American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 13

As Jim Morrison said prophetically months before he kicked it as the result of a heroin overdose, "This is the end" (too soon?). And so American Horror Story: Coven ends its third season, although we no longer feel right calling it our "beautiful friend." (WE MISS YOU TATE!)

• Stevie Nicks (we love you!), at the request of Ryan Murphy & Co, reappears to personally scrub "Horror" out of the show's title with an episode killing version of "Seven Wonders." = -10pts
• Mixing Glee and AHS in the same season. Twice. = -25pts
• Having a last supper and staging it in the manner of the actual Last Supper, while also ignoring any religious correlations to the famous painting. = -8pts (For confusing things by placing Myrtle in Jesus' seat. Wha-?)
• It's a bad sign when the actual "Seven Wonders" wouldn't even make it into the outtakes of a David Blaine special. = -10pts
• Taking a dig at NBC's live production of The Sound of Music when your own show has shit the bed for the last four episodes. = -13pts (They were live. What's your excuse?)
• Hell being a high school biology class. = +4pts
• Opening an empty suitcase that is suspiciously big enough for your own body to fit into. = +4pts
• Goodbye ethnic albinos! You will be missed! = +3pts
• Catfishing is hell. = +5pts

Total Score: -50pts

Season Score: +51pts

We've already shared our biggest complaint with this season a few scorecards ago. The best we can say about this episode is that it ended the season. We'd love to tell you how amazing the "Seven Wonders" were, but you could just Spotify Stevie Nicks and listen to it yourselves. 

Ryan Murphy & Co need to take a page from the playbook of a great show like The Wire and stop asphyxiating on the idea of final episode money shots. It didn't work for this guy. It's not working for this show. Have your climax a week early and allow the final episode to deal with the fallout. What we ended up with was an unnecessarily drawn-out show that came to a sudden, shambling halt, with little or no time to reflect on the consequences from the plot that's been building up for the last 13 episodes. The fact that this season ended with a faux-feminist message was laughable, given the last half of the season. But perhaps that's the real horror: fading to black with a cry of "GIRL POWER!!" and expecting your viewers to forget that what you essentially forced us to endure was a fictional Real Housewives-esque portrayal of women as bitchy backstabbers (with magic!). Because it sure wasn't funny. 

Score Technician: Sean McConnell