If all horror is metaphor, then of course “Grotesquerie” would feature a turducken. The hedonistic holiday feast occasions Det. Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash-Betts) to drop the culinary term “engastrated,” which she explains to her daughter Merritt (Raven Goodwin) describes when the remains of one animal are stuffed inside of another animal – here, a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey, each separated by layers of andouille sausage stuffing.

The word lends a technical remove to a grisly concept unless you love food and haven’t seen the gore and entrails served up rare and glistening throughout the previous episode. Absent those images, watching Lois debone, stuff and truss up a turducken would be mouthwatering.

Subtlety has never been a Ryan Murphy signature, so not even the food porn in “Grotesquerie” offers a safe harbor.
The same episode that shows the corpse of a dead woman with what look like intestines coming out of her mouth features a tight shot of Lesley Manville’s manicured hand selecting a clean grape from a dish before the camera zooms in on her scarlet lips as she greedily masticates it.

A snug frame of a flower bed in full bloom is interrupted by vomit. People are reduced to meat and parts arranged in artistic displays reminiscent of Renaissance paintings. Carolina Costa’s unrelentingly intimate shots of viscera through the first three episodes refuse to allow us distance from these murders. Since we came for the shock value, the camera shoves our faces in its guts, bellowing to eat up.

Following all that, Lois’ gastronomical overkill, a gift from a mother who loves to drink and cook for a daughter who can’t control her food intake, is appropriately filmed to look like a maniac readying his disturbing masterpiece. What should be mouthwatering instead physicalizes this show’s defining descriptor: disgust.

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There’s nothing in the first four episodes of “Grotesquerie” that other crime shows haven’t flirted with if not displayed outright. “Hannibal” broke that barrier a decade ago by using fetching cinematographic and sensual editing to make cannibalism look appetizing.

Even so, Murphy and his collaborators Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken use that bar to push onto the audience things we haven’t seen and yet can’t erase from memory, the vilest of which is never shown.

When Lois meets her eventual crime-solving partner Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond) she will only say, “Think about the worst thing you could never unsee, boiling in a pot.”

For the viewer, that guesswork is eliminated by the macabre tableau to which she’s referring. A mother and her two young children have been gruesomely killed, their bodies placed upright at a formal table laden with a hearty meal. What remains of the father is on the kitchen floor, and a cutting board – and yes, in front of his family.........

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