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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Chanel #5 is already starting to be interpreted by some viewers as a Yandere for Chanel, acting sexually promiscuous and homophobic as a means of staying in the closet.
    • Sam's death. She claimed to have known who the Red Devil was, and offered to help him/her. Was she not too proud to beg? Or did she sincerely want to join him? note 
    • Gigi and her relationship with Grace. Is she purposely trying to mislead her to cover her tracks, or is she trying to protect her from the Red Devil? Does she really care about Grace, or is she just being nice to her to appeal to her father? Her wanting to have Grace committed and locked up in an asylum could be evidence for both interpretations.
    • Chanel's rant defending Hester in Thanksgiving. A Heel–Face Turn, or Even Evil Has Standards?
    • Thanksgiving also provides one for Chad, although it's subtle. In the previous episode Chad said his family would expect him to marry the mother of his child. In this episode the family is established as having an army of lawyers to dispute paternity claims, and are shown to be more than happy to pay to make embarrassments "go away." This creates the shocking interpretation that Chad was lying about his family's expectations, and was making a conscious choice to take responsibility for his child.
    • Each Red Devil seems to see him or herself as smarter than the others. It's debatable how much this is true for any one of them, especially given how much this show revels in Unreliable Narrator and Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass. Even Hester, the final Devil, may have been more successful than her co-conspirators out of sheer dumb luck, at least until the Season 2 time skip where Hester confesses on camera like an idiot because she thinks double jeopardy means no one can be tried for a crime if someone else already has.
    • Grace could have actually felt guilty in her role of allowing the Chanels to be framed for murders that they didn't commit, which could explain why she is in a psych ward.
    • Miss Bean is interpreted as a Butt-Monkey forced to do humiliating things at Chanel's bidding. But the flashback in the second episode shows that Miss Bean knew of the bathtub baby and in fact got Dean Munsch involved - effectively starting the cover-up. Miss Bean also goes along with Chanel's plan to scare the pledges away. So one wonders if Miss Bean is as moral as she appears, is Chanel's treatment of her Laser-Guided Karma, or does she put up with the Chanels because she feels this is adequate punishment for her crimes?
    • Chanel is popularly theorized to be either an unaware Asexual or a heavily repressed Lesbian. This can be attributed to her comments about faking it or crying during sex with Chad, being shown to distract herself with Snapchat during sex with Dr. Holt, her desire to have a rich boyfriend being said to be entirely about social status and wealth, and various amounts of Ho Yay she has with other women (in particular Hester, Grace, Chanel #5, and Dr. Lovin).
    • After being released from the asylum, Chanel has an immediate Snap Back to her previous Alpha Bitch behavior and disordered eating habits. Is this a result of Chanel being placed back into the "real world" of society and all of the pressures she was under before— with the added stress of being cut off financially and being reviled by the general public, or was Chanel’s happiness and serenity in the asylum merely a something of a coping mechanism or her plainly losing her mind, potentially being drugged?
  • Angst? What Angst?: With the exception of a few ear-piercing screams, the cast is rarely ever upset over losing their so-called friends and acquaintances. Chanel flat-out gave Chanel #2 caustic Last Disrespects at her funeral, and no one called her out on it.
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: Somewhat inevitable, given that it's a horror show where Anyone Can Die, and a vast majority of the characters are either Alpha Bitches or Jerk Jocks, both of which are ripe to become Asshole Victims. Some find it hard to get invested in the show and its characters because of how spiteful they are (or at least initially appear to be). Many viewers who stuck around after the first few episodes argue that it manages to move away from this by featuring a lot of Character Development and Hidden Depths from the more unpleasant characters which ultimately makes them more endearing, while others disagree.
  • Awesome Music: Scream Queens might be one of the first television series to use 90s music in the same classic way 70s and 80s music is used in movies and television.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Chanel Oberlin is the biggest one, and there's three bases that came from her (vs. the usual two) One base adores her, loves that she's the lead of the show, and thinks she is hilariously bitchy. The second base finds her entertaining, but thinks she is far too unlikeable, bitchy, and one-dimensional to be the lead character; they find her incredibly overexposed, but would like her a lot more with a smaller role. The third base straight-up hates her due to her unrepentant bitchiness, finding it more annoying than amusing. Being portrayed by Emma Roberts makes her even more divisive. She's only gotten more divisive as the show goes on. Her fans continue to praise her for being a royal bitch to everyone and also like to point out that there are some scenes implying Chanel has Hidden Depths, such as defending Hester. On the other hand, her detractors point out that Chanel is becoming a hypocrite as she defends the same people she's bullied or, even worse, attempted to kill. She became even more divisive in Season Two, as her nicer side was shown even less and her bitchiness increased— some fans hated this, finding her too annoying to Love to Hate her, and others loved her even more.
    • Denise Hempville, the security guard assigned to protect the girls of Kappa Kappa Tau. Some fans love her, finding her to be among the funniest characters in her debut episode as well as her "GTFO" attitude towards the killer being present. On the other hand, a lot of fans utterly loathe her, seeing her as a terribly written, obnoxious, and racist stereotype, as well as a ripoff of Reese from Urban Legend.
    • Hester Ulrich. Some viewers find her psychopathic tendencies to be hilarious, and feel she steals every scene despite her small role, but a sizable amount of viewers also found her extremely psychopathic personality to be as creepy as the characters did. She's become even more divisive as the show continues, with some fans loving Michele's performance and the plotline about her trying to replace Chanel, citing her as one of the most entertaining, original, and interesting characters of the show. On the flipside, a lot of fans are tired of her being a "wanna-be Chanel" (despite the two being very different characters) and find her Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch storyline to be redundant as there already is an Alpha Bitch with Chanel Oberlin. And, as said, there's also a large segment who just hates her because it's Lea Michele (not even because of her acting, because of the actress).
    • Pete Martinez. A lot of fans find him to be just as bland and uninteresting as Grace, while others appreciate that he's able to function as an Only Sane Man Nice Guy while still bringing some comedy to the show.
    • Grace Gardner. Many viewers don't like her that much, stating that outside of her being an Only Sane Man, she's bland and uninteresting. Others don't seem to mind her that much, if only because she's one of only the few genuinely good people in a cast of Alpha Bitches and Asshole Victims.
    • Chanel #5 has quickly become one of the most divisive characters in the show. Some fans love her for her constant on-edge personality, Oscar-Nominee Abigail Breslin's killer performance, and being one of the more insecure realistic characters. However, others hate her for her constant whining, Abigail's performance (which was meant to be as whiny and obnoxious as possible) and for her standing up to Chanel O in almost every episode before immediately going back to being her minion five minutes later.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • The Chanels beating up a pair of sexist jerks in "Haunted House." The scene comes completely out of nowhere, is over the top even by this show's standards, and is the one time in the whole thing so far where we're supposed to be siding with them completely non-ironically.
    • The dance party at the end of "Seven Minutes in Hell," which Hester lampshades.
    Hester: "This is so wonderfully random!"
  • Broken Base:
    • The cafeteria scene in episode 4. While there are many who feel it's a feminist moment, there are also many who find it out of place and preachy, or even outright insincere and hypocritical, given how Chanel herself treats the other pledges. It's worth noting that Ryan Murphy was retweeting or giving thumbs up to Twitter posts during the scene saying things like "WOO! FEMINISM!"
    • The second half of the finale has UTTERLY DESTROYED the unity of the fanbase, with approximately half the fans utterly despising everything about the finale, most specifically the Chanels getting a serious dose of Laser-Guided Karma. The other half absolutely loves it, and not only that, but for the exact same reason half the fans despised it.
    • Some fans can't agree on whether Billie Lourd is just forgetting to emote in certain scenes or intentionally being a Dull Surprise (#3 being an Emotionless Girl).
    • The constant jokes about Chanel #5's appearance. One half feels that it's getting too much and reinforcing negative stereotypes about beauty. The other thinks it still fits in with the show's Crosses the Line Twice humor. A third camp feels that sympathy for #5 is the Intended Audience Reaction. Chanel #5's general status as The Chew Toy has become this in season two. While there are plenty of fans who still enjoy it, a lot of fans feel that it's been done to death in the show and is no longer amusing and some feel it's too mean-spirited and unjustified and that #5's character is too miserable to laugh at her expense. There are also complaints that it often makes the other characters (particularly Chanel and Chanel #3) cruel to the point of being unlikeable.
    • The reveal that the final Green Meanie is none other than Wes Gardner. On one side, people are completely pissed that they turned one of the few genuinely good people in the show and the only other male survivor from season one into a bloodthirsty killer for almost no explanation at all, especially since this completely clashes over his characterization the previous season. On the other side, people are ecstatic since it means it wasn't some chump we hadn't met before and that we get to see Oliver Hudson show off more of his acting chops than just "Overprotective Dad."
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • As a horror-comedy show, it's best to expect this to happen Once an Episode, but for a real example, just about everything to do with Chanel #2's death, from the lack of any screaming of horror from the character when the Red Devil appears after texting her, instead texting the Big Bad instead of trying to make a run for it. After being stabbed in the back when in the middle of typing out a final message to post online, she then temporarily gains consciousness long enough to post a tweet before promptly dying.
    • In episode 3, the Dickie Dollar Scholars decide to confront the Red Devil face-to-face as revenge for Boone's death, only for them to get brutally beaten and for one of them to get his arms sawed off. The catch? "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" was the BGM for all of this.
    • Chanel's treatment of Miss Bean goes from cruel to hilariously cruel once she calls Miss Bean "White Mammy."
  • Designated Hero:
  • Ending Fatigue: The last episode of Season One was criticized for consisting mostly of expositions and backstories for the killer.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Resident douchebag fratbro Chad. The biggest reason for this is most viewers and critics agree that Glen Powell is perfect casting and that Chad himself is hilariously douchey without overstaying his welcome. But him being (relatively) pro-LGBT and genuinely accepting of his best friend Boone being gay helps a lot too, since it shows that Chad has some redemptive qualities. Of all the characters, he's had the second least amount of negative reception (behind Dean Cathy Munsch) It only increased even more in the finale, when he became one of the only characters on the show to not attempt to murder another character or cover up a murder for someone. His being genuinely saddened by the deaths of his fraternity brothers also helped. The general consensus is his Jerk with a Heart of Gold status makes him the second most sympathetic person behind Denise Glen Powell was predicted as the breakout star of the show for this reason.
    • Tiffany, aka "Deaf Taylor Swift," has a decent fan following on Twitter. The fact that she is very adorable and not as annoying as many of the other pledges helps. So many people liked her so much that they tweeted Ryan Murphy that he should bring her back as the Red Devil... despite her clearly having her head mowed off by them in the first episode.
    • Jennifer the Candle Vlogger, for her bizarre quirks and obsession with candles, and for contributing to silly background events.
    • Gigi Caldwell, for being a genuinely nice person and being a pretty quirky character all-around. The fact she's played by Nasim Pedrad and that she proved to be quite a bit tougher than everyone expected, also helps. The reveal, that she's the mastermind behind the Red Devil attacks, has if anything, only made her more popular.
    • Zayday Williams, due to Keke Palmer's great chemistry with the cast as well as her coming off as the one person trying to do something. It helps that she was the one sister who stood by Grace as well as the fact that she won't take any of Chanel's crap. When it was announced that Grace wasn't returning for the second season, fans were overjoyed at the news that Zayday would now become the show's protagonist.
    • Sadie Swenson/Chanel #3 gained a lot of fans as the season went on, thanks to Billie Lourd's deadpan delivery and the character being the sweetest (or, more accurately, least bitchy) of the original Chanels.
  • Epileptic Trees: A surprising number of people seem to believe that Boone's sister is either transgender or was adopted by a wealthy family. This is probably an attempt to expand a suspect list that, as of the last few episodes, basically consists of Hester and Chanel #5.
  • Fanon: With the series ending prematurely, fans have assumed that the Red Devil who attacks Chanel at the end of the Grand Finale is actually Grace, seeking revenge for her father's death.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • The first few episodes are decent, but the show's humor becomes more distinct and original (and bizarre) around the Halloween Episode. The plot also gets more dramatic around episode 6. Starting with episode 7, the show starts to balance humor and drama in a more meaningful way, while also fleshing out characters besides the Chanels. Though time will tell if this is permanent.
    • Season 2 has ironed out many of the wrinkles of the first season, such as juggling too much of a large cast and making the mystery too complex for them to keep track of. It also ups the focus on the Chanels, while focusing more on their humor and less on their misdeeds.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Denise jokes about feeling like her home is being invaded by ISIS in "Ghost Stories". While this was already a pretty dark reference, it doesn't help that there were massive attacks in Paris the week before the episode aired.
    • Season 1 ends with Grace leading Kappa to be a better sorority with the Chanels in jail. Everything with her happiness and her relationship with her father takes on a darker tone with the reveal that she is in a mental institution, and her father is now one of the Green Meanies. Rewatching Gigi try to convince Wes to have Grace put in an insane asylum is incredibly uncomfortable after that reveal.
    • At the beginning of 2x03, Chanel mocks Chanel #5's grief over Tyler, telling her to "get over" another one of her boyfriends being murdered. Do we even need to tell you what happens to Chanel's ''fiancé'' at the end of the same episode?
    • The scene where Gigi, dressed in a robe and mask to make her resemble Justice Antonin Scalia, is beaten up by Dean Munsch while the latter screams rebuttals against Scalia's real-world political views in her face. Regardless of your politics, re-watching the scene hits new highs of discomfort knowing that Scalia died suddenly less than three months after the episode aired.
  • He's Just Hiding:
    • Ariana Grande's fanbase was very insistent that this was the case for #2, and, in fact, continued to insist on the case even after #2 was killed on screen, her dead body was located, multiple characters commented that she was dead, and a funeral was held with her being either buried or cremated after. Not helping due to the fact that her ghost (or Chanel's dream of her) made an appearance, which fueled the fire for speculation. There is talk that the character was meant to have a larger role, but it had to be cut down because Ariana had to go on tour.
    • Jennifer and Hester. The most common running theory is that the former faked her death for show and is trying to tie her into the Red Devil killings, and the latter because Ryan Murphy's loose lips already spoiled future plot points for her. Hester was confirmed to be alive in the episode after her "death."
    • Few people so far have been willing to accept Gigi's death.
    • In season 2, fans are really unwilling to accept Chad and Denise's deaths. The former stayed dead but Denise was revealed to be Only Mostly Dead and got revived to pull Big Damn Heroes in the finale.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Chanel's insulting and harsh missive was leaked, exposing her true nature to the world and making her come under much public fire. Kim Kardashian would later leak a private call she had with Taylor Swift, exposing a lie Taylor made and making her come under much public fire. This coincidence comes off the heels of Chanel already being set up as a parallel for Taylor Swift when the singer's Swiftmas was parodied by Chanel.
    • In the second episode Hester says to close the eyes of Chanel #2's body otherwise "she'll take one of us with her". Come to the end of the series all four characters present in the scene - Hester, Chanel, #3, and #5 are still alive.
    • Dean Munsch trying to reassure Wes that he doesn't need to be an overprotective parent is downright hilarious when Jamie Lee Curtis returns for Halloween (2018) and Laurie's characterization in it.
    • Chanel #5 referencing Eiffel towering with Roger and Dodger is even more hilarious once it's revealed her vagina does have teeth.
    • Skyler Samuels (Grace) played an Alpha Bitch named Gigi on Wizards of Waverly Place. Nasim Pedrad's character on this show was also named Gigi.
    • A character named Chad is known for sleeping around with loads of women.
  • Ho Yay:
    • One-sided with Hester's obsession with the Chanels, especially Chanel #1, in a weird, stalkerish way. She did tons of research about KKT before pledging, asks to call them all 'Mom', and after being given a makeover and transformed into Chanel #6, she considers having to hold Chanel #1's hair on 'Purge Night' a pleasure. It turns out that she wants everything that Chanel #1 has and is.
    • Chanels #1, #3, and #5 all seem to have a crush on their (female) idol, Doctor Lovin'. In fact, there is a scene where Chanel imagines Lovin running to her in slow motion, her hair blowing in the wind, while romantic music plays in the background.
    • In a Season One episode, Chanel blackmails Chanel Number Five with the threat of sending Roger and Dodger video proof that Chanel #5 "regularly rubs it out" while watching Dora the Explorer - the fact that Chanel has not only watched Chanel #5 masturbate but enough times to know that it's something she regularly does, is... suggestive, to say the least.
  • I Knew It!: The actors don't get the scripts until they filmed the scenes, but the YouTube feature the Scene Queens is about a recap of the latest episode and guessing who the killer is. One actress successfully identified Hester as the bathtub baby but was wrong as to her being involved in the killings - she named Wes as her suspect.
  • Indecisive Parody: The biggest problem with the show is how serious we're supposed to take the characters, who are mostly cartoonish levels of stupid and Jerkass. Even the heroes are often Asshole Victims. This means that when there is a serious moment in the show or character development, it completely falls flat. It thus comes off as a show that's a bit like Archer is to spy movies for slashers only to move to something similar to a "normal" slasher.
  • Hollywood Homely:
    • Exploited by Hester. She says that she knows she's beautiful and that the neck brace was a way of distracting from that and making her believable as an outsider to the Chanels. Once the brace is removed, a minor makeover is all she needs. Likewise averted with Grace and Zayday, who don't fit the Chanels' standards of beauty, but are said to be pretty by many other characters.
    • Chanel #5 is treated like an ugly and hideously obese freak by the characters in the show. It is mainly used to show the other Chanels as bitches, but still.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Hester may have turned to be a manipulative, brown-nosing, two-faced bitch but she admits that it comes from having a lonely life due to her neckbrace to top it off Chanel callously attempts to kill her after pretending to forgive her. She manages to survive though, so it nulled a little.
    • Chanel #5 is very much the Beta Bitch, and is just as jerkish, mean, and aggressive as the other Kappa's. However, she is also pretty much Chanel's punching bag. She is always blamed for anything that goes wrong with Chanel (even when she's not involved or the task is impossible), Chanel never misses an opportunity to emasculate or humiliate her, and regularly spreads the rumor her vagina has teeth. Both her lovers die at the hands of the Red Devil. She admits to not feeling she belongs in Kappa due to getting in by being a legacy. Her family goes off on holiday without bothering to tell her. And when she is almost killed by the Red Devil, Chanel dismisses it for not being attacked in "a new and exciting way." The last straw is when her own parents willingly aid Hester in framing her for being the bathtub baby because they want to get rid of her once and for all. Quite a lot of her fans argue she really deserves a hug at this point. In Season Two she drops most of her Jerkass traits, gains, even more, Woobie traits, and becomes a pure Woobie.
    • By the end of the series, Chad Radwell definitely counts. While he's the campus' resident Jerk Jock, most of Chad's Jerkass tendencies come from sheer stupidity rather than outright malice (unlike a large majority of the characters), and is among the two characters who haven't tried to murder anyone by the end of the finale (the other being Denise Hemphill). These alone make him one of the more sympathetic characters on this show. However, what really seals his woobie status is that, as of the end of the show, Chad's Heterosexual Life-Partner and best friend, Boone is not only a murderer, but also dead, and the rest of his frat brothers (who he clearly cares a great deal for and considers to be his closest friends) have also been killed by the red devils, leaving Chad as the Sole Survivor of the Dickie Dollar Scholars. This is clearly something he finds incredibly devastating, to the point he even starts to break down and cry as he mourns them in the finale, saying he has nothing left to live for. And his reaction to everything that happened? Open a charity fund dedicated to his fallen friends with a genuine goal to help others in a Heartwarming Moment... well, kinda. And for good measure on the top of all of that, Denise Hemphill breaks up with him in the last episode.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Good evening, idiot hookers," which has made its way around Twitter fairly quickly.
    • Grace's ugly hats. People have made quite a few jokes about her ugly hats and how she's always wearing one.
    • "I May Slay Liz Daw." Liz Daw herself is a hypothetical person who does not exist. But that hasn't stopped fans from joking about her being a real person or being the Red Devil.
    • Chanel's insulting missive has gotten rounds on the internet.
    • Pretty much everything Chanel says. There are a lot of gifs, Tumblr blogs, articles, and pages dedicated to repeating memorable insults.
    • Glen Powell claims that he gets Chad Radwell quotes thrown at him whenever he's out in public.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • Scream Queens is often described as a throwback towards films such as Mean Girls and Heathers. Whether or not it succeeded in this regard is highly debated. Whereas the previous films made the alpha bitches and douchebag jocks the butt of the jokes, with much of the humor coming at their expense (and, in the case of Heathers, at their deaths) rather than their victims' expense. Scream Queens flips this by having The Chanels as the leads while the audience is meant to be laughing with them as they bully, torment, and tear down others in exaggerated ways. The aim was for a Crosses the Line Twice style of comedy. The reception has been far more mixed. Fans of the show point out that it's a comedy, and that it provides an interesting twist on the genre while the jokes themselves are not intended to be hurtful. Its critics, on the other hand, think the humor is simply mean-spirited and dislike the idolization the Chanels appear to receive from it, noting that jokes can still be hurtful. This also likely plays into why the finale was so divisive, as the former group wasn't pleased to see the show turn against their favorite characters while the latter was incredibly overjoyed at the notion of the Chanels receiving what they considered Laser-Guided Karma.
    • Regardless of one's feelings on the humor style itself, there is no doubt that the Chanels are meant to be horrible human beings, with Chanel Oberlin herself crossing the Moral Event Horizon on a regular basis (and arguably as early as the first episode). However, there is a large number of viewers who genuinely see them as good, or at the very least not bad, people. Likewise, their mean-spirited humor style has often been emulated by fans in real life, such as many of them mocking Abigail Breslin for her weight and defending it as "simply a joke," even when it's pointed out how cruel their behavior is. It's one thing to enjoy the show's humor style, it's certainly another to start attempting to emulate the Chanels in real life.
    • Grace's mom, from what little we know, is a horrible, horrible person and should never have been a mother. The show makes it very clear how bad she was, more different from the cartoonish evil of other characters. But at the same time, some people found her and her crazy behavior to be hilarious and awesome, due to being so over-the-top.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • An In-Universe example, Pete confesses to Grace that he was a Red Devil and a murderer. She is utterly horrified even with the justification being that Pete would have been killed otherwise and that it meant that Grace was no longer a target for the other Red Devils.
    • Chanel #1 is a horrible person from the start but she definitely crossed it by murdering Hester. Interesting point of note, Chanel seems aware of the trope by saying that, while she may have gone too far, she states that she can redeem herself morally. Based on the next episode, the show seems to agree. The same cannot be said for the audience.
    • Boone crossed it when he murdered Earl. While a well-established mass murderer by this point, up till then it was possible to believe he was a revenge mission or a Punch-Clock Villain. Murdering one of your friends, just to have a shot with his girlfriend is just cold though.
    • The Red Devil Hester well and truly crossed it when they murdered Gigi. While a mass murderer from the start, up till then there was so much ambiguity, same as Boone. However killing the woman who raised them, immediately after they gave you a heartfelt speech about how you're the only family they have left, is too much.
    • Chanel #5's parents cross it by framing their daughter as the Red Devil.
    • Nurse Hoffel's plan to murder the Chanels as revenge for Chanel killing her sister, Miss Bean is extreme but understandable. Her joining the Green Meanie in killing innocent people, starting with Chanel #9, however, is completely unjustifiable and reprehensible.
  • Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Nick Jonas and Lea Michele are hands down the most famous actors among the college students (together with Emma Roberts and Ariana Grande, but the former's character is Obviously Evil, the latter doesn't even make it through the Pilot). Turns out Boone and Hester are the Red Devil Twins. Jamie Lee Curtis is another high-profile figure in the cast and she may not have had any active part in the Red Devil killings, but she's still guilty of murdering her husband and framing his girlfriend.

  • Questionable Casting:
    • Quite a few people were not happy with Ariana Grande being cast for the show, in large part due to her incredibly divisive performance in the pilot. She's dead before the pilot ends, though.
    • Subverted with Nick Jonas as Boone, whose acting abilities (and character) were met with better criticism after the first two episodes aired.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Boone was The Scrappy before the show even began, mainly due to casting Nick Jonas. After the show aired, public reception of him vastly improved with a lot of people citing him as one of the highlights of the show.
    • She's still divisive, but people have been warming up to Grace after episodes 7 and 8, where she's more relevant to the plot. Episode 8, in particular, is a Humiliation Conga that delves into her character and her family, greatly fleshing her out and bringing out a new side to her. She also stops wearing her ugly hats. A lot of fans also have begun to find her as less of a Vanilla Protagonist due to suspicions that Grace herself is actually the red devil.
    • Like Grace, he was never worse than divisive, but Pete has become more popular as the show goes on. One of the biggest reasons is that he is the only Nice Guy left on the show as of episode 11 (seeing as fans don't know the details of his "murder" and many speculate it was some form of self-defense). Even Grace and Zayday were 100% good with the idea of murdering Dean Munsch (until Pete talked Grace out of the idea she suggested). His receiving more Character Development and giving more humorous performances have also helped quite a bit.
    • While she, like Pete and Grace, was never more than a Base Breaker, and is still divisive, Chanel #5 seems to be gaining more fans in Season Two, mostly due to viewers feeling bad for Chanel's terrible treatment of her, her hilariously poor luck, and her being a bit less bitchy than she was in season one.
  • Rewatch Bonus:
    • Re-watching the series reveals that there was quite a lot of missed foreshadowing to the killer(s) identity. Also, several scenes make a lot more sense after a second watching, once you know who the killer(s) were. Plus the added bonus of figuring out which character was acting as the Red Devil during certain scenes.
    • Rewatching scenes where Chanel accuses Libby of having teeth in her vagina makes for some great comedy after it's revealed to be true.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Predatory Lez is pretty hated, mainly due to fans considering her actress to be quite weak and her creepy tendencies.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Whether intentional or not, certain characters displayed characteristics familiar to those familiar with another Ryan Murphy series.
    • Dean Munch = Sue
    • Zayday = Mercedes
    • Chanel #1 = Quinn - humanity
    • Wes = Will
    • Hester = Rachel - musical talent + insanity
  • Squick:
    • While a hilarious moment, Chad admitting he got his first boner watching Faces of Death, a film showing examples of death both fake and real is truly this. Really just about anything with Chad's arousal with death, especially the fact that he confesses to masturbating in front of headstones he takes a shining to when walking through graveyards.
    • In Episode 4, when Hester and Chad go into the haunted house to make love, which has its share of Squick on its own, Hester stumbles upon a wax replica of Ms. Bean's dead body, and wants to screw in the same room it's in. Turns out it's really Ms. Bean's body, and Hester's finger breaks the skin and touches the pus buildup inside. As if the series didn't have enough Nausea Fuel already.
    • Brock's romances with Chanel and later Hester can be this for a lot of viewers, given the (huge) age gap between the actors- something the show acknowledges.
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • Jennifer, who many fans were getting tired of due to the candle vlogger shtick being beaten into the dirt, is stabbed while doing another candle vlog, and her body is mutilated with candles.
    • For the viewers who found the Chanels to be incredibly hateable and unsympathetic (whether it be in a Love to Hate way or The Scrappy way), the finale is one big, long, Take That, Scrappy!. The entire episode is dedicated to tearing down the Alpha Bitch and her Beta Bitches, showing why they suck as human beings, and having them suffer major comeuppance for their bitchery in the form of extreme Laser-Guided Karma. It is just so cathartic if the viewer hated these girls. The Season 2 premiere reveals that although they achieved fame from a Netflix documentary clearing their names, it just made the public despise them even more and they became Fallen Princesses.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Chanel revealing the truth about Grace's mother is a very dark moment for the character. The incident prompts Denise to give Chanel a massive talking-to and she's ordered to apologize. It's implied that even Chanel herself thinks she may have gone too far.
    • The death of Tyler at the end of Season 2's second episode. Just after he and #5 fall in love for real, he's murdered by the killer. #5 is clearly devastated and the scene isn't Played for Laughs. What's more, is that Chanel and #3 don't use this as an opportunity to mock #5; instead of taking a shot at #5, Chanel just says "we have another serial killer".
    • Chad Radwell's death in 2x03 is one for both the viewers and the characters in the show. Even worse, Chanel's grieving over him at the beginning of 2x04.
    • As divisive as her character was, Grace being revealed to have been put in an asylum to due the trauma she went through is absolutely heartbreaking. Finding out about it from her father, who has now gone murder-the-Chanels insane, makes it even worse.
    • In the season two finale, Chanel #3 running after the doctors carrying Cassidy's corpse sobbing and screaming, is downright depressing.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A couple of cases throughout the series, and presumably more to be added after the finale-
    • Earl Grey was killed off in Episode 9, the first main credited character to die, an event fans had been eagerly anticipating. However, since he was the least developed of all the leads and had received significantly less focus even than several supporting and one-shot characters, this trope applies, especially since his relationship with Zayday was just beginning to get some attention. The character had some promise, too, being easily the nicest member of the Dickie Dollar Scholars, with no explanation given for why he joined the fraternity when his temperament is so different to that of his brothers, or how a British guy ended up attending an American college and deciding to join a Greek house (which has no real British cultural equivalent) in the first place.
    • Many agree that Gigi Caldwell's death in episode 10 was incredibly premature, pointing out that the character was not only a popular, hilarious scene-stealer, but that she had a lot of unused plot potential, seeing as she was a killer whose motives were still unexplained, whose exact connection to the bathtub baby was still unexplained, and who had not even been able to have her own reveal to the protagonists, including her boyfriend Wes or his daughter Grace. This occurring in the episode after another character was wasted did not help
    • Many fans regard Boone in this way too after episode 9, pointing out that, like the one mentioned above, the character still had a lot of untapped plot potential and was a fairly universally liked character (in contrast to the many Base Breaking Characters on this show). The above death occurring in the episode after did not help, especially since Boone's death was done to keep Gigi alive... only for her to die offscreen after having one scene in the very next episode.
    • Chad Radwell receives only one brief scene during the entire two-part finale which, while hilarious, has zero bearing on the Red Devil plot. He plays no actual role in the resolution of the story - in fact, he doesn't even witness it, despite there being loads and loads of one-shot characters present - and never gets to react to the Chanels being arrested and KKT reforming under Zayday, Grace, and Hester. The fact that he was dropped from the main titles in Season 2 and only reduced to recurring status (not to mention being killed off three episodes in) doesn't help.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Many viewers feel this way about the show itself, feeling it had a lot of potential to be great, but poor execution has resulted in many viewers imagining What Could Have Been instead of what actually is.
    • There could have been a lot of joke potential over having a character named Liz Daw show up near the end, and have Chanel #5 get a victory of some sort.
    • One of the promos for Season Two heavily indicated that Chanel would be out for revenge against Hester or at the very least have some anger and hostility towards her, both of which would have been immensely entertaining. Instead, Chanel- who, it is worth mentioning, responded to Hester trying to steal her boyfriend and Chanel #5 allegedly turning her in for murdering Miss Bean by attempting to murder them or get them murdered- without much convincing allows Hester to live with her and the other Chanels (as a prison escapee, something that directly puts Chanel in danger of being tried for harboring a fugitive) and, for some reason, also praises Hester for her intelligence and compliments her on successfully framing The Chanels.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: In an interesting case, the show presents the Chanels being successfully framed for the Red Devil murders, deemed hopelessly insane, and sentenced to spend life in the asylum as Laser-Guided Karma. However, a lot of fans felt at least in the case of Chanel #3 and #5 that although they did deserve to be punished this was simply too extreme. Despite their incarceration presented as making their lives better in the long run, a lot of fans feel they really didn't deserve their fate (although others do). The reasons for this differ:
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Chanel Oberlin in 1x10. The viewer is clearly meant to sympathize with her, seeing as Chad's relatives relentlessly and mercilessly rip her (and Hester) apart as a human being. The show even gives her a failed attempt at a Moment of Awesome when she calls his family out. However, Oberlin herself treats people WORSE on a regular basis, and is herself a racist, homophobic, classist, elitist, sociopathic, narcissistic bitch. It's also pointed out that, while Chad's family was undeniably cruel to Hester, Chanel Oberlin tried to murder Hester. In cold blood. With no signs of remorse. Needless to say, a good portion of the audience didn't feel particularly sympathetic when the Alpha Bitch had the tables turned.
    • Chad himself. The show likes to play his quirky behavior for laughs and make him seem like a clueless but lovable idiot, but he can be hard to sympathize with when he's emotionally abusive to Chanel and cares more about her money and popularity, as opposed to Chanel, who genuinely seems to love him. His mistreatment of Chanel's supposed to come off as karma for her, but he receives no comeuppance and is always Easily Forgiven. Granted it migrated a bit by his redeeming traits and the fact he loses all his friends throughout the season.
    • In the flashback when Pete is refused admission to DDS. This is clearly played as an elitist moment. However, the Dickies don't bring up issues of wealth, they bring up his lack of knowledge about golf and lack of interest in physical fitness. Since these are clearly the unifying forces of the frat, it's perfectly valid to say that he's not a suitable candidate.
  • The Un-Twist: Generally used in many of the Red Devil's appearances. The characters expect the Red Devil to show up at a particular time or place (either because he's being called out, or simply because it's an obvious time to strike), and...he shows up and attacks them. This is likely because, in a 13-episode series, the Devil NOT showing up when expected would get old and repetitive.
  • Vanilla Protagonist: Many fans find Grace to be bland compared to many over the top characters in the show.
  • The Woobie:
    • Ms. Bean had to deal with the Kappa Kappa Taus for years, and for her trouble, she gets her head dunked in a deep fryer.
    • Tiffany, aka 'Deaf Taylor Swift', just wanted to sing "Shake it Off". Then she gets her head shaken off with a lawnmower.
    • Chanel #3's uncharacteristically impassioned cry of "I'm sorry Sam!" when she believes that her evil secondary personality was directly and deliberately responsible for the latter's death is a bit of a Tear Jerker - especially in comparison to other characters like Grace, Zayday, and Chanel #5, who all seem more or less over the deaths of their respective love interests by the finale, even if they were much more recent and the character supposedly more sensitive and likable.
    • Chanel #5 seems to have become this for a lot of viewers in season two, as she's lost most of her Jerkass tendencies from season one and is constantly being treated like garbage by her 'friends' and pretty much the entire world. Made worse when she once again loses her boyfriend to the killer and is then mistaken for the killer and later stabbed in the back, left to bleed out.
    • Doctor Brock Holt. He's being constantly tormented by his evil transplant hand, overworked by Dean Munsch, stressed over trying to keep said hand from killing people- pointedly, Chanel- along with the pressure of being the only actual doctor at the hospital, and he's been made to look (by Cassidy) like the Green Meanie/flashback baby.

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