Scream Queens Episode One – Pilot

The very first episode of Scream Queens opens at the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority house back in 1995 at Wallace University. In the middle of a major party, the girls find themselves sent upstairs to the bathroom, where they find that a pledge just gave birth to a baby. They can't be bothered dealing with her because their jam, TLC's Waterfalls, suddenly starts playing. They come back to find that she died, leaving them with the problem of what to do with the baby and what to do with the dead body.

Cut to the present day. We meet Chanel, the president of the sorority, and her lackeys, Chanel #2, Chanel #3, and Chanel #5. While there was a Chanel #4, she's no longer around. We also get to meet Grace, the daughter of a legacy, and her extremely hot dad Wes, played by Oliver Hudson. Grace convinces her new roommate Zayday to pledge with her.

Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis) calls Chanel into her office and threatens to expel the sorority from campus because of the numerous complaints she received and because she just plain doesn't like them. Gigi, a former sister perpetually stuck in the 1980s, then arrives, announces she is the lawyer for the sorority, and that the dean doesn't have the authority to kick them out.

Grace arrives at the first pledge party and finds the girls are absolutely nothing like her mom. The dean shows up and tells them that if they want to remain on campus, they must agree to accept any girl who pledges. All the other girls take off running when they find out it won't be the prettiest, richest, and most popular girls any more. That leaves them with Grace, Zayday, Neckbrace, Jennifer, Sam, and Deaf Taylor Swift.

Grace also meets Pete, a guy working in the coffee shop. Chanel flips out on him for making her pumpkin spice latte wrong and then reveals that he “stalked” her the previous year and sent her tons of text messages, but that doesn't stop Grace from getting a little crush on him. We also get to meet Mrs. Bean, the housekeeper for the sorority house. Chanel decides that to scare off the new pledges, she'll pretend to drown Mrs. Bean in the fryer that night.

Before the next party, the other girls find a shrine dedicated to pictures of Chanel with her eyes cut out. She confronts Mrs. Bean in front of the other girls and shoves her head in the fryer. Turns out it was actually turned on, and Mrs. Bean's face literally melts off in front of them. While Grace wants to go to the cops, Chanel gets the other girls on her side with promises of hot boyfriends and a spring break trip on her dad's private plane.

Grace turns to Pete for help, but when they go to look for Mrs. Bean's body, which the girls put in a walk-in freezer, she's gone. Chanel also goes to her own boyfriend Chad, the president of the most popular fraternity, but he only cares that she's no longer popular. The Red Devil, the killer of the show, turns up at the end of the episode to kill Chanel #2.

Thoughts:

After the first episode of Scream Queens, I'm on the fence. The humor feels a little forced at times, and I can't help feeling like the writers created the show for people way younger than me. A lot of people got a kick out of Chanel #2 tweeting and sending Facebook messages during her death scene, but even that felt like it was trying too hard.