The Following “The Poet’s Fire”

Last week I railed pretty heavily on the Poe mask wearing criminal, Rick, who set a man on fire in public.  In that episode it seemed ridiculous that people wouldn’t notice a man running around in an Edgar Allan Poe mask, but this episode explained the circumstances and I have to retract my statements.  Not the statements on other acts of stupidity, only that last one.  You see, he is a street performer that recites the works of Poe.  So the audience watched him perform The Raven and then, when he was done, he pulled out a gas can and lit a man on fire.  Now, do I believe somebody might have screamed watch out, or something equally as useless, to the man being turned into a human torch?  Deep down I do.  I don’t think you let a man carry a gas can into a crowd of people and proceed to pour it onto an individual without doing something about it, but then again in the heat of the moment one might freeze.  This plot point was successfully justified, well done writers. 

After the massacre of last week’s episode I didn’t expect much this week, but the show drew me in.  If I had to point to one major flaw of this show is its predictability.  “The Poet’s Fire” revealed twists that I saw coming in the first episode.  The writers might as well have put big neon signs on screen telling the audience what was going to happen.  Today’s audiences are harder to trick, I understand that.  This generation has seen more movies than earlier generations and we’ve seen all the tricks, but at least try. 

A part of the show I’m really enjoying is the cult psychology of Carroll’s followers.  Carroll is a very charismatic character, and he’s played well by James Purefoy, who leads his followers by asking them to create their own stories.  Carroll’s modus operandi is to remove the eyes of his victims and to display them as pieces of art.  To his followers he continues this theme of death as art, but insists that his followers write their own stories.  He wants them to find their own paths to becoming serial killers, so when one of his followers doesn’t like knives but enjoys fires, he approves of his disciple’s differing method.

The Following is far from the best show on TV right now, but, in spite of its death grip on mediocrity, it is far from the worst.  I want this show to grow into itself and become the awesome story I know it can be, but it has yet to reach the point where it becomes something special.