There's one thing Ryan Murphy is known for and that's making murder a little too sexy.
Murphy and Ian Brennan's latest season Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, focuses on the Menendez brothers, who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise 'Kitty' Menendez.
Watch the trailer here. Post continues after video.
And look, it's a very complicated and layered story, but I've got to say: I'm much more attracted to Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez's portrayal of Lyle and Erik Menendez than I feel I should be.
The Menendez brothers are extremely sexy in this show. Like, I swear in every second scene before they are arrested, they're either topless or in the shower or pool. It's a lot!
This is not all that surprising.
Take a look at the promo image which looks more like a high-fashion underwear campaign than a TV show about two murders.
And I'm not alone.
The internet has gone truly wild with people thirsting over these characters.
Erik has loads of fan edits just like this.
This felt wildly tone-deaf considering the seriousness of Dahmer's crimes.
Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer tortured, murdered and dismembered 17 boys and men, mostly targeting Black men with the killer engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism.
But there is a case to argue that Monsters is simply reflecting the culture it portrays. Whether morally right or not, the Menendez brothers and Dahmer were both subjects of intense adoration from female fans.
The '90s were a weird time in celebrity culture and it's a time both Murphy and Brennan seem fascinated by in the Monsters anthology.
After his arrest in 1991, Dahmer had a legion of devoted women falling at his feet. A year earlier, the Menendez brothers were arrested and similarly had loads of women sending in 'fan mail' to share their sympathies throughout their trials.
This isn't just the case with the stories Murphy explores.
It happened with Zac Efron's turn playing Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. A lot of viewers couldn't get over how attracted they were to Efron in this role, which for better or worse, did reflect the odd cultural fascination women had with the serial killer in his time.
Bundy's looks were a big part of his allure for his victims, which explained casting one of the world's biggest heartthrobs in the role.
So yes, Evan Peters, Cooper Koch and Nicholas Chavez are potentially too sexy to be playing the types of characters to be abhorred, but they do represent a larger problem in the ways murderers were glorified in the past.
But wait, what about season three? This is where things get troubling.
Murphy has announced that Ed Gein is the next 'monster' and the actor who will play him is (surprise, surprise) another heartthrob: Sons of Anarchy's verified hottie, Charlie Hunnam.
You may be wondering: was Ed Gein another serial killer who had women under his spell for his good looks and charisma?
Absolutely not. This is a man known as the 'Butcher of Plainfield' who snatched women's dead bodies from cemeteries.
He confessed to killing two women in 1957 and when police searched his home, they found his 'house of horrors' was decorated with the skin, bones, nipples and teeth of dead bodies.
Ryan Murphy, this is not a time to be sexy.
If there's one season that the 'monster' needs to be utterly sexless, it's this one. Your turn, Murphy.
In the meantime, I'll be trying to tilt my algorithm away from Lyle Menendez's topless fan edits because I feel very odd.
Feature image: Netflix.