'AHS: NYC' Plays Like a Companion to Ryan Murphy's Dahmer Series
(CNN) — Producer Ryan Murphy has premiered three series in roughly a month, so a degree of overlap is perhaps understandable.
Even so, the new season of his long-running FX franchise, this one dubbed American Horror Story: NYC, feels like a companion in its central themes to Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which premiered last month on Netflix.A key element of the Dahmer miniseries, based on the real-life serial killer who preyed on gay men in the 1980s and particularly people of color, was the extent to which homophobia contributed to an indifference that helped him avoid legal consequences, before his arrest in 1991.The latest American Horror Story is set in a different place, but an overlapping time, beginning in 1981 — just as the AIDS epidemic began, and before the disease had acquired that name — and focusing on a serial killer murdering gay men in New York City.The mysterious killer remains unidentified through the first two episodes, but suspicion surrounds a leather-clad figure known only as Big Daddy.
The key issue throughout the opening two hours, however, centers on city officials and the police department having little interest in solving the crimes, as even the unseen killer tells a reporter (Joe Mantello) who he kidnaps.
Before letting him go, the killer says of the NYPD, "They'll do nothing. They don't want to."The question of LGBTQ+ lives being seen as expendable by public officials during those years obviously parallels the AIDS crisis, which is a concurrent part of the story.
