Being a huge fan of Ryan Murphy (at least when he’s doing a series based on a real-life story to rein in his, perhaps, overly imaginative writers) and a historical home aficionado, “The Watcher” was high on my list of binge-watching this past fall.

If you haven’t sat down to enter the world of Westfield, N.J., with the Broaddus family, the short version is, city people with lots of money, but living above their means, buy a multi-million-dollar home in the ‘burbs and then start getting threatening letters about the house, like the residence has a jealous ex-boyfriend.

Actually, scratch that—it’s implied that the letters are coming from a previous owner, but there’s also strong vibes that it was someone whose love for the house was unrequited (by the mortgage lender).

In Murphy’s “American Horror Story,” there is the Murder House of Season 1, a 1920s bourgeois dream, and the New Orleans mansion of Season 3, that are both spectacular feats of architecture and detail, and this is what I was expecting for “The Watcher”—a house that was its own character and love interest for everyone else.

But sadly, I was disappointed in 657 Boulevard.
Sure, it was huge, but even with a dumb-waiter from the original Jazz Age construction, it felt like an HGTV special on the inside, with a “blah” façade on the outside.

Immediately, I thought of all the houses in Sayville and along Middle Road, in Bayport and Blue Point, that were much more worthy of a stalker—I mean, a poem of gratitude—than the showcase of “The Watcher.”

On a cloudy Sunday afternoon, I goaded my husband to drive me around The Suffolk County News’s coverage area to collect some photos of homes that would’ve been more believably obsessed over.

For privacy reasons, we’re leaving out identifying information about the homes, but next time you drive around, take notice of the beautiful architecture that is not only ubiquitous, but characteristic of the towns we live in.