1.10 Guilt So much of the plot around her has focused on three things: her marriage to Joe, her relationship with Ryan, and being a mother to Joey. Getting married to Joe is forgivable, as she didn’t know he was a serial killer and any true crime show reveals that most people don’t know they’re with a serial killer until the cops kick in the door or he turns the knife on the wife. Ditto the relationship with Ryan, since she was single due to her husband being in jail. She couldn’t know he had a death curse where everyone dies when they become his friend. However, the fact that Claire keeps leaving the safety of FBI custody to put herself into the midst of Joe’s snake nest of serial killers because she wants to see her son does not make sense. Joe has your son, that much is true; but you’re a piece of leverage. With you, the FBI has something that Joe wants. You’re a living, breathing bargaining chip. When you give yourself over just to see your son, your odds of removing your son from a horrible environment go down a great deal. To balance out Claire’s naïve, earnest desire to be with her son despite all logic, there’s Emma. From stealing Joey in The Following‘s first episode, she’s developed into quite the effective villain, even if she does depend a great deal on the Lori from season two Lady MacBeth manipulation act to keep her various fellows in line, but that kind of song and dance won’t work forever, and when the jig is up, it’s really up. Emma found that out the hard way this week. After betraying Jacob and Paul, abandoning them as she escaped justice and ignored their pleas for help (until Jacob contacted Roderick, who seems to be the guy who gets things done), she then tries to buddy back up to Jacob and it never really works. It just seems hard for The Following to keep justifying these bad, nonsensical decisions by characters. I know that a certain amount of stupid is necessary to make television function, but Claire just takes the moron cake. I imagine that, before long, she’ll somehow escape from the Murder Mansion, only to volunteer to go back into the custody of a group of crazed killers to protect her son who is in the least amount of danger of anyone there because he’s the scion of the group leader. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Love Hurts, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
