Confusing 'The Watcher' sees Ryan Murphy take aim at 'Twin Peaks' quirkiness in confusing mystery

[Editor's Note: This post contains spoilers for "The Watcher", including the ending.]

Looking at the Ryan Murphy/Netflix collaborations as a whole, it's safe to say that the pair didn't create a heavenly match (despite massive view numbers for "Dahmer"). Which is a shame, because "The Watcher" is probably the best series Murphy has worked on for the streaming giant. What makes "The Watcher" skyrocket is that Murphy returns to what worked for him with the first "American Horror Story": a haunted house movie with a cast of characters you simultaneously loved but who were irritated. But at the end of the day, it's still a Murphy show, which means for every good thing, like Jennifer Coolidge's Hellish Realtor, there's an element that makes you roll your eyes and sigh. exasperation, like the wearing of the mat becoming a major plot point.

Flashback: Dean and Nora Brannock (Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts) set out on their dream home in Westfield, New Jersey. Like any good haunted house movie, the stakes are high. The couple survived bankruptcy and cashed in all available funds. But almost immediately, the neighbors around them begin to scare them away. And if that's not enough, a series of letters written by someone known as "the Observer" begin to arrive, asking the couple to "give the house what they want".

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What does the house want? It's anyone's guess. Murphy and longtime co-creator/collaborator Ian Brennan revele in not giving audiences many answers, likely because they didn't have any either. Derek and Maria Broaddus, the real-life counterparts of Cannavale and Watts characters, never even moved into their house. The couple quickly tried to get rid of the house before renting it out. Between them, the couple who lived in the previous house, and the tenants to whom the Broadduses rented the house, the Observer sent only four letters before disappearing completely.

So, of course, Murphy and his team had to develop the original story and they're doing it by borrowing from the "American Horror Story" playbook by bringing in a top-notch cast to cook it up, making sure drawing on murder mysteries that aren't associated with this one, and stand out squarely from other horror movies. Dean and Nora's neighbors are a hodgepodge of goofy characters, from the rude snoopers and rocket-gatherers of Margo Martindale and Richard Kind to the pigtailed historian of Mia Farrow who tells the story of the Brannocks trees. Each character feels like they got lost on the way to a David Lynch movie, though the weirdness is probably more of an attempt to literally make each of them a potential Watcher suspect.