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WARNING: Killer clowns ahead.

FX kicked off its latest installment of the award-winning American Horror Story last night, but this Freak Show-based version of the anthology got off to a different start than we expected.

Did we meet a few freaks? Oh yes.

The tiniest woman in the world is in the cast. As is Kathy Bates as a bearded woman… Evan Peters as a motorcycle rider with deformed hands (which allow him to easily pleasure a woman)… and Sarah Paulson as conjoined twins Dot and Bette.

The latter is a visual stunner, a character unlike any you’ve ever seen before and someone who should automatically win Paulson every Emmy.

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Watch American Horror Story Season 4 Episode 1 Online

These misplaced "monsters" have a home and a family in the carnival run by Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange), although their circus is struggling with attendance.

 

Hence why Elsa convinced Dot and Bette to join as new headliners, even after she figured out how they killed their mother because she wouldn’t allow them in public.

The police also figured this out, but Peters’ young biker killed a detective who came to arrest the twins because he’s all about keeping their family intact. This made Dot and Bette feel very much at home.

Overall, however, the premiere was more a character study of Elsa than anything else. She’s determined to be a star. It’s all she thinks about and all she talks about, even (as we later see) if she doesn’t exactly have a great voice.

But she tells her henchmen (Bates’ Esther) in a drug-induced haze that she merely brought the twins on board so they could help her become a household name and we eventually discover why Elsa can relate so well to the members of her carnival: the final season of the episode depicts her taking off her prosthetic legs.

It’s unclear if anyone else at the carnival knows she is like them, but it’s an interesting tidbit on which to conclude.

Oh… and there’s a killer clown on the loose in Jupiter, Florida. We see him commit a couple very bloody murders and we also see him take a little boy and a teenage girl hostage.

He’s on the carnival grounds toward the end of the opener, witnessing all the freaks stab the corpse of that murdered detective. Interesting. And scary!!!

Did you catch this solid premiere? Visit TV Fanatic now to watch American Horror Story online if you need to catch up.