Featured photo above: Ryan Murphy (left) laughing in our faces when we asked him how any suspense or dramatic stakes can be maintained if any character killed off can be brought back to life and/or patched back together whimsically,* including a decapitated main character with one hand being put back together offscreen, which is barely mentioned other than a throwaway line.  Meanwhile, Kathy Bates (middle)  and a woman who appears to be a young, strangely friendly Naomi Campbell Angela Bassett (right) are good sports and laugh at how much fun they had playing fictional versions of Delphine LaLaurie and Marie Laveau while wiping the floor with certain younger cast members –without even trying –no matter how goofy or nonsensical their plot-lines got.

Okay, uh, moving on a bit, to the Paleyfest 2014 panel that actually took place…

It is our firm hope that whoever she is cast as (in American Horror Story -Freak Show), Frances Conroy still has as much of a blast playing as she clearly did when she played Myrtle Snow.

Well, Coven started OUT feminist, anyway… the women in American Horror Story Asylum went through way more pain, suffering, and heartbreak–mostly at the hands of men–but we thought that all in all (other than poor, wretched Chloë Sevigne’s character Shelly, whose fate was so horrible that several fellow female friends of mine said was the reason they decided not to watch the rest of Asylum as it was “too disturbing” for them, and actually gave me a rare nightmare or two) the women in the show prevailed. However, that’s another article.  Plus, the Coven cast really did kick ass. Click “View original” in the lower left to read the entire Paleyfest article… and check out the beautiful Ms. Angela Bassett (and friend), looking thirty-five tops, not fifty-five, below (and not looking too bad in the featured image, either)! Let’s hope she gets to have just as much fun on “Freak Show”, which will premiere in October 2014.

*including a decapitated main character with one hand being put back together offscreen, which is barely fucking mentioned other than a throwaway line because, you know, witches …then telling us “Don’t be a hater, dear,” when we express valid disappointment in the last 1/3 of the season or ask for clarification on plot holes we could drive a frat party bus through, and then laughing heartily while patting himself on the back at his own clever reference to a line of dialogue on the show.  Later, Murphy howled with laughter when asked to define the term feminism, then  soon after composed himself and changed the subject when another audience member pointed out that feminism is comprised of more than women characters deciding to use the majority of their time and supernatural powers by hurling physical abuse, bitchiness, and actual intentional slaughter at other women on the show, rather than having man-on-woman violence.  Wow, I would have no problem writing a fictional version of the entire panel like this, but hopefully I got it out of my system for now.

Also, in the interest of honesty and full disclosure, I freely admit that I would have KILLED to be an audience member at that panel, no matter how much of a let-down the back half of “Coven” was (I’d only kill if the seats were really good, though).