If you’re looking for a smart, gory, cop thriller – The Following might not be for you. If you want to have some mindless fun, watching Kevin Bacon go all Footloose on a disbanded cult and their leader, then you’ve come to the right place.
The shows creator, Kevin Williamson of Scream fame, must know he’s got a lot of competition out there, Hannibal and True Detective to name a few, because (finally) gone are Joe Carroll’s ambitions to be the next Edgar Allan Poe. Even the cults constant high school references to Poe are nevermore.
Williamson didn’t keep it a secret before the start of the second season, The Following was all but abandoning what the audience had come to know from the shows first season. And save for the first three episodes of that season, I highly doubt that anyone was too upset over that announcement. If anything, it made me want stick around more.
If you’ve been watching The Following this season, you already know it’s still suffering from some of the same problems that dogged the show in its first season. Okay, Poe maybe out, but there’s still the obvious MacGuffin that is, Gina Mendez in the FBI as the iffy mole. Who knows if she’ll go the Debra Parker way or if they’ll drag it out, into a possible third season. But the one thing I appreciate about the new incarnation of The Following is that they’ve embraced the nonsensical.
In this weeks episode Fly Away, we meet back up with Kevin Bacon’s Ryan Hardy and his niece Max, who’s a nice counter if they don’t muck it up and put that damn “Hardy curse” on her, in a motel room in Connecticut. They’re hot on the trail of Carroll and the “international house of psycho’s”, enlisting the help of Hardy fanboy, Mike Weston, forming what I casually call – Team Rogue.
A ticking clock is set-up when we catch up with Lily Grey and Joe Carroll in post-codial bliss. Turns out, not only is Grey and her stab happy, Olympics commercial family, creepy. She’s also extremely clingy for a woman who’s totally okay with murder, so much so, that all her talk about wanting to be a family with Carroll in Venezuela freaks out a known serial killer. And when Carroll bucks at Lily’s advances and Grey discovers Giselle is dead, at the hands of Hardy, she drugs Carroll for an easier get away – sensing that Team Rogue can’t be too far behind.
And wouldn’t you know it, she’s right. When Hardy calls her to wife-swap her twin son Luke for Joe Carroll, they arrange a showdown on a bridge, replete with ominous tones. Sounds great in theory, if everyone didn’t double crossed each other, Joe and Ryan are nowhere to be found. Leaving Max, Mike, Luke, Lily, Joe Carroll Mask Face Guy, and other twin Mark, to have their low stakes, stand-off.
So where are Joe and Ryan? Ryan has tracked down the Grey compound and after some light stabbing, finds a bleeding Russian who tells him Carroll, Emma, and Mandy (Carroll’s pseudo daughter now?) are on their way to an air strip. Destination, Venezuela. And in true season one fashion, Hardy has shown up just in time to watch Joe Carroll drive away.
Back on the bridge, after everyone casually tosses aside their guns, Mike Weston does his best Jesse Pinkman “bitch” and prison shanks Luke. Chase ensues, a race to the air strip.
This would be a tense moment and they sure to try to make it feel that way. Weston, finally doling out more beatings this season instead of being on the receiving end, kills the shit out of Luke in front his mother and brother. Mendez and whole FBI Calvary, copters and all, meet up with Hardy but of course, we’re still watching The Following so Carroll and Co. have been tipped off. They’re already halfway into the night, dismissing Lily Grey, getting her so mad, she pukes. In one of the most hilarious freak outs that feels like it’s a lost scene from The Room.
So is Mendez or her ex-wife, played by Leslie Bibb, the mole? Yeah, probably. But you already knew that. From the preview for next weeks episode, it doesn’t even seem like that’ll matter, Lily Grey is coming for Team Rogue and hopefully, it won’t be pretty.
I’ll see you again next week for another recap of The Following!
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