{"id":372187,"date":"2025-11-11T19:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T19:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372187\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T19:15:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T19:15:18","slug":"ryan-murphy-is-getting-the-worst-reviews-of-his-career-it-doesnt-even-matter-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372187\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Murphy Is Getting the Worst Reviews of His Career. It Doesn\u2019t Even Matter | Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps it was inevitable that the premiere episode of \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d<\/a> would be a commercial smash. The moment its reviews dropped \u2014 embargoed until the day of release \u2014 its Rotten Tomatoes score dropped to 0% (later growing to 5%), but all that negative attention hooked audiences. Could this Hulu legal drama starring Kim Kardashian really be that bad? Yes, it was, but as viral marketing and the power of social media gossip have proven, everyone loves a trainwreck.<\/p>\n

So, it barely mattered that almost every critic deemed \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d to be unwatchable and curiously inept, because it created a wave of hype that led to Hulu getting its biggest ratings<\/a> for an original scripted debut in over three years.<\/p>\n

With any other showrunner, a year like 2025 would be a career low. For Murphy, the critical maulings and ethical quandaries have been sidelined as the ratings overwhelm such discourse. Aside from \u201cAll\u2019s Fair,\u201d which is truly the worst thing ever released<\/a> under the sizable Murphy umbrella, this year saw Murphy release a third season of his Netflix anthology \u201cMonster\u201d<\/a> focused on the story of murderer Ed Gein. This show may have a few Emmys to its name, but it\u2019s also inspired some of the most skeptical reviews of the Murphy-verse, thanks to accusations that his fascination with true crime veered wildly into the fetishistic. With \u201cThe Ed Gein Story,\u201d even ardent viewers of the previous seasons felt discomfort with the leering sexualization of a killer and necrophile, and the trite attempts to add cultural heft to a story otherwise packaged as hyper-violent trash.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But again, viewers still tuned in. Netflix\u2019s ratings can be hard to parse, but the streamer said \u201cMonster: The Ed Gein Story\u201d hit number one on its weekly charts, with 20.7 million views in its first week of release. Still, that is down from the Jeffrey Dahmer season, suggesting that viewer fatigue could be setting in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonster\u201d and \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d suffer from many of the same symptoms that have long plagued Murphy\u2019s shows. They are both lavishly stylistic, tonally confused and increasingly reliant on gimmicks over craft. \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d went for stunt casting through the presence of Kardashian, while \u201cMonster\u201d attempted to tie the story of Gein\u2019s crimes to the wider American cultural fascination with serial killers and their presence in iconic films like \u201cPsycho.\u201d Both featured a slew of legendary actors doing some of the worst work of their otherwise illustrious careers.<\/p>\n

They were also bound together by a curious technical and narrative ineptitude that feels like a world away from the prime years of Murphy\u2019s reign. Compare \u201cMonster\u201d to the genuine brilliance of the first two seasons of \u201cAmerican Crime Story,\u201d where the weaving of true crime and cultural autopsy was expertly done, and the differences are stark.<\/p>\n

\"alls-fair-kim-kardashian-hulu\"<\/p>\n

Kim Kardashian in \u201cAll\u2019s Fair.\u201d (Disney\/Ser Baffo)<\/p>\n

\u201cACS\u201d offered a dense portrait of America through the lens of a famous crime, but remained tightly controlled and rejected the easy jokes or morals. But all three seasons of \u201cMonster\u201d have been a sledgehammer of noise, punctuated with a gawking approach to the disturbing crimes whose reverberations can be felt to this day.<\/p>\n

Watching Ed Gein be portrayed as a cover model buff dude, whose perfect frame is obsessed over by the camera, cannot help but make one queasy, an emotion replicated in the Menendez brothers season, when the abused and traumatized siblings were depicted as pseudo-incestuous babes the viewer was meant to feel aroused by.<\/p>\n

At least \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d doesn\u2019t want to tackle anything as serious as serial murder, but it also fails to pass the rock bottom expectations it sets for itself. Murphy used to be a great soap opera maker, as shown through the slick melodrama of \u201cNip\/Tuck\u201d and the first season of \u201cGlee\u201d (after that, we dare not speak of.) There\u2019s a genuine sense of impish fun in these shows where emotions are high but taken just seriously enough amid outlandish plots. Crucially, these shows worked when the characters had some grounding in expressive truth. Think of Brittany and Santana in \u201cGlee,\u201d tropey cheerleaders whose relationship evolved from a one-line joke to something of surprising heft. There\u2019s nothing remotely like that in \u201cAll\u2019s Fair,\u201d where these ciphers of women are held up only by expensive clothes. They\u2019re not so much people as mouthpieces for some of the most flop-sweaty dialogue on TV in 2024.<\/p>\n

Those terrible one-liners, however, have broken containment and found what might have been their intended home: social media. \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d seems a hell of a lot more watchable in bite-sized increments or via Instagram photos with the captions overlaid on pictures of Sarah Paulson looking fabulous. It made the show enticing to an audience that consumes content through TikTok summaries and gif collections. If the ethos that any publicity is good publicity is true, Ryan Murphy is Exhibit A.<\/p>\n

\"Monster\"<\/p>\n

Charlie Hunnam in \u201cMonster: The Ed Gein Story,\u201d Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch in \u201cMonsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.\u201d (Netflix)<\/p>\n

Murphy has a level of power that few people in TV history will ever possess. He is a household name who attracts a major audience across multiple channels and platforms, and who receives a seemingly unlimited supply of blank checks to make whatever he wants. He doesn\u2019t need to follow network notes, if they\u2019re even given, because the viewer numbers speak for themselves. Critics and victims\u2019 rights groups think \u201cMonster\u201d is repulsive? Commercial ratings speak louder. \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d is poorly made and insulting to its own audience? They\u2019re tuning in anyway. It\u2019s unwatchable? Hate watching still counts. Maybe we\u2019re being rage-baited.<\/p>\n

But that untouchable quality doesn\u2019t make Murphy impervious to some more personal criticisms. Horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins, whose father, \u201cPsycho\u201d star Anthony, is a character in Season 3 of \u201cMonster,\u201d called the show out for being part of the \u201cNetflix-ization of real pain.\u201d And during filming of Murphy\u2019s upcoming\u201cLove Story\u201d series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, Jack Schlossberg repeatedly called the creator out for hijacking his family\u2019s struggles. To that, Murphy made a pretty nasty comment<\/a> about Schlossberg, the nephew of JFK. Jr., insinuating that he had no right to be mad because he probably didn\u2019t remember his own uncle. Are all real people\u2019s tragedies just a blank canvas for him to project his own gawking melodramas onto?<\/p>\n

Murphy will, of course, be fine. Aside from the critical low points of his two newest series, he\u2019s still on top of network land with the \u201c9-1-1\u201d franchise \u2014 where his silliness makes sense \u2014 and \u201cMonster\u201d Season 4 is underway. Still, that doesn\u2019t make his creative slump any less disappointing.<\/p>\n

Dishearteningly, \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d and \u201cMonster\u201d make it seem like Murphy simply doesn\u2019t care as much as he used to. As aggravating and grotesque as these shows are, they are, above all else, half-baked to the point of shoddiness. More clout and freedom should have made for far more nourishing results rather than the wannabe prestige version of trash we\u2019ve gotten. We\u2019d suggest that audiences deserve better, but if they\u2019re tuning in either way, does it really matter?<\/p>\n

\u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu. \u201cMonster\u201d Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n

The post Ryan Murphy Is Getting the Worst Reviews of His Career. It Doesn\u2019t Even Matter | Commentary<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps it was inevitable that the premiere episode of \u201cAll\u2019s Fair\u201d would be a commercial smash. The moment…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":372188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,101739,179234,171,14406,37602,4659,59164,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-372187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-charlie-hunnam","10":"tag-ed-gein","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-kim-kardashian","13":"tag-monster","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-ryan-murphy","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115532669913349893","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}