The Following (Season 1)

Once again, bear with my very limited amount of posts. Really wish I could commit myself to more, but my willpower is next to nothing.

The Following is a great and terrifying hour-long drama that’s airing on Fox right now. (Shamelessly plugging the start of season 3 that will air next month, I believe). Just starting in to the second season, so let me recap my experiences with the first.

The show, in general, follows an extremely charming, murderous psychopath, Joe Carroll, who’s escaped from prison and now plans to unleash a wraith of deadly murders with help from his large cult-following of sociopaths who desperately look up to him and his “art”. What’s his “art” exactly? Before being caught as a murderer, Carroll was a failed novelist and college English professor with a huge affinity for the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Because of Poe, Carroll sees beauty in death. Hence all of his killings. Back to the present, we have FBI agent Ryan Hardy (played by Kevin Bacon – a big reason I tuned into this show to begin with) who’s a consultant on Carroll's habits as he was the agent who first brought him down. And thus, we have our story.

It’s basically a cops and robbers tale, only with a lot fucked up cult-murderers involved. The show incorporates a lot of flashbacks as we slowly learn peoples’ backstories and how Hardy and Carroll first met leading up to Carroll’s eventual (first) arrest. As we push further into the season, we see how Carroll is using these experiences/murders to write a “real-life” story about Hardy’s chase after him –  it’s clear from the get-go that Carroll has an unnatural obsession with Hardy and sees him as his story’s protagonist who must fight against the odds to stop the evil and save his love (his love being Carroll’s ex-wife… but that’s something you can learn more about by watching the show!).

So, if I haven’t made it clear, this show is great! Or, rather, the first season is great. (I’ve heard talk that the second season struggles to live up to its predecessor, but I'll learn for myself soon enough.) There’s the action and cliffhangers that of course draw you in, but what really grabs me is how vulnerable all our heroes are. These followers (Carroll’s murderous cult) have imbedded themselves everywhere, lying low like sleeper-agents or something. Point is, you never know if someone you trust is secretly the enemy. As a viewer, it always keeps you on your toes guessing over and over again who you can trust and who you can’t. Plus the villains are just creepy as shit.

In general, I would give this show a watch if you’re struggling to find some time to distract yourself at night after work or something. Wouldn’t say that this is something to just watch right before you go to bed (believe it or not, it does give you a scare-jump every now-and-then), but maybe you’re like me and liked to be lulled to sleep by the death screams of the innocent. To each their own.