An interesting development has started evolving in “The
Following” over the past couple of weeks.
I touched on the subject last week, but I don’t think I went in depth on
my thoughts.
During the first half of this season I often complained
about the inept people inhabiting the world of “The Following,” the people most
were the FBI. I blamed the writers for
the mistake of making the “heroes” so dumb they were unlikable and wondered how
they could be so lazy. Recently though,
since Carroll escaped inexplicably in a helicopter, the show has admitted the
FBI have been running a shoddy investigation by bringing in an agent to take
over the case because of Hardy and Parker’s failures. The two agents even faced an inquiry at the
beginning of this episode taking responsibility for how badly they have run the
investigation. So the FBI being insanely
stupid wasn’t an accident of bad writing, it was specifically crafted into the
show to reach a major plot point. Are the
writers trying to discredit the FBI in general or are they trying to make the
audience dislike Hardy and Parker? I don’t
fully understand this decision, but I thought it was important to bring
up. I would be interested to see a
discussion on the subject in the comments.
Also this week we saw our second sacrifice in a row from
within the cult. Last week one of
Carroll’s followers gave himself up for sacrifice because he failed in a
task. This week Paul asks Jacob to kill
him. Paul, seriously injured from the
raid on the house (I think?), is taking refuge with Jacob in Jacob’s parents’
cabin. Jacob’s mom finds them and, for some
reason beyond me, helps clean Paul’s wound, but urges Jacob to get his friend
to a hospital before he dies. Jacob
obviously can’t because they are fugitives and would be noticed
immediately. With nowhere to go, and
Jacob’s dad coming home soon (because I guess his dad would have the
intelligence to call the cops), Paul asks Jacob to kill him so his life would
have meaning. It is a big moment for
Jacob because it is his first kill, and the meaning it takes is compounded
because Paul is Jacob’s closest friend besides Emma and was previously his
lover.
I think these scenes with the members of the cult have
been really cool due to the amount of humanity within the cult. They are literally a cult of killers that
have more humanity than the FBI agents hunting them. This goes back to my previous point of the
writing of the FBI agents. I wonder if
they were written as inept so that we would become more emotionally invested in
the cult, which has all the points on the intelligence scoreboard, instead of
the quintessential heroes chasing the obvious bad guys. This definitely brings an interesting dynamic
to this show, but I wonder how much better it would be if the FBI agents would
have been formidable foes for Joe Carroll and his rag-tag gang of murderers.
“The Following” is recovering from the complaints I had
about the series early on, but were my complaints misguided because I couldn’t
see the intention of the writers? Or
were their decisions well placed? I want
to wait until the end of this season to decide, but I am interested in what you
guys think. All in all, I enjoy the direction
this show is going in as long as they can fix some moments of weak
writing. I did really enjoy the killer
this episode though, she was delightfully creepy. I hope the season keeps improving.
3.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment