'American Horror Story: Freak Show' Season Premiere What's With That Song? Recap

We expected the conjoined twins. We expected the sadistic killer clown. But we have to say, "American Horror Story" surprised us with the 1970's David Bowie song.

The new "AHS" season, appropriately titled "Freak Show," has premiered, and it just might be the creepiest and most inventive season to date. In most cases, inventive is a good thing. In others, it's a bit confusing.

Let's start with the good. We're introduced to this world through the eyes of Bette and Dot, the two-headed conjoined twins played by Sarah Paulson and...Sarah Paulson. The effect here is fantastic, due to excellent work on the part of the special effects team, the director, and Paulson herself.

To start, Paulson gives a great performance. Bette and Dot have distinct personalities, and it's fun to watch her seemingly interact with herself, though in reality the lines were filmed separately.

On top of this, the show has some fun with perspective with these two. At some points, we even get a split screen of what the two of them are looking at. It's jarring, a bit disorienting, and has huge potential down the line for some fun and/or scary sequences.

Bette and Dot are taken in by Jessica Lange's new character for the season, the German Fraulein Elsa who is in charge of the titular "Freak Show." The show has landed in our setting of Jupiter, Florida in the years following WWII, and it seems that Elsa has plans for the show to make a more permanent home here.

That might prove difficult with the locals, but there's always Evan Peters' character Jimmy, who uses his claw-hands to not only pleasure sexually frustrated housewives, but also seems bent on protecting his fellow freaks.

It's clear that our "monster" of the season is Twisty the clown, who has already gotten busy with stabbing a couple on a picnic. The visual aspect of Twisty is enough to make him thoroughly creepy, as long as you're one who is generally creeped out by clowns. If not, hopefully you're creeped out by serial killers. Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you.

But here's the strange part: there's a "Glee"-like musical interlude here, with Lange's Elsa singing "Life on Mars," the aforementioned Bowie song. Given the time period, this song won't be out for another 25 years or so, and this isn't likely to be the only anachronistic song on the show.

Here are the potential explanations:

1. Elsa is a genius songwriter who comes up with these songs that are later stolen by major pop stars.

2. There's an element of time travel in this season, and Elsa has the ability to see into the future, at least musically.

3. Ryan Murphy just wanted to turn this season of "AHS" into "Glee" since the latter is ending soon and he's going through jukebox musical withdrawal.

Of those three, the third is the most likely. Murphy has said that this season would be a "return to Asylum," which we took to mean that there wouldn't be any magical stuff going on, just humans being scary, terrible people.

Still, we wouldn't put it past this show for there to be some kind of mystical time-bridging thing going on. It worked wonders in the video game "Bioshock Infinite," with a similar anachronistic music motif, so why not here?

In any case, we'll be staying tuned to this season, if only for the colorful characters.