2.12 Betrayal Part of the attraction is the show’s impressive ability to entertain visually. For example, Joe is angry at televangelist Kingston Tanner (Tom Cavanagh) for making Joe the object of his attention in an effort to sell a few books, so he decides to send his A-Team of goons off to track down Kingston’s son Preston at his college and have a little fun with him and all his frat buddies. Of course, before this can happen, Joe has to get a message to Carrie via stabbing emissaries, then his group gets to get their freak on in a very freaky way. I’ve talked before about how I enjoy the show’s use of creepy masks, but that tactic comes to a head this week in the frat house thanks to one or two really stellar scenes. Yes, the killers have their masks on, but so do the victims. Joe’s followers take the time to herd all of the folks hanging out in the frat house into a single room and glue masks onto their faces—removing the masks also removes skin and flesh—so that when Mike and Ryan inevitably show up to bust the group, there’s no way to tell who is a killer and who is an innocent victim, especially when the victims try to run screaming from their prison/room the moment Mike opens the door. (The fact that one of the killers is among them, and he jumps out to attack Mike/get killed by Mike only makes the whole idea work that much better.) That moment is actually topped by two other specific set pieces in the episode. One of them is simply Ryan peeking out from behind a tree, observing the cult crazies as they welcome Preston Tanner, Kingston’s kidnapped son, into the compound. It’s really simple, but it’s a really amusing moment because, however briefly, roles are reversed. We’re used to seeing the bad guy creeping around and peeping on the hero, yet here we are, and Joe’s talking about sins and blood sacrifice, and he’s being stalked by Ryan in yet another muddying of the roles. Another muddying moment was Lily’s behaviour towards Joe and, specifically, Mandy. Lily isn’t a nice person, but she’s good at faking it for as long as she needs to before the noose slips into place. In this case, that noose went around poor Mandy’s neck, and it was used to prop up her corpse for a family dinner with Lily and the American Psycho twins. Once again, Lily is the bad guy and Joe is, by comparison, less bad (the show also puts two of the killers into a positive light by having them turn the knives on a frat boy who calls one of the girls ‘fatty’). The Following is a show that’s gone beyond black and white without actually concerning itself with the morality of its characters or their actions. Ryan’s the hero because he’s the lesser of three evils (and the most charismatic actor on the show). Lily is probably the most evil character on the show, because she’s a few dead sons short of being reduced to a gibbering, stabbing lunatic. Joe is somewhere in the middle, as he has been for awhile. He’s still evil, but everyone on The Following is kind of evil in their own way. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Freedom, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is probably also a bad guy in some way. Maybe because he likes The Following, it’s proof of some sinister urge to stab things? Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
