Monday, January 21, 2013

'The Following' 1.01 Series Premiere Review


Fox
One of this season’s most anticipated new series debuted tonight with an audacious, bloody, and instantly intriguing first installment that told the age-old story of good vs evil but did so with a twist that could only come from the age of social media. In fact it’s this concept that’s going to keep viewers glued to the screen for the next fourteen consecutive weeks—The Following will have no repeats or breaks which is the way all serialized shows should air. It essentially breaks down like so: what happens when a charismatic and diabolical famous serial killer uses his influence to indoctrinate his fans or ‘followers’ into enacting a series of acts on his behalf?

Fox


Joe Carroll (a chilling James Purefoy) is nearing his death sentence and he knows that killing an idea is so much harder than killing the person who planted the seed of that idea in the first place. After he escapes prison, Joe uses the time to start putting his plan into motion all while the FBI and local detectives have no idea of the hell that’s about to break loose around them. Carroll cloaks his crimes in the literature of his hero, Edgar Allen Poe, but even before Purefoy can have his grand villain monologue at the end of the episode it’s apparent that this next chapter is solely dedicated to the man who took him down years ago.


Fox

Former FBI agent Ryan Hardy is your classic broken protagonist figure—literally so as he wears a pacemaker to keep his heartbeat steady, (and I’m sure something’s going to happen to jeopardize that as the series goes forward since they made such a point of mentioning it). He meets all the criteria of these sorts of characters: he has a drinking problem, an illicit relationship that went sour quickly, and a general sense of emptiness after he took Joe Carroll down the first time. But he’s also the sort of impulsive man whose own mind is attuned to Joe’s, and he’s fated to be the one who stops him again no matter the cost. 

Kevin Bacon is the perfect actor to play Ryan as he truly embodies a subtle portrayal of a man whose life is barely stable after his first descent into Joe Carroll’s madness. The pair only shared a few scenes in this episode, but Purefoy and Bacon have the necessary chemistry for this kind of mind-game to engage the audience and keep them that way. I look forward in future episodes for their pairing to break the mold of Lecter/Starling and the fact that Ryan banged Joe’s wife will definitely add that extra seething edge to their future interactions.


Fox

As I mentioned above, the big twist of the show is that Joe can be entirely behind bars for most of it and his work can still continue thanks to his followers. Over the years, Joe accumulated quite the cadre of psychotically devoted fans, or friends as he calls them, who will do anything for him. That’s just enough of a gimmick to keep things compelling on a weekly basis as absolutely anyone can be revealed to be one of Joe’s friends. It could be anyone we’ve met in the first episode, it might be someone like Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) or any of the other various law enforcement personnel that Ryan worked with to try to find Carroll before he struck again. Sometimes it’ll be expected as it was with the babysitter of Joe’s child who abducted little Joey at the end of the episode. Other times it’s just the kind of thing that could turn a standard scene completely on its head. That’s part of the fun of it is watching and wondering who, if anyone, can be trusted as the series progresses.


Fox

The nature of the violence in The Following straddles the line of what a broadcast network standards department will allow on air. Just when you think they won’t possibly show a disturbed young woman plunge an spike into herself, they do show it just for a few split seconds and then the camera pulls away. It makes all the difference in the world to see the full scope of the ‘work’ of Joe and now his followers. It gives you the kind of insight into Carroll’s mind that Ryan and the other characters are privy to. It also lends the right tone of sinister dread that was wonderfully highlighted when Ryan chased down a trail of blood spatter only to find a body but not the one he was looking for.


Fox

But this is the kind of show I’ve been looking for. It’s suspenseful and it’s unflinchingly dark in a way that serves its story and its antagonist. Maggie Grace featured in this episode as Joe Carroll’s last victim--the one that lived and testified against him. Much like Janet Leigh in Psycho, Grace was expected to survive and be part of the show’s future because most network shows would have the girl that lived being saved by our hero just in the nick of time. This show plucked her eyes out and let her bleed. It was a definite statement about what to expect from this show on a weekly basis and I think the body count is going to be fairly impressive when it’s finished.


Fox

I hope this series is a sign of a little more willingness to experiment from the other broadcast networks. It’s a compliment to say that if Fox would have passed on this then I could easily see it on HBO or Showtime with few changes other than a few more four letter words tossed in. All said, The Following is the kind of nightmare I want to have on a weekly basis. Yeah that was cheesy, but it really is more of a horror story than any other show on television right now. I’m excited to see just how grisly it gets for Ryan Hardy in his quest to end Joe Carroll’s work for good as well as what will even be left of Ryan himself if he can do that.

1 comment:

  1. Nice review, I was thoroughly engrossed by this show and look forward to the rest of the series.

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