American Horror Story: Delicate Gets Off to a Surprisingly Meek Start

Motherhood has always been a fraught concept on American Horror Story, going all the way back to poor Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton) dying in childbirth in the show's first season (which also featured a terrifying reanimated demon baby called the Infantata). If you're not giving birth to the Antichrist, you're discovering that the son you gave up for adoption years ago because his father was a serial killer has now become a serial killer himself. It seemed inevitable that Ryan Murphy's long-running anthology series would eventually dedicate an entire season to a maternity-horror story. Which is why it's so surprising that Season 12 has gotten off to a relatively timid start, mistaking vague flatness for subtle insight.

American Horror Story: Delicate, which premiered Wednesday night on FX, centers on Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts), a decidedly meek yet also world-famous star of film and television who's undergoing IVF treatments in order to get pregnant. But something is amiss, and it's not just the spiders that have taken to crawling out of her hair at inopportune times. One night, she wakes up to a strange hand caressing her recently impregnated belly, and the spry, hooded home invader manages to escape Anna's Brooklyn Heights condo, though not before scrawling a threatening/pleading message in red lipstick on Anna's mirror. Someone (or someones) doesn't want Anna to have this baby.

Maternity and child-bearing is a subject that has long fascinated horror filmmakers, understandably so. The loss of control over one's body, the terror of having something vulnerable to protect from a threatening world — these are powerful themes. They've been at the heart of such horror classics as David Cronenberg's The Brood, Ari Aster's Hereditary, and Jennifer Kent's The Babadook.

Delicate is the first AHS season to be based on a previously published work, in this case, Danielle Valentine's novel Delicate Condition, which was published in August 2023. The novel was optioned for adaptation well before publication, having drawn comparisons to Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby, which was turned into a horror classic starring Mia Farrow as a woman impregnated by the devil (with her husband's collaboration) who unwittingly gives birth to the son of Satan. American Horror Story has always been incredibly literate about its references, so it's hard not to read a Rosemary's Baby narrative into this show from the very start.

A classic like Rosemary's Baby is also a high bar to clear, and after one episode, Delicate may not be up to the task. There is a lack of interiority about the way showrunner Halley Feiffer has sketched out Anna's plight. The premiere episode is effective in depicting Anna’s whirlwind of treatments as she’s whisked away from appointment to appointment, usually by her husband (Matt Czuchry) or her fertility doctor (Denis O'Hare). It's a subtle but intentional communication that Anna is not exactly the driving force in her own life. But Feiffer and Roberts are — and this is not a criticism that is often aimed at American Horror Story — perhaps too subtle in going about this.

Feiffer — a playwright and TV writer who wrote for Impeachment: American Crime Story — writing every episode this season marks a first for the series. That singular voice may end up lending Delicate a sense of cohesion that previous AHS seasons have lacked. But maybe cohesiveness isn't the virtue we make it out to be when it comes to this show. American Horror Story's lifeblood has been chaos, and while that's produced some of the series' unwatchable lows, it's also produced some audacious highs. This first episode of Delicate is, for an AHS premiere, incredibly buttoned up.

The biggest issue is Anna herself, who barely registers as a character. Does she want to have this baby? Does she not want to have this baby? Does she want this movie-star career that's suddenly booming? Certainly in 2023 there's a wealth of psychic unease and terror surrounding the idea that women are losing control over their bodies and their reproductive choices. What we get from Roberts and Feiffer here is vague ambivalence, which — and granted it's only been one episode — seems like a waste of a promising premise.

It's definitely strange to see Emma Roberts playing such a wallflower on an American Horror Story season. She seems to be playing deliberately counter to the bitchy, confident kinds of characters she's always portrayed on this series, and rather than coming off bracingly coiled up, she just feels drained of any kind of spark. (Of course, playing to type might have brought on its own share of issues at this moment, in the wake of her former co-star Angelica Ross's claims about Roberts making transphobic comments on set, about which Roberts has apparently reached out and apologized.) On the other end of the typecasting spectrum is AHS newcomer Matt Czuchry as Anna's husband, Dexter. Czuchry, who has perfected a kind of grinning overconfidence in his roles on Gilmore Girls and The Good Wife, feels all too predictable in the role of the transparently bad and selfish and probably conspiratorial husband.

This kind of casting malaise trickles down even further, which is a huge problem for a series that has historically thrived on its audacious casting choices. If you were hoping the much-ballyhooed addition of Kim Kardashian to the AHS fold was going to deliver the spark you were waiting for, keep waiting. Despite tossing off a "suck my cl*t" in her first 30 seconds on screen, Kardashian plays to type as Anna's publicist Siobhan. Even a seasoned AHS veteran like Denis O'Hare has put a more interesting spin on the irksome fertility doctor in the Tamara Jenkins film Private Life. The cast does deliver some bright spots, with Succession's Annabelle Dexter-Jones as an intriguing visual artist who looks distressingly identical to Dexter's dead first wife, and Tony winner Julie White bringing some much-needed over-the-top crone energy and delivering the episode's one true scene of explicit horror.

Easily the best and most exciting part of the episode comes at the very end with the teaser for what's coming soon in this bifurcated season (with production eventually coming to a halt during the strike, this season has been split into "Part 1" and "Part 2"). We're promised AHS faves Billie Lourd and Leslie Grossman as Hollywood strategists, an Oscar campaign for Anna's new movie, people dressed in creepy costumes, and what looks to be a flashback to Edwardian times. Julie White and Debra Monk share a "Broadway stalwarts/character actresses face-off" scene that's become a staple of any good AHS season. There's a goat. There's a head in a jar. Giant spiders! Cara Delevingne as a weird stalker! A shadowy cabal of people who either do or don't want Anna to have her baby!

We're promised, in other words, all the bells and whistles of an American Horror Story season. Whether those bells and whistles will adorn a central story that remains as uninspired and listless as this premiere remains to be seen.

New episodes of American Horror Story: Delicate air Wednesdays at 10:00 PM ET on FX, and stream next-day on Hulu. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.