The Following - Season 1 Episode 3 - Recap and Review - The Poet's Fire
Recap and review of The Following - Season 1 Episode 3 - The Poet's Fire:
There's a peculiar pathology to The Following that informs how we should view it, and it's never been better illustrated than in "The Poet's Fire". The episode seems designed to condition us to expect the worst from nearly everyone in the cast who isn't directly known to the viewer as an agent of law enforcement. While this leads to a certain suspicion that prevents the viewer from falling for the same tricks that our protagonists ultimately fall for, it also keeps us from really being shocked by any of these twists. If these three episodes have taught us anything so far, it's that if a person could possibly be a follower of Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), they probably are. So it's no real surprise when it's revealed that the beleaguered wife of Carroll's most recently-discovered follower is a Carroll devotee herself.
Credit: David Giesbrecth/FOX
Of course, this could actually be the point of the show's transparent narrative approach: placing the viewer in a superior position by granting us knowledge that isn't available to the investigators in the show. They're characters in a TV show, so they aren't given the narrative hints we're given: the quick cuts, the lingering shots on images or objects that will be important later, or the creation of an atmosphere that portends danger. They also don't see the flashbacks to the formation of Joe's cult, nor the dissension among Emma (Valorie Curry), Jacob (Nico Tortorella) and Paul (Adan Canto), who struggle to maintain peace in order to keep Joey (Kyle Catlett) from discovering the truth of the whole countryside getaway. Some viewers might be miffed by the plot's occasional predictability, but I don't imagine it will actually be a dealbreaker for anybody, as the series continues to do a commendable job of building tension by throwing in smaller shocks within that predictable framework. Unfortunately, those shocks are of a violent, jump-scary nature, which remains problematic for a series that seems more concerned with illustrating the depths of human depravity than actually telling a focused story. However, this was the only episode of the four I've seen that bothered me, in that regard. And the fact remains that it's still a pretty good hour of television, if you can get past the nakedly transparent attempts at shock value.
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This week, Ryan (Kevin Bacon), Parker (Annie Parisse) and Weston (Shawn Ashmore) investigate the immolation that closed out last week's episode: someone in an Edgar Allen Poe outfit set a bystander on fire for seemingly no reason, escaping past a crowd of horrified onlookers. This pyrotechnic is revealed to be Rick Kester (Michael Drayer), a fire-obsessed follower of Carroll's. The bystander he set on fire was Carroll's harshest critic, a book reviewer who tore Carroll a new one when his novel hit the stands. His death serves the dual function of earning Carroll a modicum of revenge, while also satisfying Rick's desire to have his part in Carroll's story be the "revenge" chapter. To this end, he carries out Carroll's revenge fantasies, going on to stab the University Dean that denied Carroll tenure in a scene that's absolutely chilling for its completely nonchalant approach to cold-blooded murder. More so than any of the followers we've met thus far, Rick Kester is coldly unflinching in his violence, neither appearing to relish it nor exactly showing any sense of fear or remorse.
However, his wife Maggie (Virginia Kull) is arguably worse. Whereas Rick is matter-of-fact about his violent proclivities, Maggie spends the lion's share of the episode playing the wounded dove, telling Hardy that Rick once tried to kill her by stabbing her in the abdomen (a story that is confirmed to the viewer via flashback). Of course, it turns out we're not getting the whole picture, as a subsequent flashback reveals that this wasn't an intentional murder attempt on Rick's part, but merely a botched dare during a night of drinking in the den shared by Carroll's cultists. Maggie is taken back home by Agent Troy Reilly (Billy Brown), who stands watch for Rick's inevitable return. Parker questions the wounded Jordy (Steven Monroe), who tells her what he knows in exchange for a meeting with Carroll. She learns that Maggie is a Carroll follower, and that she knows where Joey is being kept, since she helped coordinate the plan to abduct him. Unfortunately, Parker learns this too late to save Reilly, who bleeds to death after Maggie stabs him through the neck, and only moments before Ryan and Weston can do anything to stop it. It's a genuinely disturbing development as, again, there's a frankness to the violence that's exceedingly jarring, to say nothing of how the show seems keen to spend the majority of its budget on buckets upon buckets of blood. As if that isn't enough, the scene is given a run for its money by Jordy's suicide, in which the mentally-disturbed former corrections officer dislodges the gauze from his wound and swallows it until he chokes to death. This plays out in a slow, deliberate fashion, and I have to at least give credit to the show for the uniqueness of the death, even if I could have done without seeing Jordy purpling and instinctively struggling for breath. But then, that sort of unflinching morbidity is why the scene is effective in the first place.
Credit: David Giesbrecth/FOX
Maggie escapes, although Ryan is able to subdue Rick -- by shooting him dead. Maggie's escape and Reilly's death are two more in a series of failures for which Ryan blames himself, including the death of the Dean earlier in the episode, as he feels he should have been able to predict that the Dean would be a target. He feels this way because, as we learn in a series of flashbacks, Ryan first met Joe at the University, setting up a meeting to discuss Edgar Allen Poe, as Hardy felt Carroll's contributions could be beneficial to solving the then-unsolved murders. These scenes don't tell us much that we don't already know, though they help us get a sense of just how beguiling Carroll could be, and how thoroughly he fooled everybody in his life. They share good scotch while Carroll dissects Ryan's loneliness, along with his ache to put an end to the killings. Carroll is toying with Hardy, but he doesn't know it just yet. Ryan beats himself up, in the present, for not knowing, and for not suspecting Carroll sooner. Ryan's guilt is something that we, as viewers, can measurably witness through Bacon's attentive performance. Just from the way Ryan Hardy walks, speaks and carries himself, there's a world weary exasperation that does much of the work of communicating, for instance, that he's only been getting an hour of sleep each night. Ryan's guilt and raggedness are plain on his face, and those elements play into the conclusion when he and Claire (Natalie Zea) watch an email attachment she received. The accompanying video shows Joey being taught to kill small animals by Emma and Jacob, and it becomes clear that Carroll is intent on molding his son after his own image, as if intending to adopt the literary technique of reflecting the father in the son for this masterwork he's been planning. As Claire pleads with Hardy to find her son already, we can see a heartbroken resolve in his eyes to get the job done, and pain over having allowed it to ever get this far in the first place. Bacon is doing yeoman's work with the part, and he's one of the best reasons this show works as well as it does, though Purefoy also deserves commendation for making such a slimy figure so believably seductive.
Credit: David Giesbrecth/FOX
The other major plot of the episode sees Paul going on a bender after Emma cuts him for bad-mouthing her to Jacob. Realizing that he'll never be more than a third wheel to the pair, Paul drives off in search of a way to reassert his power and agency. He flirts with a convenience store clerk named Meghan (Li Jun Yi), convincing her to drive out into the middle of nowhere with him to drink beer and make out. But when he takes things a little too far, Meghan asks to be taken home, causing Paul to snap and slam her head repeatedly into his car, rendering her unconscious. He brings her back to the farm house, alive and gagged, to the abject horror of Emma and Jacob. Paul claims he's sick of being the third wheel, and with Meghan present, now he won't be. Jacob asks Emma for a moment alone with Paul, at which point we learn that Paul's disdain for Emma is related to how their faux-gay relationship briefly became real, as we see in a flashback in which the two engage in a bit of drunken fooling around. Back in the present, Paul asks Jacob if/when he's ever going to tell Emma. This development builds real tension, because we know Emma is nuttier than squirrel s***, and won't hesitate to cut somebody if they get on her bad side (which is the only kind of side she seems to have, this week). I don't know that the Trio in the Countryside storyline needed an affair to add intrigue, but I can appreciate the attempt at character development, giving the trio a secretive backstory that fleshes out their conflict a bit more clearly. That said, this is still a subplot about three murderers, so the show will have to forgive the audience if it doesn't exactly feel like relating to or identifying with a bunch of psychotic child abductors. In fact, it's the biggest problem I have with the show, that we're being asked to see something tortured or salvageable in a trio of characters that, for me, are as every bit beyond redemption as Carroll. But this is a problem that isn't going to be remedied any time soon, given that much of this first season is already in the can. But hopefully the series can course correct, should it get picked up for subsequent episodes.
Credit: David Giesbrecth/FOX
"The Poet's Fire" is a fairly engaging episode that illustrates much of what works about the show (from the way it's filmed and the consistency of its look and tone, to the performances of Bacon and Purefoy), while also displaying much of what doesn't (the Trio, the transparency of its narrative, and the sensationalism of its violence). But I continue to contend that there is a more nuanced show underneath the morass of elements that don't work. There really is a ton of potential for this show to be more than the dreary, though nonetheless compelling, serial it is now. This is a pretty divisive show already, and I imagine it'll either rise or fall by the audiences' willingness to endure the oft-oppressive bleakness of each episode. I can certainly stomach the bleakness, but I do hope there's actually a light at the end of this tunnel eventually.
