The Following - Season 1 Episode 4 - Recap and Review - Mad Love
Recap and review of The Following - Season 1 Episode 4 - Mad Love:
There came a point in tonight's "Mad Love" where I wondered, "Why the hell am I even watching this?" The obvious answer is that it's my job to watch it, and to write these reviews, which is something I love doing - even if I occasionally hate what I'm watching. But what's peculiar is that I don't hate The Following. It has a lot of problems that aren't being addressed, but that hasn't precluded my finding things to enjoy about the previous three episodes. In fact, I'd argue there's more to enjoy about this show than there is to dislike. Yet episodes like this risk making me forget that. While it advances many of the primary threads of the series in significant ways, and develops the backstories of these characters in the process, "Mad Love" is an absolutely dreadful hour of television, to the point where I just wanted to shut it off and palate cleanse with some Futurama - because while I don't hate The Following, I hated the living hell out of "Mad Love".
Credit: David Giesbrecth/FOX
My issue with the episode stems from the fact that we still have no reason to care at all about the personal or private lives of Emma (Valorie Curry), Jacob (Nico Tortorella) and Paul (Adan Canto). I realize the show has more or less given up trying to make them identifiable in any real world sense, and I doubt we were ever really supposed to enjoy spending time with them each week. Yet while they might have their own interpersonal stories in play, it seems that the only real purpose in spending time with them in the first place is to verify that, yes, Joey (Kyle Catlett) is still alive - and also, I suppose, to illustrate the effect Carroll's (James Purefoy) own depravity has had on his charges. But it's become a real slog to endure their company each week. Never mind identifying with them, or even putting up with them, we actually haven't been given a single reason not to actively loathe these people. Oh, the show tries to humanize Jacob by revealing the actual secret he's been keeping from Emma. Last week, we were led to believe that his hookup with Paul was the mystery he'd been concealing, but that's apparently not the case. Turns out Emma already knows about all that and doesn't seem to care much since she knows that Jacob isn't really gay. No, the secret isn't that he had a guy-on-guy hookup. Jacob's big secret is that he's never actually killed anyone before.
Credit: FOX
With each episode that introduces a new follower, we've seen flashbacks or heard stories of their initiation into Carroll's cult, an induction that necessitates a murder to prove one's commitment and willingness to kill. We've gotten hints of Jacob's past, but no clear explication of his complete story. To this end, we see flashbacks to Jacob relishing in telling a story about his first "kill", where he put a woman in a shallow body of water, standing on her until he was sure her lungs had filled with water. As he describes the feeling of discovering, for the first time, just how heavy a dead body was, we see Emma's eyes practically fill with little cartoon hearts for how lovey-dovey the story is making her. But it's a lie, and Paul reveals as much to Emma in a passive-aggressive outburst. Devastated, she confronts Jacob and tells him he must be the one to kill Meghan (Li Jun Yi), who is still being held prisoner in their basement. It appears he has every intention of actually going through with the job, as we see a flashback to an early meeting between Jacob and Carroll in prison, in which the young follower states his earnest desire to kill someone, even though he hasn't been able to bring himself to do it, and Carroll comforting him by telling Jacob that he'll kill when he's ready, after he meets the right person (which sounds, for all the world, like they're talking about sex - and given how they seem to get off on murder, they might as well be).
Credit: FOX
However, Meghan doesn't appear to be that special person for Jacob, as he has a crisis of conscience and lets her go, causing Emma and Paul to give chase. They corner Meghan in the garage out back and Emma stabs her, leaving her wounded but alive. They then return Meghan to the basement, a message to Jacob that killing is an unavoidable aspect of what they do. Jacob returns upstairs, possibly having killed Meghan, though it seemed to me that he still didn't go through with it. Once there, he witnesses Emma and Paul in the shower together. The duo spreads their arms in a gesture of acceptance, and Jacob welcomes their embrace, his tears giving way to a relieved, blissful smile. And I just don't care. I don't see how anyone possibly could. These are the worst people in the universe, and while I suppose it could be the intention of the series for us to be sickened by this, it wasn't the kind of reaction where I wanted to see these people get what was coming to them. I just wanted to change the channel. The repulsive morbidity of the content is exhausting, and it's particularly distressing that we spend roughly half of the episode exclusively exploring this plotline, which is a lot of time to spend on morally repugnant characters that can't even bother to be interesting or three-dimensional in their repugnance.
Credit: FOX
The other half of the episode doesn't really do much to rescue things either. Ryan's sister Jenny is abducted by Maggie (Virginia Kull), whose real name, as Ryan (Kevin Bacon) learns in an interrogation with Carroll, is Margaret Schuller. Turns out Schuller was a serial killer long before Carroll ever got hold of her, and Carroll admires her every bit as much as he appreciates her loyalty. Moreover, he appreciates a good love story, which is what Maggie certainly had with her husband Rick...at least until Ryan shot him dead. That act from last week is what compels Maggie to abduct Jenny and telephone Ryan, telling him to meet her at the restaurant Jenny owns in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn. Weston (Shawn Ashmore), who knows everything about Ryan because he's a huge admirer (again, drawing parallels with Carroll and his unquestioning followers), deduces that Ryan is off to rescue his sister on his own, and begs to come along. Ryan reluctantly agrees. On the drive over, Weston, annoyed that Ryan doesn't seem to want to meet him halfway in his attempts to bond, reveals that his name is Mike. Mike seems pretty miffed with Ryan, who spends much of the car ride in a fog of sleeplessness and stress, to say nothing of the relentless memories of Jenny, and of his relationship with Claire (Natalie Zea).
Credit: FOX
The flashbacks take us back to Ryan introducing Claire to Jenny at her restaurant, in a scene that's full of easygoing warmth, and is among the few that I didn't dislike this week. However, a subsequent flashback gives us more of Ryan's backstory. During pillow talk, Claire pesters him into revealing that he and Jenny are the only members of his family remaining. His father was an ex-cop with the Albany PD before being killed while trying to be a hero during a convenience store holdup. His heartbroken mother died a year later. Sadder still, they had an older brother, a New York fireman who was killed on 9/11. I don't know that we needed an entire cataclysmic, tragic backstory to give us a reason to root for Ryan to save his sister, but it does help illustrate why he's so singularly devoted to her, since she's the only person he has left (and the only one willing to usher him through his alcoholism, even though it was immensely painful for her to endure herself. At one point, she briefly cuts ties with him over his self-destructive behavior).
Credit: FOX
Once Ryan arrives on the scene, he orders Mike to double back to the door around the side, and to make rescuing Jenny his priority. Upon entering, Ryan is made to blindfold himself, at which point Maggie enters and teases Ryan about his family and their "curse". She knocks Ryan out when he takes off his blindfold, strapping him to a table via a seemingly-infinite amount of duct tape. She brings out Jenny, so she can watch as Maggie tortures Ryan to death in front of her. Maggie's torture involves using electrical currents to overload his pacemaker, which is a particularly slow and agonizing way to die, and if the episode gets anything right, it's in Jenny's absolute terror at being made to watch this happen. Her horror and panic is so palpable that I felt a sincere sense of relief when Mike came to the rescue (although he sure took his sweet time, didn't he?), even though I knew there was absolutely no way they were killing Ryan off.
Credit: FOX
Yet for everything the episode gets right, it has innumerable things around it that end up feeling like some awful parody of a horror movie climax, from the needlessly complicated revenge scheme to the last minute reprieve (I feel like the show drew out the torture for so long in order to get us to forget that Mike was there, so that we would be both surprised and relieved by the rescue. Against all reason, it actually kind of worked. But that didn't necessarily mean it was a logical approach for the narrative, as it makes Mike seem cautious to the point of incompetence). As Ryan talks with Jenny in the aftermath, she wonders if there isn't some validity to Maggie's theory that their family is cursed. She asks about Claire, and suggests that Ryan is still in love with her. Flashing back and forth between past and present, Ryan (in the past) tells Jenny why he isn't right for Claire, while Jenny reiterates that it's clear how much he loves her. In the present, Jenny reiterates it again, leading Ryan to contemplate staying for breakfast when Claire offers the next day. But he can't bring himself to do it. He walks away, disappointing Claire and consigning himself to loneliness. The show wants us to root for this pairing, but Ryan's nobility doesn't really endear him to the viewer, since it's a selfish kind of nobility, denying himself someone he clearly needs in his life, all out of some misguided, chivalrous notion that he couldn't possibly be something she needs in hers. I can certainly understand why he'd worry that Carroll would try to get to her through him, thus endangering her unnecessarily. But she's already imperiled. At the very least, they need each other to get through this mess, together. Even if just as friends. If this episode actually tells us anything, it's that no one can really manage on their own.
Credit: FOX
But that germane message isn't enough to rescue what is basically the worst episode of the series so far, to the extent that I'm actually worried about this show's direction, going forward. Granted, the previous three episodes have been good enough that my fears aren't all that serious, but I still have to wonder how an episode so littered with cliches, contemptible characters and hackneyed climaxes could have passed muster. Hopefully the series can rebound next week and get back on track, as I continue to believe that this could be one of network TV's better dramas, if handled delicately.