The Following - Recap: Whip it good
Credit: FOX
Recap and review of The Following - Season 1 Episode 11 - Whips and Regret:
The Following has long employed the "one step forward, two steps back" approach to storytelling. For every episode that involves our heroes making significant headway into Carroll's (James Purefoy) cult, there's an episode like "Whips and Regret", which resets the counter back to 0. Every week, I keep looking for new things to say about the show, but each episode leaves me with very little to say about it, if only because so little changes. Of course, this is a necessity of the story showrunner Kevin Williamson and company are trying to tell. They have to approach the story this way, because Carroll's overarching plan disallows for Ryan (Kevin Bacon) and the FBI to make any headway. But my argument is, and always has been, that this is an outrageously s***ty approach to take. Never have I seen a network TV series so gleefully spinning its wheels. Sure, we might learn a new nugget of information or two, but at this point, we're hardly even getting incremental change. The Following is an endurance test for the audience: how much nihilistic bleakness can you take? How much weekly stagnation can you endure? Can you handle the show asking you to care about the emotional well-being of unrepentant serial murders? The show is one long challenge, and I'm not sure it even has to be, except that Williamson and co. seem to fetishize misery.
Credit: Giovanni Ruffino/FOX
The episode involves Ryan and Parker (Annie Parisse) tracking down a woman named Haley, who has possible connections to one of Carroll's followers, Vince (Christopher Denham). She works in an S&M club, and this results in some more "dark imagery for darkness' sake", as we see pale-skinned white guys getting whipped by dominatrixes in a grungy underground club. Turns out she's not a member of Carroll's cult, and is actually quite disgusted at the inference. Ryan and Parker manage to convince her to wear a wire and meet with Vince. The confrontation goes about as well as you'd expect, with Vince repeatedly trying to force himself on Haley, and then abducting her at gunpoint for her own safety. Ryan, obsessed with catching Joe, convinces Parker to ignore Haley's codeword to abort the operation. He sells Parker on the idea that Vince will lead them directly to Joe and his followers, and while it's initially sound, though risky, logic, things go pear-shaped once Vince makes a stop at an abandoned building and discovers that Haley is wearing a wire. I can get that they're building a storyline in which Ryan's increasing desperation puts others in danger, but the decision to ignore Haley's codeword to end the operation was embarrassingly irresponsible, to the point where it's almost hard to actually root for the guy. Sure, he saves Haley from Vince, but they ultimately lose several of Parker's men when psychologically conditioned cult members are let loose from a cell in the basement of the building. It's a full-scale disaster that leaves Ryan with egg on his face, once again.
Credit: Giovanni Ruffino/FOX
To make matters worse, Ryan still doesn't know that good-friend/ex-girlfriend Molly (Jennifer Ferrin) is one of Carroll's followers. She apparently has a key to his apartment and lets herself in at will, yet though Ryan is on his guard in every other facet of his life, his affection for Molly blinds him to the possibility that she could be an enemy in disguise. In addition to having Ryan's phone number, through which he torments Ryan on a daily basis, Carroll also has a hidden camera in Ryan's bedroom. He watches videos of Ryan and Molly making love, because his obsession with his own wife is rivaled only by his myopic, unsettling obsession with Ryan. In a flashback, we learn that once Joe makes the call that Ryan must be killed, Molly wants to be the one who does it. Is she really that broken up about Ryan dumping her? Or is there some deeper impulse compelling her hatred of Ryan? Maybe her desire to be seen as worthy by Carroll? At this point, I'm expecting the explanation to be "just because", since no one seems to need much of an impetus to kill on this show.
Credit: FOX
Meanwhile, Joe makes a little bit of headway with Claire (Natalie Zea). She's at the mansion now, although her pleas to see Joey (Kyle Catlett) fall on deaf ears. Joe gives Jacob (Nico Tortorella) free reign to bully Claire with the threat of violence so she'll dress up and meet her former husband for an intimate dinner. Claire plays along because it's the only way she'll get to see Joey, but even though she goes along with the dinner date, and endures Joe's constant assurances that he's simply indulging his biologically-compulsive need to kill, and that she will eventually learn to love him again, he denies her access to Joey. His rationale is that it's the only card he has left to play with her. Claire is understandably incensed, yet I guess I have to give the show credit for not sticking to Joe's refusal to allow Claire to see Joey. The reunion between mother and son is emotionally resonant almost despite itself, as it's such a raw, understandable connection with which one can easily identify, even if the episode around it isn't exactly up to snuff.
Credit: FOX
In other developments, Jacob continues to freak out Emma (Valorie Curry), who just wants the old Jacob back. Meanwhile, Roderick (Warren Kole) comes into more direct conflict with Joe, getting punched for his trouble when it comes out that Roderick had given Vince permission to travel to New York, which resulted in his getting tailed by the FBI. This could lead them directly to Joe's compound, bringing the entire following to ruin. Roderick argues that the followers deserve more consideration from Joe, given what they've sacrificed, but Carroll remains unrelentingly self-absorbed about what this mission is really all about, as befitting a villain of his caliber. However, it's still hard to get invested in the developing struggle for power between Carroll and Roderick, since it's between two characters who don't seem to have any possibility for redemption, going forward. Seriously, Roderick is just plain unpleasant to have to spend any amount of time with on a weekly basis, so I just can't see how the audience is supposed to care whether he's at odds with Joe or not. It's in-fighting between unreservedly terrible people. The sooner they take each other in an internecine war, the better off the world will be.
Credit: FOX
"Whips and Regret" continues the problematic strain of episodes that are characteristic of the back half of The Following's first season. There's a sense of insurmountable misery that makes it exceedingly difficult to become invested in anything that happens, as we're given no indication that there's an end in sight, or a light at the end of this pitch-black tunnel.
