Why we follow The Following
Combo of psychology, violence, paranoia makes series a winner
You can safely say that nobody watching has the slightest idea how Season1of The Following is going to end on Monday (CTV at 9 p.m.).
Will former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) have the confrontation with serial killer turned cult leader Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) that we’ve all been waiting for?
However the finale resolves itself, it will lay the groundwork for Season 2, which was ordered by originating network Fox last month.
Ever since this blood-drenched, mayhem-driven crime drama went on the air on Jan. 21, it’s held Canadian viewers enthralled.
It consistently wins its time slot, averages 1.8 million viewers a week, is No.12 on the list of top new shows of the year and has generated more than three million video views at ctv.ca.
The premise is that, back in 2003, literature-professor-turned-killer Carroll slaughtered 14 of his female students, until FBI agent Hardy stopped him from murdering No. 15, but almost at the cost of his own life. Hardy became an alcoholic and quit the bureau, while Carroll ended up behind bars. A decade later, Carroll escapes and we realize he has spent the last 10 years on the Internet, building up a network of fellow serial killers who have secretly deployed themselves around America, ready to carry out Carroll’s plans.
The games soon begin and they’re deadly ones. The question is: why are we following The Following?
What has made this series the nail-biting, stomach-churning event that you’re afraid to see but more scared to miss?
Watching, rewatching and analyzing this season’s episodes reveals a brilliant three-level structure that creator Kevin Williamson has used to keep us simultaneously on our toes and looking over our shoulders. LEVEL I: “CHARACTER IS DESTINY” Making Joe Carroll a professor whose specialty is Edgar Allan Poe was a superb choice. Not only was Poe’s alcohol-drenched world of betrayal and heartbreak a perfect objective correlative for the nightmarish mental landscape that Carroll inhabits, but the tragically flawed Hardy is his perfect opponent.
Carroll is a failed author. Hardy became a published author writing about Carroll. He also bedded Carroll’s wife, making him a betrayer on several levels.
And during his capture, the killer damaged Hardy’s heart so thoroughly that he now wears a pacemaker (yes, images of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” come to mind). Both Hardy and Carroll share a weakness for the bottle that makes them symbiotic brothers in addiction. This psychological struggle runs like a mordant bass line beneath the often frenetic plotting of the show. It’s not as simple as a struggle between good and evil, because Hardy isn’t innocent, but it places something serious at the core of The Following, a good thing to hold onto as the gore starts splashing . . . LEVEL 2: “IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS” You’d think after years of watching everything from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, we’d have grown numb to violence on television. And yet, the creative team of The Following make us gasp at least once every week. From that moment in the premiere when a girl stripped naked in the police station, revealing fullbody tattoos of the words of Edgar Allan Poe, then stabbed herself to death, it became obvious the rules were different at this rodeo. We see a psychotic member of Carroll’s cult walk into a restaurant and hunt down an innocent chosen for slaughter on the basis of her name. (The innocents die here all the time; makes it creepier.) We know something horrible is about to happen, but we can’t guess what. Sitting opposite the woman, the killer announces she’s about to fire a spearfishing gun into her stomach. A horrible sound, an unearthly scream and the blood starts pouring. And every episode has a murder to match it. LEVEL 3: “EVEN PARANOIDS HAVE ENEMIES” The most brilliant piece in the puz- zle is how Carroll disperses and uses his cult members all over the place. Take the shock in Episode1of discovering the nice gay couple who’ve lived for years next door to the girl who would have been Carroll’s 15th victim are Carroll cult members, and have broken through acloset door to drag the trusting girl away to torture and death.
From then on, we realized that nothing was what it seemed and the most supportive or innocent character could be a pawn of Carroll’s, waiting for the right moment to pull out a gun or cut a throat.
In a universe like that, one is always on guard, which is what Williamson wants us to feel.
Its murderers are a bit far-fetched but still plausible and arguably the scariest on television today.
Because the walking wounded are always more dangerous than the walking dead.