that’s what i’ve been saying! they took such creative liberties with the story itself but then decided to maintain an ambiguous, incomplete conclusion? it’s such a disappointment.

Yes! It could have been amazing had they stuck to the actual account. They basically made a parody.. So dumb

@@lydzz6344 the actual account would've been boring as hell.

@@jbracq2008 you’re boring as hell. Anything can be interesting with good direction. Queens Gambit is literally chess matches. CHESS. But it’s absolutely captivating by the direction.

Ryan Murphy isn’t that good at anything, so of course he didn’t think like this.

this bugged me so much lol. in a show about being watched it’s kinda important to have characters close the damn blinds and not have sheer curtains. it’s the least anyone would do if they knew they were being watched.

OMG YES!!!!!!!!!!!! Why do characters ALWAYS do that?? WTF~

I guess like common sense, blackout curtains aren't a thing

@@Gchildwarrior Or just any plain curtain, or blind… Hell I would’ve been at least a bit more satisfied even if the curtains were sheer. But they just leave the damn windows with nothing. Blows my mind, one of my biggest pet peeves on horror movies and TV series. lol

Flashbacks to You and the decision from the show to have Beck ALWAYS keep her blinds open

maybe shes ray dunn

Oh my goodness! I had the same thought. (I’m also a ceramic artist) it is insane that she just fully supported the family on selling her mediocre pots. Also, who has a ceramics studio in the attic? Almost everything for ceramics is heavy and would be a major pain to carry up and down 3 flights of stairs. Plus you need access to water.

@@learning2live_brokeninchro157 YES!! plus where is her kiln? the most logical place for the studio would be the basement not an attic! ... which could have been a great plot point (people messing with her pots/etc)

@@0katsuki0 this comment deserves more likes 🤣🤣

@@learning2live_brokeninchro157 Obviously directed by someone who knows nothing about ceramic studios. Lol.

That's why I gave up AHS. Too many plot threads and his insistence that the sleaze factor is upped to 11. Why he needed to do it for a simple scary story about an unknown letter writer is beyond me. Sometimes less is more.

@@bree9272 lmao he even managed to do it in the dahmer show. I’m from milwaukee so maybe I’m more biased but the whole romance arc with the deaf person never happened it was an unnecessary story line to make us sympathize more with a real serial killer

"It's super easy, barely an inconvenience!"

We live in a world where Glee is Ryan Murphys only decent show

Ferret death and pottery 😂😂

I'm imagining the mom opening it and being covered in confetti

It's a legitimate congratulations note. Or make it worse, they wait and the watcher knows the gender of the baby and sends a pink/blue card and possibly has a copy of the ultra sound photo that they send along... Which the family realizes they still have all their copies they didn't quite send to family yet. They're all there. So how'd they manage to get a copy? Who do they know in town? If you're gonna go with escalating this for fictional methods, go all out.

I agree but out of context this sounds hilarious. Like, "oh, thanks watcher"

I'm writing that down for my book, thanks

@@helloill672 it's a glitterbomb so strong it whooshes her hair back lmao

Any show. I've seen very few media of any genre with teenage girls (or teenagers in general) in it where they're not sexualized.

@@AndreaFMS100 TRUE you're not wrong

It's messed up

Lol

teenage girls in horror movies made by hacks def are

Yes. No way for me to root for the family in this show.

Yea, towards the end I was wondering if we were still supposed to be rooting for them. I only felt bad for the ferret.

That's Ryan Murphy for you.

the mum assuming that her husband cheated on her because of that obv-edited footage💀💀

and the dad scrolling through the daughter's phone

I mean, I get it, but where does that end? Would one need to get permission from the families of the Holocaust to do a WW2 movie?

@@gbeach85 Understanble but the direct families have openly stated how uncomfortable they are with the documentary and how much mental anguish they have to go through over and over again because of people turning these terrible situations into a source of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with true crime but when you are activity hurting the victims/victims families it then becomes a serious issue.

@@cupcakecat1196 Oh, okay, fair enough. I didn’t know all that. Thanks for the info.

@@gbeach85 if the WW2 movie is going to have characters based on real people then, yeah it would probably be a good idea to get their family’s permission. However, a lot of WW2 movies just use fictional characters so I don’t see that being an issue

@@teddy-1965 Yeah, that’s true too. I agree.

Literally sameeeee

Could y’all imagine a collab👀🥺

me too😭😭

I watched an episode of ghost files before watching this lol

OMG Same!!!!!!???!!

And you, good friend, have just proven you are a better writer and have a better understanding of the basic building blocks of storytelling than the writers of this show's script.

This is the same thing I thought like then the audience could have those lightbulb moments where then it made sense why they seem suspicious.

This is probably how it should have been done. In my understanding of the real-life story, none of the neighbors (other than the Langstons) acted suspicious; they were simply suspects by proxy. So the show could have framed the "suspicious" neighbors as the paranoia of the family rather than how the neighbors actually were.

Yup. Instead this show was literally screaming LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!! I'M A RED HERRING!!!!!!!!! at all times

@@j.g.9045 I believe the issue in the real life story was that when the family was trying to sell the house and solve the problem, the neighborhood council unanimously voted against their plans to tear down the house and split the land to sell to a developer (so as to avoid the very public murder-stigma). Even worse, they allowed a different neighbor to do the exact same thing. So there is a reason to believe there was unexplained animus towards the family.

Yeah they do but realistically alot of them do their makeup to look older and to thirst trap. So they really shouldn't.

@@goddammitalana that’s a weird take and not even very accurate

It was so out of touch, like 50’s sitcom level cringe

@@goddammitalana look older, maybe, but at the end of the day they just wanna feel pretty. For me, sure I can do without it, but makeup is just an extra step of pampering that helps me feel I’m putting my best foot forward at the start of the day

@@goddammitalana How do you know a lot teen girls are trying to look older and thirst trap? Speaking as a former teen girl who wore makeup I liked wearing it for me. Idk, your comment is alarming in a way that is hard for me to explain. Maybe it's the assuming what their goal is with wearing makeup.

why did this made me exhale so hard

Now I have to watch this

Lmao, had me in the first half 😬

I was literally so bored watching it, so I just left the room and let my mum watch it

I watched it in 102° F fever , and it made me bare with the discomfort of going through the fever pains, i wouldn't be able to watch it till the end if i hadn't had that fever.

What racism subplot?

@@sadem1045 I think it was when the dad of the main family (who were getting stalked obv) accused his daughter's black boyfriend of grooming her + being the watcher

Its when the daughter got mad that the dad for SUSpecting her boyfriend of being a stalker so she creates a tiktok and claims that her parents are racist and her dad nearly loses his job. And then later she says sorry to her mum and they just hug it out. Im not making this shit up its that bad

​@@callmecharlie0498 saw this and yes it was so cringe and the dad, mom and daughter were so insufferable

The writers take it totally for granted that Dean's not racist, they push it so hard that everyone who knows Dean knows he's not racist. But how do they know that? It's out of nowhere. What about his character makes everyone believe that? It's all tell and no show.

What 💀

@@magickaldust1213 It was the “An Ode to a House“ lesson from a character that was kinda confirmed to be The Watcher for a short time (Roger Kaplan. In his past he was a teacher and his town-famous lesson was basically writing a poetic love letter to another house.

Yeah it was so weird. And sending it to the address! I could understand it as just a piece of creative writing for school only but he was insisting that they send it. Even if it's the nicest letter in the world, I can't imagine being happy to receive that letter. It is creepy to think of someone looking at and thinking about your house so much. So much of this story revolves around people being obsessed with houses for their own sake in a way I just don't think all that many people actually are. Historical societies who want to preserve old houses, sure I'll give them that, but I bet most people who love a house love it because they had loved ones who lived there once and lots of good memories there. Most poeple couldn't tell you much about a house they know no one in beyond 'I like going past that house, it's pretty'. And yet we're meant to buy that this is so many students' much remembered favourite lesson? It was all so fucking implausable.

Would have been better as a limited episode series,like 3 episodes.soooo boring.

@@aeddiefarmer it’s… it’s meant to be a teacher’s creative writing exercise.

I hated him for that. Hoping he would get axed lmao

I hated that. I assume they were trying to connect it to this case of the man who killed his whole family but his behaviour was so inappropriate and unlikable. I kept waiting for his wife to sit him down and be like hey fucking stop this it's very weird and creepy of you. I honestly thought they were setting up for him doing something horrible to her at times, but then it stopped going down that path and no one really reacts to his behaviour like it's bad, so maybe the show thinks it isn't???

Yeah I think there was supposed to be a link between him and John list who basically acted the same way, to show how he was slowly becoming just like him

It’s probably just that the dad’s is an arsehole, and has weird ideas about gender/sex/violence.

Right? This story is basically gold, yet both renditions of it have been horrific.

Yeah it’s a shame I feel like they just buy the rights and push it out quickly Cus they seem to value quantity over quality so rather than making something high quality they just push out numerous mediocre tv series and films with the same writing flaws

Netflix didn't make this show. Ryan Murphy did. Netflix doesn't write these shows. So saying they're torching them is wrong.

​@@DavidKen878 yeah it's weird how people don't understand this That said, channels" have arcing purchase themes. I'd sum for some "is it A24?" In any situations

@@DavidKen878 they bought the rights, hired Ryan Murphy, let him torch it and then greenlit the release so they did torch it.

The real one was from the 1940s but in the film it's new Edit: internet says the real one was built in 1905

@@nineteenfortyeight6762 I decided to look up the actual filming location and it was built in 2016. Not that it matters too much, but they didn’t even TRY to make it not look like a McMansion lol

@Iris ik r?? I live (sorta) near where the original incident occurred. And my town in particular has a combination of actual historical homes and recently built ugly McMansions, and almost nothing in between. So I could NOT take it seriously AT ALL when they kept being like “this house is so old and beautiful 😊” like it drove me CRAZY.

I personally didn't really notice that many mcmansion elements

maybe because i'm european, but it just didn't look like a historical home. it looked like pretty much every house in the u.s

the mom straight up always wore beige or cream colours, i kept watching and being like... surely she owns something in A Colour at least but no. the only time we see her in something other than beige is in the last episode when she is getting ready to go out in a sexy black dress and it basically signals her pulling away from her husband and entering her villain era or something. by the way her pottery was so boring and beige too!!! and she is supposed to be a prestigious Artiste? ok

Just like youtube mommy vloggers

Werner Herzogs sad beige clothes for sad beige children

😂🤣😂🤣😂

I got the feeling that a lot of things in this show were meant to be artistic or metaphorical but the guy whose idea this was wasn't allowed to actually get it into the story

I dunno if it's a like "oh he's a creep" or that most of his work is in the horror or horror-adjacent genres-American Horror Story, Ratched, American Crime Story, Dahmer, etc. and he WANTS his audience to feel uncomfortable about the daughter and knows that that's an easy way to do (also hes a gay man, so itd be weird to me if it was because it was something HE wanted to see-like why feet were a thing on iCarly or something)

@@FIRING_BLIND regardless of sexuality, Ryan Murphy is still capable of sexualizing young women/girls and using them as props, ie. using their sexualization as a plot device. Anyone is capable if they don’t respect that group.

@@FIRING_BLIND I certainly think his obsession with teens having sex is creepy- gay or not he does it for EVERY show even if it adds absolutely nothing for the story. It feels like he’s one of those “oh look at me I’m so edgy!!1!” people, but his “edge” is just shock humour that barely anyone but him finds funny. Kind of feels like Shame Dawson in a way. This is coming from someone who is a huge fan of American Horror story/ Glee/ Scream queens.

I do agree that nearly all of Ryan Murphy's shows have a profound and at times seemingly gratuitous emphasis on sex but I do think that's in part due to the close ties the horror genre has with sex, particularly sex between teenagers (like, think of all the old slasher films where a couple is making out and then they get butchered by the villain). Historically there was this idea that teens having sex = bad = deserving of horrible things, which is why the "virgin" character was usually the victor at the end of a slasher movie. In modern horror, a lot of creators try to subvert this idea because it's old-fashioned bs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the most famous examples of that but I think to some degree Ryan Murphy attempts it too. I realise I'm probably giving him way too much credit and it's possible that he just wants as much sex and violence in his shows as possible purely for shock factor, but it's something to think about 🤷‍♀️

His obsession with serial killers has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Yesss! This is perfectly put! Exactly how I felt about all the characterisation

you're not silly for saying that...the teen daughter plotline never even happened irl

It completely slipped my mind that they don't have access to their own recordings. Also, couldn't the dad sue since the security guy installed a camera in their bedroom without their knowledge? I don't know how installing that type of system works but wouldn't they've signed something acknowledging what cameras have been installed and where? Assuming that they read it (which giving these people's IQ level, I doubt it). If they wanted to have the security guy as a suspect, they didn't have to include him and the teenage daughter subplot. HE'S THE GUY THAT INSTALLED THE SECURITY CAMERAS AND HAS ACCESS TO THEM! That's enough to make anyone look at him twice.

@@MsVampirestories exactly! the dad really didn’t bother to go check his recordings of the footage to see who the hell this woman was coming in his room at night? or he didn’t have access to them? then why did they have the camera system installed in the first place. this series has so many problems with the plot and characters. it’s ridiculous. this subplot alone has so many issues they would’ve been better leaving it out all together. a few other things that really bothered me about it was 1) they all kept calling her a 17yo girl when all they saw was her creeping in the room and wearing pigtails, pray tell how would they know shes 17 or even underage from that small amount of grainy ass footage?! & 2) the way the mom (nora? i don’t care to double check lol) saw that sketchy footage and, like Swell said, didn’t question why there’s a camera in the room and immediately just believes it and turns on her husband? like she really had no thoughts beyond “girl/woman in room w knocked out husband filmed on a creepy bedroom spy camera while we have an ongoing Watcher problem = husband cheating for sure” it’s not even a lack of attention to details, the whole story of this series just don’t work

i kept thinking there was no way the guy would be as stupid as to start anything with the teenage girl like! aint no way

You’re not crazy, it’s just Ryan Murphy doing what he always does, taking everything too far

They repeatedly allude to this being a sudden thing, and even Dean himself asks Andrew (I think, maybe someone else), the man who lived in the house with his cellist wife who took her own life, whether he'd always had old-fashioned attitudes or only when he moved into the house. Andrew gives Dean no answer. They half-arsed some "This house makes me a stereotypical old-fashioned guy" subplot.

So you didn’t watch it?

parasocial nemesis

I love you

This should have been better explained in the show. I don't want a doctor popping out and explaining it... but my little cousin has selective mutism. It's so upsetting to see this adorable little girl vibrant and laughing and then her anxiety stops her mid sentence. She doesn't really have a choice when her words can "turn on/turn off" and she tries so very hard. She's learned to find ways to communicate. She's very smart. Smarter than I'll ever be. But... we could really use with better depictions and explanations. If it means two sentences of someone saying they can talk, but sometimes it's difficult for the words to come out, then I'm happy enough for that rudimentary explanation. Ryan Murphy isn't great with disability and we're like show dogs and cats to him. I don't appreciate what he does to us as a whole community. We are vast and varied. He just kind of chucks us into a pile.

I thought they were trying to portray some kind of subtle supernatural effect of the house that than snowballed via human interactions for a few episodes! Once I realized it probably wasn't that or anything that actually would hang together, I looked it up and discovered I was correct. :P

Me too lol

I'm in America and I thought she meant the desert at first too. I was like " ohhhh!I didn't realize they had nice hotels in the Sahara Desert! And then she mentioned the festival and I figured that probably wasn't what she meant 😅

Sahara is a hotel chain!

when she said she was in the sahara i thought she meant the desert in africa too, which really confused me. like "wtf are you doing in the middle of a desert in africa?"

@@Ray_Vun she hiked the Sahara desert so we don't have to

And most of all, the security guy installing a friggin camera inside their bedroom facing their bed, and then confronts him like "yeah I did it to prove a point, and I'm going to call the cops" which is super illegal to secretly install a camera like that, the other guys like "Oh, well yeah I kinda deserved that, please don't tell my wife" I was like WHAT! dudes been watching you with your wife in bed, and you don't even consider calling the cops on HIM? That movie just plain ran out of ideas too early.

@@lissettelopez8331 that was hilarious. “Oh I just happened to install a camera for no reason but then it turns out the villains sent someone to get into bed with you so I can blackmail you”

Firstly, when the detective (the cop, not the private eye) tells Dean and Nora he understands that they are afraid, they get defensive immediately. "We're not afraid, we're pissed" or something like that. Even if you don't want to come across as afraid/fearful, you can say that you're worried/concerned because of your children. It was odd. It seemed as if they felt attacked by the detective. Then it's Karen who tells Nora that she "should be angry". And Nora goes home and tells Dean "You know, I am angry". So odd.

I grew up there and can confirm that no one lives in central jersey for the sense of community, just the Raritan Valley line 😂

@@emmarosestrong Westfield isn’t central Jersey. It’s north Jersey. Atleast I’d consider it north Jersey lol

Just an excuse for the creepy people involved to show pics of the daughter in a sexualizing way to please the creeps they know will watch hoping for something. It’s so gross!

@@phoenixgirl70 🤡

I grew up in that town. The people who belong to the Echo Lake Country Club, that they based it on, probably would have quietly applauded the racism. The people there were always pretty awful.

i laughed when the karen woman said "i know theodora never lived in the neighborhood and sure as hell was never in the country club because we barely have any black members there, so believe me i would remember her!" lmao

​@@britkimmins Back in like the 50's my great grandfather was denied from a country club because he was an Italian man. They thought he would bring "Bad company" with him, which meant they thought he was a part of the mob.

Oh my. Country Clubs can be VERY racist. Not just against black people or Jewish people, they can be down right brutal if you’re not 100% WASP. They are private clubs that can make any rules they want. It’s revolting. Many have gotten better but there are scores full of following historic bullshit built solely for exclusion. It’s gotten better but at a turtles pace and more due to outside pressures.

@@phoenixgirl70 🤡🤡

Because real life isn't pc & doesn't push the narratives they want it to

@@goddammitalana Wtf? Are you ok?

@@goddammitalana PC? Seriously? She literally pointed out that the real children were little and the show went out of its way to sexualize the daughter by turning her into a teenager and taking skimpy photos. Real life was definitely more “PC” than that.

Because the real story is pretty boring, they got a couple letters with on-the-nose "threatening" writing with details about them that anyone could have easily heard or seen from outside.

It was sold in 2019 for a considerable loss, to another family. Read the 2018 story in The Cut, and the recent update in the same.

@@dontbefatuousjeffrey2494 Yes I read the cut article that Amanda put in the description. Def worth the read! Are you saying that you think the watcher is who eventually bought the house in 2019? It's an interesting possibility but that's a long time to wait and risk someone else buying it first

@@cakebby18 I doubt it, but some people subscribe to that theory. I agree with you 🙂

That’s just how central jersey is. Petty disputes about zoning and property values. When it came up that none of the towns met their low income housing requirements, the classist racist WASP types came out in droves to make sure poor people didn’t have the right to exist in their presence.

Single family zoning and its consequences

@@emmarosestrong i'd say westfield is more north jersey, but regardless you're right. all the high-earning nyc expats who live in the surrounding areas sure like to brew up a toxic environment for the ppl that have been living there for years

Yes! When I finished watching I was just ... angry about how much of a waste of time it was. I kept sort of updating my spouse about it being like "Oh, I think they are going in this direction now". For a while thought it was going to turn out that the dad was possessed or something and that was why he was apparently acting completely different and was so weirdly intense all the time. What even was this show?

the kid opens the dumbwaiter and there are shane and ryan crouching in the dark

I was hoping the real Watcher would torment her just to validate the family but nooo. It had to be the dad

I’m up

See, from the title of the show I assumed it would be about the night stalker but nah, it’s just about a story that pretty much everyone believes is a hoax lol

Considering that there's a lot of evidence that the family did this to themselves in order to get out of the mortgage, them selling the rights to their story to Netflix for 7 digits is, something else.

EXACTLY!!! There’s just nothing!!!

EXACTLY!!! There’s just nothing!!!

@@ndawn90 there’s reasonable doubt that they didn’t do that to themselves tho. If they really went through all that at least they got some cash.

I did not originally know it was based on a true story. Without that knowledge, I enjoyed the first few episodes. A great mystery show for a weekend being sick. But then it continued like it did...and then I learned the backstory. Eesh.

@@bab8771 yeah I think that had I not known that it's true I would have probably enjoyed it more

I was so confused by that! They somehow added a completely different story and didn't even do that one any good either.

@@panicatthefallout7710 right? who knew you could throw two interesting things together and get nothing good out of it. what even?????

Dude same!!!

We are getting really desperate after first season finale 😔

The only saving grace of this show is that a Bobby Cannavale is hot That’s it

Happy accidents

Much better!

I watched the keanu Reeves 2000 movie instead