Following “The Following”
*I recently started watching “The Following” while waiting for “Hannibal” to return. This post is my review of “The Following” in general and the episode “Flesh and Blood” in particular. There are spoilers for that episode here, and I talk about the show as a whole in a broadly analytical sort of way.
Since “The Following” and “Hannibal” premiered, the two have been compared (often to the detriment of the former). While both shows feature a lot of disturbing violence, “Hannibal” has always managed to invest its gore with a certain artistic appeal, due partially to the fact that we often only see the aftermath of grisly crimes and not the acts in progress. “The Following,” by contrast, shows a lot of people get butchered, and while the more creative acts are often spaced out in favor of more traditional (I guess?) knifings, the sound of metal entering flesh is enhanced (as it always is in these sorts of shows), and I would agree with the people who say that there is something especially ghastly and even cynical about the way that people die in “The Following”—often suddenly, violently, and without aplomb. The killings are usually even more brutal because of how sudden, unremarkable, and, therefore, realistic they can be.
I will be completely honest here: Before season three of “The Following,” I had seen only a handful of episodes. I remember seeing two or three chapters from season one and maybe that many episodes of season two. I know the premise of the show, and I have read synopses of plots online while also keeping up with the AV Club’s review coverage, which seems to have stopped with season two—a decision that makes sense given the clear revulsion expressed by the reviewers for the show previously.
That revulsion is justified. Although I’m not keeping a running total or anything, I am paying attention to the show to see how many women it offs versus men. I started watching season three with episode three, and so far I haven’t been overwhelmed by the deaths. The violence seems pretty evenly distributed, though as is the case with most such shows, there is a huge imbalance in the number of men depicted (favoring this gender) in contrast to the smaller number of women. This means, of course, that each woman killed hits home harder given the very small number that the show is working with. Other reviewers, particularly the AV Club, have discussed the series’ treatment of women in the past, as well as its (fumbled) handling of gay characters; therefore, given the fact that I have seen so little of the show, I do not feel qualified to make certain claims about its depiction of either. I do get the sense watching the show that women seem to end up being less informed than the men—if that makes sense. The women feel somewhat more hapless or less in the know. I guess I am speaking from the position of just having watched “Flesh and Blood,” where the serial killer training doctor Strauss’s so-called “best student” Theo Noble does in his family and then disappears into the night after Hardy and gang finally uncover his identity.
Now, this might be the comparatively small number of episodes under my belt talking, but I didn’t hate Theo’s storyline (or what I’ve seen of it so far). One of the best moments of “Flesh and Blood” comes when Theo’s phone pings to let him know that the FBI is accessing his wife’s DMV records. He silently sits down on the couch and puts his head in his hands. By this point, the viewer is pretty much aware of the fact that Theo’s humanity is all an act. We’ve seen him seamlessly shift from highly-focused killer to personable co-worker and loving husband enough times to know who he really is, but what is great about this moment on the couch is when Theo raises his head again and we can literally see the human mask is lifted. He has eyes like a shark. The dramatic irony of his character arch (with the viewer evaluating his every human gesture and appreciating it for what it is—a calculated act) builds a lot of suspense that all comes together in this moment, which is a great character beat and a testament to Michael Ealy’s acting chops. And then there is the actual murder of his wife (which we don’t see) and the reveal that he has not murdered his children, and all this throws a bit of doubt into the mix. Clearly, Theo has a shred of humanity in him. I fully expected the kids to bite the big one as well so that they couldn’t aid Hardy in his investigation through some accidental reveal of pertinent information or something (though Theo’s decision to leave them alive while killing his wife makes coldly logical sense given the way that he has so perfectly kept his other life from them and that as kids they will naturally be less useful to his pursuers than his discerning wife might be)…
But I digress. In this same episode, I was also pleased by Joe’s fantasy escape sequence. It was all too much to believe from the start, though the viewer is easily suckered into believing it on some level given Joe’s history of escape from improbable odds and the good guys’ general lack of intelligence and foresight up to this point. When Joe emerges into daylight, though, and Ryan Hardy comes speeding up in the get-away vehicle, that’s just the icing on the cake. “The Following” is clearly trying to restore some of its Hannibal-esque FBI agent/Intelligent monster prisoner dynamic this season with Hardy consulting Joe in prison and the (uncertain) relationship developing between the two. This isn’t without precedent, of course. See Hannibal and Clarice (or Will). See Batman and the Joker. See any Japanese animated series with a spunky protagonist and his/her antihero opposite. “The Following” is strongly implying that Hardy and Joe need each other on some level, and I’ll second the AV Club reviewer who noted in season two that the characters have great chemistry together. If only there was some way to finagle a partnership between the two. Maybe we off the corporeal Joe and he accompanies Hardy via hallucination or split personality on future cases? Hmm.
One thing that I have consistently noticed when I watch “The Following,” though, is that I have a particular gut reaction whenever Hardy and co. close in on a villain. Yes, weird as it feels to admit it out loud (so to speak), when Theo was dawdling at his wife’s side, saying goodbye in his own psychopathic way, I was anxiously thinking, “Go, man, go! Get out of there. We know that there hasn’t been a door made yet that Ryan Hardy can’t put a boot through and he’s on his way!” I don’t identify with Theo, however. I don’t empathize with either the villains or heroes on this show. The heroes are boring and violent and overbearingly masculine. The villains are a bit too good at being villainous at times (I guess). And yet my gut seized when the box maker earlier this season was forced to abandon his father, who has dementia, and run straight into a trap set by Hardy and pals. I hated seeing Daisy and Kyle split up. I wanted Hardy and friends to arrest the wrong tech guy so that Theo could keep going under the radar—and it would have been something like a nice experiment for “The Following” to let him go, in fact, and send a message about how sometimes killers get away and they’re just out there, undramatically living something approximating a normal life—which would have been (and still could be) a fitting end for a character like Theo who is supposed to be smart and not theatrical like Joe.
But I’m off on Theo again. I’m not sure where my nervousness for these roundly unlikable folks comes from. Maybe it’s just basic human empathy. Maybe I feel a twinge of sadness knowing that they’ll probably be illegally shot by Mike or tortured by Hardy in lieu of justice. Maybe feelings of unease about law enforcement makes a lot more sense today than immediately rooting for the guy with the badge. And maybe this is like Dandy’s massacre at the end of “American Horror Story: Freak Show.” What Dandy does is cold-blooded and awful, but because he was the only character that brought a spark of life to the proceedings of the past twelve episodes (some of which he wasn’t even in, though the anticipation for more of his unpredictable, unsettling behavior remained) I wanted him to get away with it and go on being interesting.
There’s nothing laudable or even sympathetic about what the villains of “The Following” do, but I guess they’re slightly more likable for it because they have no illusions. While this was originally marketed as a show about good guys and bad guys, such binaries no longer make a lot of sense to us as viewers. They never did, really, but it was easier to root for characters who didn’t use excessive violence and torture themselves and then justify it through the authority of a government agency. The only interesting thing about agent Hardy, for example, is the same thing that makes characters like Joe and Theo interesting, though to a slightly lesser degree: his propensity for violence and the promise, each episode, of the possibility of more door kicking and suspect torturing. We want him to defy his boss’s authority because it means he gets to go on doing what he does—being a loose cannon and such. Likewise, Joe has to live because he is violent and “interesting.” That seems like a terrible excuse to keep the story going or to tune in each week (and the dropping review scores suggest that people aren’t finding that enough), but it’s what “The Following” has got. It’s violent, cynical, but interesting to see how long it can persist in being violent and cynical before it finally gets euthanized.
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