American Horror Story: Cult feels like they’re exploiting the current political climate as much as commenting on it

CNN

Although Ryan Murphy has insisted Cult “is not about Trump or Clinton,” but it uses the toxic political divide as a jumping-off point,” says Brian Lowry. But this series “is too blunt an instrument to effectively probe that terrain, using the equivalent of an axe where a scalpel is required,” he says, adding: “If the producers wanted to weigh in with any gravity on today's cultural schism they should have developed something new instead of trying to squeeze those aspirations into the blood-rimmed contours of American Horror Story. As is, the resulting scheme plays like a gimmick at its worst, and at its best, an awkward fit.” PLUS: Cult ends up rendering all political sides as caricatures, it tries to make the Trump era scarier than it is, how those terrifying posters were created, and ranking every season