" The Following " on FOX - Page 9

I agree, and said exactly that in a previous post. Charismatic guys can make people do things that are, on the surface, unbelievable to the rest of us. History is replete with such examples. Joe had - what? - 8 years to recruit his followers and set this complex plan in motion. And the people he recruited were all damaged, homicidal misfits anyway. Apply the right pressure, the right motivation, the right "inspiration", and you've got yourself a murderous cult willing to do your bidding. They all think they're part of something greater than themselves. That's a key ingredient in leadership, and not all leaders are benign and altruistic. Some are twisted monomaniacal sociopaths. Again - history shows us there are no shortage of those guys around at any given time. Nor is there a shortage of knuckleheads willing to do their bidding.

The point is, I'm willing to accept the premise. The rest is a fast-paced "24-style" non-stop action thriller. I'm okay with that. It's what I signed up for and, by and large, the show is delivering.


Yes. One of the interesting facets of the show is how Joe's master plan will ebb and flow depending on how things actually unfold in the field, and whether Ryan can "rise to the occasion" to win the occasional battle. Joe views it as a chess match - he's matching wits with Ryan, and he has an undetermined number of pawns to sacrifice. And now, the second act is ready to unfold. The first step in that is getting his transfer to another facility. I doubt another escape is in the cards, however. It's something else.

I'd agree with if it actually was unique and interesting.

The problem is, it's turning into neither. The all powerful villain controlling things from inside prison has been done to death in movies and TV. Most of the characters are impossible to root for (even the good guys) and the whole kidnapped kid thing episode after episode has been wrung out many times before in series that have failed time and again.

It's one thing to keep going to the same well. It's another to keep going to the one full of water tainted by fertilizer runoff.

Honestly, the only thing keeping me watching at this point is last night's kind of bad*ss moment with Kevin Bacon in the house. Up until that point, I was ready to quit. If he keeps that up, it might make me want to see how he eventually gets the kid back (because he'll likely be the one to bring him back to momma - with hugs all around).

Spot on. Seems like everyone loved the Bacon dialog with the gay/'I'm not gay killers. That was a glimpse of the quality scenes many hoped the show would feature. I came to watch because of the cast of Bacon, Zea and Parisse.

It's one thing to fool the FEEBs once or twice which would be interesting even though overdone but that entire FBI bunch continue to behave time after time as if they just stumbled off the clown car. With zombie ninja elite combat trained followers spring up everywhere and blowing through perimeters like a high school quarterback through the cheerleader squad you'd think someone, anyone would catch on and get a clue with the record body count, but NOOOOooo.

I'm seeing lots of perhaps unlikely things... but nothing truly implausible or impossible as yet.

A sad but simple truth in good guy vs bad guy in real life is... the good guys usually catch the bad guys because of the mistakes they make. IF we ever had a master criminal in real life, he might not get caught. Lots of serial killers get away with their stuff for a while... sometimes without people even knowing there are serial killings at first until the bodies really pile up.

Factor in how many years this guy had to recruit people that were already off-their-rocker a bit... and it is all very possible, highly unlikely perhaps, but possible.

Jason isn't really scary in Friday the 13th because such a person isn't possible... surviving the way he does... but a show like this presents a group of "followers" who might be living next door to you.

It's funny... our parents were brought up in an era where it was believable that the USSR was training undercover agents to come live in the US and be sleeper agents pretending to be Americans and would wait 10-20 years before being activated... and our generation has terrorists, where we believe it is possible many of them come and live and work in the US for a decade and wait to be told what to do...

But the plot of the Following is somehow unbelievable? It seems right on the nose to me.

Is this going to be a recurring theme in this show?

* Bad guys are hopelessly trapped by law enforcement.
* Bad guy disguised as good guy unexpectedly helps free bad guys.

Are the writers going to use this as an "out" in more story lines?

I've seen this before, somewhere.

Huge difference:

In the case of those decades long serial killers or sleeper agents, no one knew who they are. There was no manhunt going on to find those people because they stayed quiet and were just that "nice, quiet guy who lives next door". They weren't doing things to attract attention and following it up with a lawyer giving a press conference about it. Once found out, those examples you cited were caught. They didn't slip away a half a dozen times or more through a dragnet with more gaping holes than a redneck's dental x-ray.

There's no reason any road for miles should have been accessible for escape with the resources the law enforcement had on their operation. If nothing else, the area for miles around the house should have been sealed off to keep the press away. With a house isolated and surrounded by woods, a helicopter should have been on scene. Plus, that house should have been lit up with enough candle power to make a Las Vegas hotel mogul drool. No one should have been able to approach the house or leave it through any door without being seen.

With all the long term planning that these followers do for everything (and the feebles know this about them), they should have assumed the possibility that they had a plan of escape if found, be it a tunnel, a mole in the operation or a flux capacitor in the pantry.

Oh, and could someone tell these jokers to wear some body armor. The cop that was gut shot in the barn shouldn't have been fatally wounded, even with devastator or other explosive rounds had he put on the vest that is likely still sitting in his trunk. I've know a lot of small town police officers and they all have one issued to them in case they have to answer a call out at Billy Bob's where the sign says he shoots on sight.

Even without body armor, when someone unknown to you approaches you at a scene of an operation in a potentially threatening way, you warn them to stop and get on the ground or you'll shoot them. If they fail to comply and are in danger of getting too close, you shoot them.

Finally, it's policy pretty much everywhere to assign a female agent to a female who is being given protection if at all humanly possible. That's just a much to protect the agent as the subject. There's no reason the wife should have been out of anyone's sight even long enough to use the bathroom. The idea that Joe might have someone grab her in the bathroom never seemed to occur to anyone - or that she might do something stupid like set up a meet with one of them to negotiate for her kid on her own.

These aren't mistakes like failing to arrest a subject during a traffic stop because you didn't get the BOLO for them. This isn't raiding the wrong house because of a bad trace or a typo. This is all just sloppy Keystone Kops stuff. I'm surprised there's no "Laurel" to go along with "Hardy" on this show.

I did enjoy the surprise appearance of newscaster Laurie Dhue in the most recent episode!

Missed it. I'm desperate for any redeeming value.

Missed it also. Where was she?

I can accept the premise. Its just the behavior of all the characters I find unbelievable. Nobody seems real, which makes it hard to care what happens to them.

She was the tv anchor briefly seen giving an update.

Agreed. The writers have gotten to us already. They've de-sensitized us to the humanity of the characters. By season's end we'll all be sociopathic and ready to become Followers!!!

I openly wept when I had to give up cable and could no longer see her on FNC.

She also had an appreciation for some on-camera hijinks every now and then...
Edited by Mr. Hanky - 3/1/13 at 7:09pm

why does every show feel the need to over do it with flashbacks nowadays?...seems like LOST created a bunch of copycats trying to recreate lightning in a bottle (and yes I know LOST did not invent the flashback but it seemed to revive it)

FOX has ordered a second season of the year’s most thrilling new series THE FOLLOWING, it was announced today by Kevin Reilly, Chairman of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company.

FOX press release

"There he is. Up there, on the second level". "Attention everyone!" "Can I have everyone's attention?"
"I'm with the FBI, and I'm here to catch that serial killer who just escaped from prison". "He's right there, near the rail, on the second level". "See?" "Up there".

"Anyway, like I was saying, I'm with the FBI and I'm here to try and apprehend him". "So everyone, please, step out of my way and scream at the top of your lungs so he becomes confused and distracted and, unlike all of you people, doesn't notice me, so I can surpris....." "Dang." "I think he saw me!"

"Guess I'll go it alone again since it worked out so well for me last time!"

I was actually rooting for Joe to kill his lawyer.

Characters I want to see die for their stupidity:

Joe's Ex-wife.
Pixie hair girl.
Both fake and non fake gay guys.
Warden.
Kevin Bacon if he doesn't kill Joe at the next opportunity.
Lawyer again just because she was so stupid! They could say she had a near death experience.
Writers.

Sent from my Nexus 7

I was thinking the same thing about announcing that the FBI was here so Joe could hear it.

I was also happy the lawyer died.

Am I the only one who saw the escape coming ? Leebo, they have to stretch out 8 more episodes so I do not think you will see Ryan killed anytime soon. Roderick - has he/she ever appeared on camera (I may have missed the appearance when I feel asleep briefly last night).

Everyone knew that he was going to escape. Why else would the storyline have him transferring prisons?

HaHa, you couldn't have put it better. Not to mention Ryan will shoot at a helicopter flying away but not a moving car carrying the boy.
Edited by bruce73 - 3/5/13 at 11:27am

I was just hoping that the guy at the garage would shoot the pixie girl since I figured he was "dead man walking" as he was outside the main circle.

Glad to see Ryan do a Jack Bauer imitation on the guy he shot in the leg.

Next to yelling they were FBI, the dumbest thing was not surrounding the place. Of course it wouldn't have done any good but they didn't know that.

Seemed strange that the guy that got gutted didn't scream or make a sound.

So Hardy tracks down the lawyer car/cell and only him and the other guy go there? where's the rest of the police force/FBI?

Then we had them yelling alerting Joe, at least yell "stop him" or something, then we have the gutted security guy that didn't make a noise, then the bad guy takes away Hardy's gun, he could have just shoot him dead after that when he went down the stairs instead of running, he didn't know at that time that Joe wanted Hardy alive. Then came the magic armored helicopter, where can I get one of those?

The garage guy: Looking so mean and badass with the tats and everything, what he does" cries about the boy.. then cries once more, even louder, well deserved death IMO.

The lawyer also deserving her faith, how about open the door and get out of the car? oh well.

So the "9" followers are now like 90?

i wonder if the writers are manipulating us. By introducing character after character that we feel is so stupid that they do indeed deserve grisly deaths, they're slowly and cleverly making us into uncaring sociopaths. By the end of the next 8 episodes we the viewing audience, those of us with enough tolerance for plot inanity, will have become sociopathic stone killers devoid of sympathy for our fellow humans whom we disdain as too stupid to deserve to live. We'll all be Followers!

This series is beclowning itself with inanities and really stupid characters. While the writers are horrible, I would like to nominate most of the cast for acting Emmys. How they can do these ludicrous scenarios while keeping a straight face and not cracking up on camera requires masterful emotional control. I'd kill to see the out takes. Whoops, perhaps that's an inappropriate word for this show's thread.

I'm still speechless that it got renewed for a second season. I don't even see how they can keep this bad story going for the rest of this season.

Not to pile on here, but after watching about the last 15 minutes of last night's episode, I'd agree that the writing on this show is just pitiful. I should've just kept on playing Borderlands on my HTPC instead.

The renewal answer is simple. As we saw in last night's episode something over half the US population are Followers so they're driving the ratings by watching for those secret coded messages from the college professor.

I think you've nailed it!

Nope, I'm done!

This is a documentary of "How to be a bad FBI agent for dummies"