The Following episode 9 review: Love Hurts

Review Ron Hogan
Is The Following making a point about random violence, or just enjoying it? Here's Ron's review of Love Hurts...
This review contains spoilers.
1.9 Love Hurts
There's a certain kind of casual violence that has infected The Following that I'm not sure about. In certain situations, like tonight's harpoon gun incident or when Ryan randomly guns down Joe's cultists, it's borderline funny. For instance, tonight Ryan shot Louise - she's the blonde woman who gutted a random security guard a few episodes ago - in mid sentence without even blinking. I'd say that's a spoiler, but nobody really cares about Louise and she's basically another random cultie there to take a bullet for Joe. In other circumstances, the random violence is kind of disturbing, such as when one of many women named Claire Matthews dies via defenestration or when random helpful strangers are gutted.
That's this week's scheme du jour. In order to keep the FBI running and draw out the real Claire Matthews, one of Joe's brilliant followers, Amanda (Marin Ireland) has decided that love hurts. Her husband cheated on her, so she killed him and the mistress. Since Joe's wife cheated on him with Ryan, well... the natural response is to bring Joe and his wife back together by killing every other Claire Matthews she can find until real Claire comes out of hiding and the Followers can scoop her up. If that makes Ryan Hardy suffer, so much the better.
Any excuse for violence from screenwriters Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus, who seem to have turned the show into what is simultaneously a commentary and a big joke. Of course, violence is a risk pretty much anywhere you go in the world at large, and to see that kind of random pointless death on television is off-putting at best. Perhaps that's the whole point, but I think that The Following is a show that glorifies murder a bit too much to be making a salient point about the random nature of violence and more a show that just loves to randomly shock viewers by killing throwaways. (Though that can be very fun.)
The followers have proven themselves to be the most interesting character group on the show. While most of them are pretty much stock cult archetypes or wannabes, the whole vibe of the murder plantation is a boon for The Following. I like those scenes much more than, say, scenes of the monitor-lit FBI office. There's an unpredictability there; while most of the folks are milling around and having cocktail hour, Emma seems like she's willing to kill anyone there who isn't Joe, and during her confrontations with Roderick this week, I really expected her to take a knife to his belly just out of sheer spite.
That might be a great idea for shaking things up next season. Joe is the figurehead of the group, the one who leads the unholy creative writing circles, but Roderick is the man with the ability to make Joe's desires happen. Roderick is the one who controlled the group during Joe's time in prison, who seemingly put together Joe Carroll's Joestown. Would the group function without him, or would it splinter? The killers are a more interesting group than the FBI agents, Hardy aside, and it might be fun to watch them slowly turn on each other while the FBI picks them off, one by one. Could a show about serial killer cultists fly without a focus on Hardy? Isn't Hardy basically a serial killer himself at this point, given his incredible body count?
Kevin Bacon remains great on the show, and if The Following continues to head down the black comedy route of having Bacon shoot folks mid-sentence and cracking wise, then I think maybe they can turn the series around in the eyes of the critics. (It's already a big hit for Fox in the ratings.) At the very least, dropping or minimizing the FBI drama while emphasizing Kevin Bacon shooting people and the cultists fighting amongst themselves would make for a better programme.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com

The Following episode 8 review: Welcome Home

Review Ron Hogan 
Kevin Bacon steps out of the spotlight in this week's episode of The Following. Here's Ron's review of Welcome Home...
This review contains spoilers.
1.8 Welcome Home
Disturbingly, there's said to be something very sensual about the act of murdering someone, and this is the thread to which The Following clings to especially hard this week. There's an intimacy to the act. You have to let close to kill someone with your hands or with a knife, with skin-to-skin contact or the act of penetration. Not to mention all the bodily fluids, physical exertion, and the rush of endorphins that comes with having someone else's life in your hands, then ending said life. The Following seems to make the most of this murder-as-sex metaphor, right down to the enthusiastic faces and post-murder urge for a cigarette.
It's a week of changes on The Following. Joe Carroll has to get used to his new house in the country with his murder parlour, scotch supplies, and legions of followers, both familiar and brand new recruits brought together by his talented lieutenants, some of whom were introduced this week. Meanwhile, yet another new FBI agent takes over the Carroll task force. Nick Donovan (Mike Colter) takes over for Agent Parker, who took over for someone else previously, and the first thing he does is make a whole lot of enemies by reducing Ryan's role in the case (despite the fact he's the smartest person affiliated with the FBI), punishing Weston for misbehaviour, and generally being a delay all around. It's an odd choice on the part of the FBI.
Granted, I know they need new people since the Followers seem to have been doing a number on law enforcement officials (and vice-versa), but I don't get why they would shuffle the crew on the case around, rather than adding manpower to the existing bunch and leaving Parker in charge. It just seems like a weird choice from the crew behind the curtain. I know it's not exactly going well, but it seems odd to alienate your best agent(s).
The Following managed a very suspenseful episode this week, thanks in no small part to the game of cat and mouse surrounding Agent Weston and his mystery followers. Kudos to director Joshua Butler for taking a scenario that looked like it was going to play out as expected, but still making it work well. In particular, the hotel creeping worked really well, and the red herring worked very well to briefly throw the watcher off the track for just long enough. Later in the episode, Butler does a great job filming the serial killer fight club, and made better use of light and shadow than the series has really done to this point (most of the time they deal solely in shadow). The fights are brutal, and by television standards, comparatively quick. Granted, a guy still takes a length of pipe to the jaw without having his entire face shattered, but at least he wasn't getting up and fighting after that.
Shawn Ashmore, like most of the show, is overshadowed by Kevin Bacon. However, of the FBI agents, he's the only non-Bacon one who has shown any kind of personality or ability to carry an episode centering on himself. Parker's cult stuff was a bit of a bore, but Weston getting horrible mangled by a gang of generic serial killer devotees? Now that's an episode I can get behind! Of course, that won't last forever and the show can't continue to lean on murderers over heroes, but for now, it's a nice break.
Here's hoping next week Kevin Bacon is back in the forefront (he had some good lines tonight anyway) and that we get a renewed commitment to craziness from The Following.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com

The Following renewed for season 2

News Louisa Mellor 5 Mar 2013 - 07:00
Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy will be taking another spin on the serial killer merry-go-round as Fox renews The Following...
Fans of puppet master serial killer drama The Following can rest easy in the knowledge that, though we're almost at the halfway point in season one, a further fifteen episodes are on their way. The Kevin Williamson thriller starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy as a former FBI agent and his cult-leading serial-killing nemesis, has just been renewed for season two.
Described by Fox as an "edge-of-your-seat" "thrill ride", The Following debuted to somewhat mixed reviews, but audience interest has seen it through. Fulfilling the unspoken rule that everyone involved with The Following has to be named Kevin, here's what Fox entertainment chairman Kevin Reilly had to say:
"From the very beginning, we felt Kevin Williamson and Marcos Siega had created a high-quality, edge-of-your-seat drama that could break from the pack, and it is exciting to see the audience responding. Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy have given us two of the most compelling characters on television and the entire cast is incredible. I’m delighted to have this thrill ride continue on FOX for another season."

Source: http://www.denofgeek.com

The Following episode 7 review: Let Me Go

Review Ron Hogan 5 Mar 2013 - 07:26
Just when things were looking up for The Following, it delivers a disappointing episode. Here's Ron's review of Let Me Go...
This review contains spoilers.
1.7 Let Me Go
Just when it looks like The Following is on an upswing, the show stumbles. Last week's episode was one of the better instalments since the beginning of the programme, with a lot of tension and some legitimately good work on the part of Kevin Bacon. This week's offering would have to be really good to avoid being a let-down, and while Let Me Go isn't an awful episode by The Following standards, it still ends up being something of a disappointment in the end.
Most of this season has been the Kevin Bacon show, and with good reason. He's been good in every episode, and he gets some decent action scene work in this week's episode, but the focus isn't on him as much as it is around him, because he's the focus of Joe Carroll's attention. James Purefoy is given a lot of screen time this episode, and while he's still not exactly the Manson-type charismatic guru that he's sold as being, he's able to acquit himself a little better with a fairly clever, intricate plot to extract himself from federal custody and make another escape.
To the show's credit, this escape is a pretty good step above The Following's standard level. While it's pretty obvious that Joe is going to get away from police custody somehow, having the show turn the convict into a shell game swapping between FBI van, the warden's trunk, and Olivia Three-Fingers' trunk worked out pretty well, thanks in no small part to the stylish way that it was filmed. Director Nick Gomez does a good job with these segments, and it's pretty clever to chop them up in contrasting match cuts with hands opening doors, trunks popping open, etc. It's not really suspenseful since everyone knows Carroll is sneaking away - FBI included - but it's executed very well.
However, the show's B plot, in which Emma and Joey wait at the cavernous garage of a menacing mechanic named Bo, doesn't really work. Sure, it's partially tied into the A plot thanks to the presence of the warden's kidnapped daughter, but aside from that it feels a little groundless. I guess in a sense it helps the idea that not all of the serial killing cronies are the same, with some having prominent roles and some having lesser parts in Joe's grand play, and it also shows that some of them have more honesty and redeeming qualities than others, but it's still an odd way to provide the audience with characters they can grasp onto. With the only familiar face being Emma, we're left with Charlie as the voice of honour and reason, and he's a voice we don't even know.
Seamus Kevin Fahey's script contains some weird beats (like a Beatles reference blatantly explained for the audience by a character) and a fairly flat character in the form of Bo (who is a two-note crazypants), but also some good moments as well. I actually liked the way they defined Charlie's code of ethics a little better in this episode. He's still capable of evil, but he's lawful evil not the chaotic evil of Bo or the neutral evil of Emma. These are still bad guys who have kidnapped a child, but there are shades of grey there even in their shades of grey, and they're the weaker points in Joe Carroll's otherwise cohesive group of followers.
That's the issue with any cult, let alone a cult as large as Joe's. There are two dozen people or more in Joe's cult at this point, between the ones that have died, the ones we have met, the ones that have been implied, and the ones we see at the end of this episode. Charles Manson had as many as one hundred followers at various points. How do you keep them all in control and keep them all working towards your goals? Especially when faced with a strong, fearless enemy in Ryan Hardy (chaotic good with a real mean streak)? It can't be much different from producing a television series in that respect.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com

The Following episode 6 review: The Fall

Review Ron Hogan 26 Feb 2013 - 12:37
The Following finally begins to deliver on its so-far-squandered potential. Here's Ron's review of The Fall...
This review contains spoilers.
1.6 The Fall
The story of The Following thus far has been one of squandered potential. After a pretty good pilot that set a lot of interesting things into motion, the show hasn't really followed up on that in any really satisfactory way. However, this week, everything seemed to click into place for the programme. Indeed, this might be the best episode since the season opener. That may or may not be high praise depending on what you feel about the show, but I'm still kind of on board with it, and this week was a really good continuation of last week's instalment.
Kevin Bacon is brilliant. Nowhere is this brilliance more obvious than on this particular programme. Bacon isn't given the best stuff to do week in and week out, but he always sells what he's given to the best of his considerable abilities, and he's kept the show watchable without a whole lot of help from those around him. However, when you give Bacon stuff to work with, he really shines, and this week he was given some awesome stuff to work with from writer Shintaro Shimosawa. Ryan Hardy is, in turns, funny, sarcastic, clever, manipulative, heroic, villainous, and menacing.
Of particular note is a scene early on in the episode; Paul has a gun on him, and Paul orders Jacob to tie Ryan up. Ryan turns to him and announces, quite coolly, that if he gets within two feet of him, Ryan will break his neck and shatter his spine. Threats of being shot by Paul are coolly dismissed with a repeated, “But his spine will be cracked.” It works for two reasons: it's funny and it's sold well. Kevin Bacon is so good at being threatening without being overt, and Ryan's slight smile here really communicates that he wouldn't mind being shot if it gives him the chance to mangle someone with his bare hands.
The fact that the show's strongest actor was paired with its strongest storyline (the Emma/Paul/Jacob love triangle/power struggle) made for some very good television. The tension of the scene, with cops all around them but not quite all around them, the race between various support groups for both good guys and bad guys to arrive first and shift the balance of power... it all works really well, as does the power between the three kidnappers being upset by external forces after (seemingly) coming to a happy arrangement a few episodes ago, only to have it all subverted by Ryan the FBI agent of chaos.
I do like the dissent amongst the ranks teased throughout this episode, either planted by Ryan or simply revealed by him; I also really like where this episode seems to be going with the Emma/Jacob/Paul trio. Together they're interesting, but only if they're not all on the same page. I like the friction between them, the uneasy alliances forged by Joe as part of his master plan and the potential that their emerging personalities might just shatter the whole thing before Ryan can thwart him. That's pretty cool.
However, the Claire Matthews angle and the bits with Agent Parker exploring her cult past didn't quite work for me. I don't particularly care about Charlie (well-played by Tom Lipinski) and his stalker relationship with Claire, nor do I care about Parker's past as a member of a cult in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, or her conflicted relationship with her mother and father. It seemed like filler to me, though Parker's scenes in the FBI van were pretty good, as were her exchanges with Emma where the two of them seemed to try to out-stall one another at cross purposes. I just don't really care that much about Claire as anything other than Ryan's love interest, and I'm not a huge fan of the cult-member-turned-anti-cult-crusader story angle (as previously seen for a period on Big Love).
The episode was a little uneven, but the good elements were enough to carry the day. I am afraid that the upcoming Roderick reveal (not teased this episode, but it's coming) may be something I won't like that I won't spell out here for fear of speculating above my pay grade, but if they keep feeding Kevin Bacon episodes like this one and continue to twist the kidnapper trio around in creative ways, I'll keep watching the show.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com/

The Following episode 5 review: The Siege

Review Ron Hogan 19 Feb 2013 - 07:41
Might The Following finally be fulfilling its original potential? Here's Ron's review of The Siege...
This review contains spoilers.
1.5 The Siege
One of the hardest things for people to do on television is write a smart kid character. For whatever reason, either kids are insufferable (The Walking Dead's season two Carl) or world-weary (season three Carl) and nowhere in between. However, Joey Matthews (Kyle Catlett) is not one of those kids. For whatever reason, he may be the smartest person on the show, or at least the smartest person of the four people - 3 killers and 1 girl taped up in the basement - in the big white hideout. Joey shows cleverness throughout this week's episode, and that only increases as it goes along, but there's never that little nudge that reminds us some adult wrote the kid's role. Joey is, by turns, brilliant and gullible, defensive and naive. Long story short, he's a kid, and weirdly well-written.
The noose seems to be tightening around the throats of Jacob, Paul, and Emma. The more the three squabble amongst themselves, the less they pay attention to Joey. That comes back to bite them as they have difficulty keeping track of the kid. After he makes a brief phone call to his mother, trying to get back in touch with her, the caretakers separate him from the phone. However, that call is just long enough to get Ryan, Mike, and the local cops in the right direction.
At the same time, Joe Carroll has used his lawyer to pass a message to the outside world via press conference. The code is a snippet from Poe's Masque of the Red Death, but it means something to Carroll's followers, and that message puts a lot of complicated plans in motion involving fleeing the farm, picking up Joe's ex-wife Claire, and moving all the bits around on the chess board, since Ryan is getting too close for comfort. This gives Kevin Bacon ample chances to show off how intense he is.
Director Phil Abraham made great use of the helicopter the show rented this week to ferry Ryan around. There are some great overhead shots of the copter flying through Duchess County (or somewhere in Georgia, since I believe that's where they film the programme). It's a nice touch, and it gives the show the sort of scope it seems to want to have. It's meant to feel a bit like a movie, given the star power attached to the lead role, and it is those sorts of shots that help provide that feel. Abraham also created a great deal of tension this week, making good use of the shaky cam and drawing out the suspense from the clash of disparate elements all coming together at the farmhouse.
It really turned out well, despite a few dull moments. The episode seemed to build really organically as things went on, tying in some elements I didn't expect to see and keeping things just fluid enough that every unsurprising death (the disposable cop), there's an unexpected death to balance it out. The script from Rebecca Dameron really luxuriates in the show's violence, and it contains a few really good reveals to balance out the continued chase. It also pushed boundaries other than violence with the emerging, intriguing relationship between Paul, Jacob, and Emma.
This might have been the sharpest episode since the show's debut episode, if only because it seemed to have an idea of where it was going and what it needed to set up for next week's continuation. Given the ending for this week, I'm very interested in seeing how things work next week (and beyond). Perhaps they might redeem the show's very clever premise after all.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-following/24536/the-following-episode-5-review-the-siege

The Following episode 4 review: Mad Love

Review Ron Hogan 12 Feb 2013 - 07:28
It may have more viewers than positive reviews, but The Following is moving in the right direction for Ron. Here's his review of Mad Love...
This review contains spoilers.
1.4 Mad Love
The Following is a very dark show. If you're getting deja-vu, that's because I talked about the darkness of the show's tonality last week. This week, I'm talking about actual darkness. There's a murkiness to the episodes in general - and this episode in particular - that makes me feel like I need to adjust the colour balance on my television so I can actually follow what's going on. Ryan's in his perpetually shadowed apartment. Ryan's creeping through a darkened house. Emma, Jacob, and Paul are skulking in their darkened farmhouse. Joey squats in the darkness at the top of the stairs. That kidnapped Asian girl is taped to a chair in a dark basement. Everything's dark dark dark; the one thing The Following has managed to do is convince me my television has pretty good black levels.
This is generally the show's aesthetic, but this week's episode features more blacked-out screen in sixty minutes than some entire movies, and no doubt part of that is due to this week's director, Henry Bronchtein. He goes overboard both on moody lighting and on the shaky camera work, particularly when attempting to inject some harrowing action into specific scenes involving the serial killer trio. It doesn't really work most of the time. A little bit of Shaky Cam goes a long way, and this is a bit too much. It tends to be detracting from the episode itself, which is unfortunate because the two segments in which the Shaky Cam is most prevalent are two segments which really didn't need any spicing up.
However, I do like one development amongst the serial killer trio. The show has been commenting on, teasing, or outright showing the quasi-gay relationship between Jacob and Paul for a few episodes now - they started out as a fake gay couple, after all, and ended up as something more than just friends. It seemed like a pretty trite storyline, but Kevin Williamson (the creator and the writer of this week's episode) actually manages to take it into a couple of interesting directions. I'm not sure how tenable it is in the long term to devote so much attention to characters who will likely end the season arrested, dead, or both (since crime doesn't pay), but I like that they're fleshing out the villains and giving them some layers.
The same can't be said for Joe and Ryan and the FBI gang. Even with a lot of reveals concerning Ryan's back story this week (as compared to Joe's last week), it doesn't play out to be as interesting as the serial killing trio's farmhouse escapades turn out to be. The less said about Ryan's tragedy-filled back story, the better, as far as I am concerned. He's not lucky; we get it.
That said, I did like Ryan's show-down with Maggie at his sister Jenny's hipster restaurant, and I like that Shawn Ashmore got to be something other than a sycophant for Ryan for once, as well. Those two have the makings of a decent buddy cop team, except they're not really buddies. Ryan's refusal to bond with his associates at the FBI is one of the show's more endearing call-backs. It's certainly more appealing than his unrealistic shirtless Eeyore lifestyle he lives.
Complaints aside, the show seemed to perk up over last week's edition, which has been my least favorite thus far. It's still not brilliant, and definitely not living up to the great premise, but it's at least continuing to find new wrinkles, even if The Following hasn't quite gathered up a following of critical praise to go along with its impressive collection of viewers. If the show can continue to get creative with its nastiness while forcing the audience to make tough decisions on who to root for, it can turn itself back around into something different and clever, rather than existing in the procedural realm exclusively.

Source:http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-following/24450/the-following-episode-4-review-mad-love
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