed. I could write a novel about the absurdly bad writing (the table-less bar-style 80s plastic menu board greasy spoon takeout restaurant that sells italian beef sandwiches "doesn't do to-gos" and instead employs a full staff to sit around and make small batches of time-consuming fine french fusion dishes with no wait staff), but frankly it's too annoying to think about. The first two episodes include no plot development or character storylines and is simply filled with people screaming over each other the entire time. I cannot understand what anyone says. The extras angrily scream "CORNER" at the top of their lungs every 1.5 seconds -anyone who says "this is how restaurants work" has only worked in highly dysfunctional abusive environments and are conditioned to accept the abuse. This is manufactured stress and drama for the show, and it comes off as lazy writing and obnoxious. Why is the container of gravy on top of a box on the top shelf in an otherwise empty walk in? Because they need DRAMA but don't really want to spend any time making sure the scene seems realistic in any way! This show feels like it was written by a kitchen nightmares reality show producer, and has the same lazy writing, lazy producing, "producers hate their talent" type-vibe of those shows. The chicago references are terrible and stereotypical of what people who aren't from chicago think everyone thinks/talks/acts like there. The only good thing this show offers is beautiful shots of food. That's mostly what the show is. Close-ups of food cooking. We almost never see any of the characters outside of the restaurant. We don't know their lives. They don't have relationships or kids. They're stressed out drones that are there to "serve." A very elitist view of restaurant workers. We hardly know the characters names, as every 3rd word coming out of their mouths are "chef." Everyone in the show calls everyone else "chef." I don't know where this fascist military-like de-personalization of restaurant staff originated from, but it's demeaning. Restaurant owners/managers/workers who wish to alienate their staff and make sure their business fails should employ this "calling everyone "chef" technique. We all know that what people like the most is being de-personalized and being called by words and names that aren't who and what they are. Big props to the actors in the show, they are the only part that makes it worth watching. I would have quit after episode 1 if it weren't for them.

I was a teen during the original airing of Felicity and saw the show so many times, I could recite many parts by heart. It was never exactly my "thing" but I remember being so thirsty for any sort of entertainment acknowledging girls my age, I eagerly gobbled up this trash.

I rewatched this show now that I'm in my late 30s. I'm in utter disbelief that something this bad could have ever been made. I could spend all day listing the many small problems with the show - such as 30+yr olds playing 18yr old "normal" college kids who never drink or have sex, the truly god-awful music, the fact that every woman in the show except for Felicity (and Megan in season 4, maybe) is written to be a villain, the fact that senior year featured very little-to-no talk about college, graduation, jobs, internships, etc at all, let alone college-related storylines. Julie, the character who exists solely to try and date anyone who dated Felicity, then yell at Felicity for dating her boyfriends who were Felicity's first... Elaina's lack of storylines in season 4, or just the awful way they treated her throughout the show. The terrible casting, acting, and writing in every repeating storyline about Felicity's parents who are about as mature and intelligent as 14 year old kids. The only time these writers attempted to write an actual surprise in the show, they had Keri Russel cut all her hair off (about 6 inches too short), which turned out so bad that fans stopped watching the show and the ratings plummeted. But I could almost let all that go...

The biggest problem/problems center around the terrible Ben storyline, which suffocates the show. Sure, I get Felicity having a big crush that set her on this journey, but Ben is a POS. He and Felicity have nothing in common. They have no chemistry, aside from a "confusing sadness" they pass back and forth to each other for 4 seasons. He cheats on her constantly, or straight up dumps her for selfish reasons/other girls more times than I can count. Nameless girl in the pilot, Julie, the OTHER pink ranger, dumps her at the beginning of season 2, avery, THEN gets his father's mentally-ill-middle-aged-AA spons-ee pregnant and makes felicty forget about senior year and any plans she might have in order to support him, THEN he cheats AGAIN by having a month long affair?!? He sure does cheat a lot in the 4 seasons of this show. And each time we are expected to just forgive and forget.

And Felicity... well, she doesn't matter. The entire premis/moral of the show is, "Girls, it doesn't matter what your dreams or relationship fantasies are. Friendships don't matter. Education doesn't matter. If you think they do, you're delusional. Your only purpose is to clean up the messes created by the idiot men in your life. The guy you love? He doesn't care about you, and he will make sure to let you know every chance he can. But he'll say "I'm sorry I love you" and you WILL instantly forgive him because THAT's what love is! Also, don't try to choose your own career path, because ultimately you're going to move back home with your parents and do exactly what those miserable controlling people want."

The end.

I hope I saved some of you from wasting your time.

I'd give zero stars if I could, but I gave 1 star for Megan. She's the only good character in the show, and she's highly under-utilized. Also 1 star for JJAbrams attempting to bring some sort of interesting sci-fi twilight zone/time travel elements to the show, too bad they Wizard of Oz/"it was all a dream"-ed it at the end.

Felicity should have been with Noel, for real, starting around the beginning of season 3. Then the show would have been a story of choosing your own adventure and unexpected life changes, making your own decisions and learning whats right and good for you vs what's wrong, instead of a "shy bro's" guide on how to politely and quietly gaslight women into giving up everything they want and dream about in order to stay in a *seriously* emotionally abusive relationship with you, until they end up isolated on the opposite end of the country from their only friends, forced to raise the baby you made with another woman, while you're out having one of your twice-yearly affairs.

I hate Ben.

The real horror is how many female characters in this show are cast to be in a straight relationship with male actors who couldn't play a convincing hetero if their life depended on it. Though that seems to be true of AHS for many years now...

This series is sloppy. It's written with the creativity and originality of a film student who is sleeping with their teacher to earn a passing grade. How do you go back to the horror house and not reference even ONE of the original cast of characters that made the show famous in the first place? Yeah, i know we finally get to see a few glimpses of a couple of them at the end in a truly moronic storyline about video games, but they aren't actually written in to be important to the storyline in any way, and it's just a tease. And why cast a "daughter" who looks maybe 5-7 years younger than her "dads?" I fully thought it was a story about two gay guys and their single angry aging lez bff for the first few min, then I watched the rest in disbelief. The female actresses cast in this show have increasingly too much botox/filler/plastic surgery and that wannabekardashian instagram emotionless face and it's painful to watch. The new young actors are very very VERY bad at acting and have the sincerity of a dead-eyed soulless disney child actor - again, this is where the true horror lies. You get a gem like Danny Trejo and you put him in the biggest piece of garbage I've seen in a half decade - an episode where a bunch of undeniably IRL gay actors run around in crop tops pretending to be straight bros, and it's all centered around social media crap. I'm tired of hearing about "followers" and "likes" and "virality." I'm tired of reading test messages in life, television is my escape, yet I still need to read texts to follow storylines. I'm trapped in a waking nightmare. This is MY american horror story.

The actual plots may have been able to be somewhat interesting, but it felt like it wasn't written, casted, acted, or edited by anyone who was interested. Churn out more crap, get a big check from quarantined streamers, start working on the next season. Nothing is original here anymore. Within the first 10 min I turned to my spouse and said "there's going to be a sleepover massacre." Guess what happened maybe 20 min later?

I long for the intricacies, nuance, attention to detail, expansive and diverse cast, and desire to make a masterpiece that was so evident in the first few seasons of AHS. Now it's a gimmick. Anything with the label makes mediocre money from people who love gobbling up crap, so the key is to put as little effort in as possible and release it asap.