[voltaireodactyl]

I hear where you’re coming from, but you will note that AHS, while being an anthology, pulls continuously from the same group of audience favorite actors — which goes back to the “people putting on a show” variant I described above. The audience has a relationship with those actors. Very meta, as befits a Ryan Murphy shindig.

That recurrence that wouldn’t be possible for a Foundation series without suggesting characters themselves are repeating through time, which would seem to lean even harder into woo, which I’m sensing is not your bag.

[dbspin]

Agreed - but as I said with Foundations specifically, that you could change the characters each series and keep your anchor characters (i.e.: those that live on literally by being robots, or through projection). It's also pretty amenable to cutting back and forth in time. In other words multiple parallel timelines, which a number of shows have pulled off. There are enormous underserved audiences for clever complex formally innovative TV, and a whole bunch of money going into fluff that (at least in Apple's case, seems like it isn't drawing an audience now - let alone in future rereleases, as the prestige shows of the 90s did).