Like a tweet sent at 4 a.m. by the president, American Horror Story usually leaves us with far more questions than answers. Each week, we’re going to take a deeper look into every question the anthology gore-a-palooza needs to A.

Look, there’s nothing really funny to say about the scene that opens “Mid-Western Assassin”—a jarring public shooting that Ryan Murphy decided to heavily edit for the original broadcast—other than to note that after ghosts, aliens, witches, circus freaks, vampires, and serial killers, the most truly terrifying thing this show has ever, ever done is literally hold up a mirror to the audience and say, “America, this is you,” like some demented dark-timeline version of the America’s Funniest Home Videos theme song. And that’s not ha-ha funny, really. Me calling the uncomfortable irony “funny” is a bit like a Vice President saying to leave a football game is a “protest”; it’s not, but we’re both getting paid to do this so we can’t just outright call it sad.

And it’s not as if Murphy and Co. are even pulling this mood off well—at this point, this season is so on the nose it might as well be titled American Horror Story: Prom Night Pimple—which brings me to one of the few questions I have this week:

Does This Show Have Anything to Say

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Image via FX

It was right about the time Kai Anderson dropped the line “Of course they will [believe it]...it’s on Facebook” that I realized American Horror Story: Cult had stopped being a story of any kind, and had morphed into an extended game of Mad Libs where all the lines say insert buzzword here. I’m not even asking the right question: Of course this show has something to say. It has all the things to say. It is saying everything, all at once, in every scene, a cacophony of Twitter hashtags and breaking news chyrons working together to drown each other out.

Paid protestors. Big Little Lies. Protest vote. Electoral college. Pussy hat. This show wants to make absolutely, completely sure you are aware it is commenting on The Issues, but forgot to bolster all that shorthand with an actual theme or story. There’s only so many times you can wink at an audience before you just have your eyes closed and you’re spinning around in circles making helicopter sounds. Cucks. Trumps. Pussy grabs back. Liberal elites. This show is wink-wink-nudging everybody while mouthing “you are bad, everyone is bad.”

It’s all just so empty, a sentiment that, unfortunately, takes a bit of the weight out of the decision to edit down the gun violence that opens “Mid-Western Assassin.” I watched the unedited version—it’s clumsy, undeniably jarring, and ultimately unnecessary. But it also comes after weeks of throat slittings, gimp slashings, artery sprays and, yes, gun violence. It also comes before a new character (played by Mare Winningham, doing her darndest) is shot in the chest in her own home. Cult can’t decide if it’s a horror show about politics, or a political show with horror overtones, so it’s settled somewhere in the middle as a weekly, hour-long trombone noise that occasionally makes a “point.” It has become the Reddit post of TV shows.

If a character isn’t murdered over a packet of McDonald’s Szechuan sauce by season’s end, I will be sincerely shocked.

But Someone Has to Call Kai Out on His Bullshit, Right?

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Image via FX

Okay, just because Cult isn’t working on a tonal or conceptual level doesn’t mean we can’t also point out the story itself is a bag of freeze dried bologna. I’m no expert on the ebbs and flows of small-town elections, and wouldn’t claim to be unless you’re buying me like six more whiskies, but here’s a scenario that I just have to imagine would raise at least one eyebrow: A no-name average Joe with more hair colors than political experience suddenly decides to fill a spot on the zoning board left vacant due to horrific clown slaughter, running on a platform of being afraid of horrific clown slaughter. Finally, an opponent publicly declares she is standing up to him...and then kills herself the next day, posting her suicide note on Facebook. I know the town’s one prominent journalist is in a death cult and the other one is a dead Emma Roberts, but...someone has to dig into this a little further, no? Does Teen Vogue exist in this universe?

It’s a shame that the current-day storyline has become so flimsy that Cult is now 80-percent flashbacks. But if you’re telling your story that often through flashbacks, it’s kind of like...maybe just tell the flashback story?

Will This Show Ever Run Out of Buzzwords?

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Image via FX

You have to imagine that, at some point, the writers will run dry on divisive topics that have proven to split Americans’ opinions in half, often without good reason. With that said, let’s all just look forward to next week’s episode, which guest stars [checks notes] Lena Dunham. Oh, dear lord.