Although American Horror Story has never been particularly tasteful, I was still sad to see season 12 of the series indulge in a trope that has always been particularly unnerving. From its debut season, American Horror Story has always pushed the boundaries of good taste. Murder House depicted a school shooter as a romantic antihero and every season of American Horror Story that followed featured something equally, if not more, provocative. That said, not all of the anthology horror show’s provocations are created equal. American Horror Story season 12’s ending proves that some don’t work at all.

Related: American Horror Story Season 12’s Theme Causes A Huge Season 13 Problem

Although American Horror Story: Delicate’s ending was daring, it was also overstuffed, unclear, and unsatisfying. The ending felt less intentionally ambiguous and more hopelessly rushed. Throughout the season, I was impressed with how slow the pacing was and how comparatively reserved the tone had been. Although Delicate was still campy, its story didn’t go off the rails midway through the season, unlike 1984 and Apocalypse. Then American Horror Story’s lowest-rated episode ended the season, leaving countless plot threads dangling and mysteries unexplained. One trope scene earlier in Delicate’s story should have tipped me off to this impending disappointment.

American Horror Story Season 12 Includes Real-Life Characters

Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow Have Roles In Episode 8

Like a lot of recent seasons, American Horror Story season 12 added real-life figures, including two living people, into its story. Delicate episode 8 began with a cold open that focused on a lunch date between Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow even though Farrow is still alive and declined a role in American Horror Story season 1. The show’s version of Farrow then returned to the set of Rosemary’s Baby, where director Roman Polanski ordered her to shoot a dangerous stunt in Manhattan traffic. This bizarre decision made me uncomfortable, like many of American Horror Story’s earlier real-life cameos.

Although the cold open of American Horror Story: Delicate episode 8 was relatively short, the scene was still strange in terms of its historical context. The sequence ended with Kim Kardashian’s villainous Siobhan Corbyn appearing to Farrow, ensuring her that she would help her with the mysterious bleeding the actor was experiencing. This came after a scene where the show’s versions of Sinatra and Polanski both mistreated Farrow, tacitly linking real-life allegations of abusive behavior to the antics of a fictional ageless demonic witch. The discord between these events resulted in a jarring tonal shift that I couldn’t stand.

American Horror Story’s Real-Life Characters Always Feel Weird

The Anthology Show Mishandled Richard Ramirez and Valerie Solanas

Unfortunately, American Horror Story has a long history of portraying real-life people in earlier seasons, and many of these depictions were equally discomfiting and misguided. Most infamously, American Horror Story’s Richard Ramirez plot from 1984 was handled terribly, with the serial killer being portrayed as a charismatic, romanticized version of himself. I can’t imagine that anyone familiar with Ramirez’s life and crimes could have found 1984’s version of the criminal to be anything but tasteless and profoundly insensitive. While the ethics of true-crime shows like Dahmer are debatable, incorporating Ramirez into an otherwise straightforward slasher pastiche was less excusable.

Similarly, Cult’s depiction of Andy Warhol’s attempted assassin, Valerie Solanas, was a misguided twist that felt more tacky than daring. Lena Dunham’s Solanas was a broad parody of humorless feminists, and even her casting was intended to be a winking joke about the writer/director’s propensity for contrarian attention-seeking. I found this distasteful considering both Ramirez and Solanas were real people with troubled lives who committed serious crimes, but they were portrayed as campy, cartoonish caricatures. American Horror Story isn’t a venue for serious psychological analysis, but the show also isn’t campy and outrageous enough to make these characters work.

American Horror Story’s Real-Life Characters Used To Work Better

Historical Distance Helped The Show’s Early Seasons

For all of American Horror Story season 12’s improvements to the show’s well-worn formula, depicting Farrow, Polanski, and Sinatra dragged down the outing considerably. This doesn’t mean that American Horror Story can’t and shouldn’t incorporate real-life figures into its plots, but that the series needs to be more careful in doing so. Maybe it’s just me, but Coven’s Madame Delphine LaLaurie and Freak Show’s Edward Mordrake belonging to different, comparatively distant eras make their depiction seem less strange and off-putting than, for example, Cult’s take on the Manson family. Their period origins provide a welcome level of distance.

Similarly, shows that are more unabashedly tasteless could utilize real-life figures for shock value, but American Horror Story exists in a strange hinterland when it comes to this issue. The series isn’t as shocking and daring as it purports to be, with even satirical outings like Cult steering clear of any divisive political commentary. As such, claiming that American Horror Story’s reliance on real-life figures is intentionally tasteless campy humor doesn’t really cut it. At the same time, the show’s political messaging is garbled and often contradictory, so saying the series needs real-life figures to make social critiques also doesn’t hold water.

American Horror Story Season 12 Proves Season 13 Must Drop This Trend

Season 12’s Real-Life Cameos Added Nothing To The Plot

I never liked real-life figures showing up in American Horror Story since, at best, this trend was clearly a ploy for controversy. At worst, it was a tasteless exploitation of real people’s stories. However, I was willing to give the series a few shots at justifying this bizarre trend and I wanted to see the series provide a reason for its frequent reliance on real-life characters. By American Horror Story: Delicate‘s finale, it was clear that the series didn’t need these cameos at this point, and they were more about shock value than deepening the narrative or themes of the season.

Pointing out that both Sinatra and Polanski mistreated Farrow in different, but distinctively masculine-coded ways might have been a meaningful statement about gender roles in another, better show. American Horror Story: Delicate was a show about a cabal of immortal women breeding demonic babies to cause the apocalypse so they could bring about a matriarchy, and the one Oscar-winning actor who could stop them. Delicate’s bizarre plot was too silly, insubstantial, and unclear in its attempted social commentary to justify its inclusion of real-life characters, which has been a recurring issue with numerous earlier seasons of American Horror Story.