3.8 Flesh And Blood Perhaps more impressive than the special effects is the actual content of the episode, which is unnerving at multiple points. It’s a credit to The Following that it can make its weekly crawl through New York State’s never-ending collection of dank basements, secret cellars, and parking garages intense even after three seasons of it. I think part of is is that the show has a legitimate single antagonist, rather than a bunch of people it can throw at Kevin Bacon so Ryan Hardy can shoot them. The manhunt for Theo is fairly similar for the manhunt for Joe, albeit Theo doesn’t have a bunch of Followers, just a bunch of people so afraid of him they’re willing to die at the FBI’s hands rather than his more creative methods. After a couple of kind of blah episodes, this feels like a return to form for The Following, or at least an uptick in pleasant weirdness. Ryan and Joe have been having issues lately, both with one another and with having recurring dreams where one or the other shows up to do something out of character. That seems to be peaking this week, with Joe engaging in a lengthy escape fantasy capped off by Ryan coming to his rescue, and Ryan imagining Joe at multiple times during his search for Theo (and even calling Mike Joe during an argument with his girlfriend). It’s fairly obvious stuff, but it’s really well executed by director Marcos Siega, who seems to bring a spark of life to this week’s episode, as well as a little extra style in those well-executed fantasy scenes. I also appreciate that the scenes are merely fantasies, not reality. I’m sure being an FBI agent is a hard job, especially in the world of The Following, but there’s only one agent whose PTSD I care about, and that’s Ryan Hardy. And, of course, Joe Carroll. With every digression to Mike or Max, it feels like the show is trying to branch out from its lead, and that feels like a mistake. The show was sold on the presence of Kevin Bacon, so you’re kind of stuck using him as much as possible, even if he might want a break or need to go do some of whatever a producer does. Between Bacon and James Purefoy, the show has a lot of strengths—the supporting characters are also very well cast—and it seems silly not to make the most of them, considering the show’s declining broadcast ratings. It might boost a few of the DVR watchers to turn the show on live every now and then. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, The Hunt, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
