Somebody send in the counsellors, the therapists and caregivers. Maybe bring some warm blankets, too.
Sunday night on the season finale of Fear the Walking Dead, the series reached a climactic point. Tens of thousands of "the infected," the zombies, that is, descended on an army base. The soldiers fled. A doctor killed numerous patients and then killed herself. The survivors fled to an oceanfront mansion and there, somebody else was killed.
When the ratings are fully counted, the episode will probably emerge as the most-watched program on Sunday night. It has that kind of appeal.
Also on Sunday night, ABC's Quantico (on CTV in Canada) continued its paranoid puzzle. The gist is this: the FBI was infiltrated by a terrorist. Based on overnight ratings, Quantico is one of the few hit shows to emerge in the early going in this new TV season.
Another is NBC's Blindspot (also CTV in Canada), and like Quantico it's a paranoid thriller. Some force or other has denuded Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander) of memory but left her covered in tattoos. Something to do with Navy Seals is simmering in the intricate plot.
Now, on one level you can say that both Blindspot and Quantico are about the female lead characters – strong, comely women put into extraordinary situations. On another level, they are both simply exercises in deranged neuroses and phobia about covert forces emerging to subvert normal life and society.
Rarely have we seen fear pitched at such a level. And the subliminal message is this – there is no one and nothing left to trust. Not family, not neighbours and certainly not the authorities.
The tone in which the message is delivered is abrasive, provocative and almost taunting. It's like invective being unleashed, and it isn't limited to a handful of shows that popular hits.
The Leftovers has just returned to HBO and, while the first season, about "the departed," could be read as post-9/11 brooding on loss and grief, the second season suggests your next-door neighbours are uniquely frightening if they are in any way religious.
Throw in a new season of Grand Guignol espionage and betrayals high and low on Homeland, and you've got a ferocious stew of anxiety and jitters.
One doesn't know yet how to interpret it all. Some of it is reactionary in the sense that it is about a fear of "others" and under the surface one might see Islamophobia writ large. Other elements of the trend suggest a fear of homegrown terror with homegrown causes.
Yet, some of it is a much more simplified phobia about the killers being on the doorstep. Certainly, this is not the paranoia of The X-Files with its ambiguous assertion, "the truth is out there."
Whatever the unconscious drives behind the spectacle of such horrors, what is on display upfront in very popular shows is a battered psyche, a subconscious in need of succour. Send in the therapists.
American Horror Story: Hotel (FX Canada, 10 p.m.) is that same set of fears and paranoia but internalized into a fantasy of camp depravity. The fifth season of Ryan Murphy's and Brad Falchuk's horror anthology features Lady Gaga. She plays the Countess, owner and operator of the Hotel Cortez, a gorgeous old place saturated in sexy perversity. The show's usual ensemble are here, though lacking Jessica Lange. Angela Bassett plays "The fabulous actress Ramona," the vengeful former lover of Lady Gaga's Countess, and Denis O'Hare is "Liz Taylor" – not the actress, but a hotel employee, obsessed with the star. If you're looking for a linear storyline, good luck. What you get, however, is gorgeousness itself as all manner of neuroses arise to disgust and arouse the viewer.
There's no evil conspiracy on display here. But if you imagine your secret depravity unfolding like a sumptuous music video, with everyone in fabulous clothes, then it's got your psyche nailed.