The Following

About one year ago i began watching a show on Netflix, a year later, it is over. When the Following debuted two years ago, it looked good but i never tuned in, both my mom & my buddy Fister were huge fans and kept telling me how awesome James Purefoy was as Joe Carroll, and they were not wrong.

The first season sees Kevin Bacon's Ryan Hardy tracking down Joe and his followers, Ryan was smart and you rooted for him, he was flawed, Joe was charismatic yet menacing. His followers were just as, if not more vicious than he was, especially the lovely Emma. There were multiple forms of manipulation and the crimes were multi layered, sure it was contrived but i was hooked.

The second season saw a family, the Gray's, of Lily and her twin sons Mark & Luke, fans of Joe's form an alliance with him, only for the falling out to lead to an almost babyface antihero turn for Joe, sure he was still a villain but you began to root for him at the same time. Ryan, along with his fellow officer Mike & his niece Max were stuck in the middle of an insane war between killers, Joe's story got even further out by taking over a religious cult, if that wasn't crazy enough, Luke has full on conversations & dinners with corpses. The body count took many characters in this season, and the body count on the whole show, is fucking huge. For network television, the show pushed the blood, i wish it had been on FX so it could have shown more.

The third season has many villains, some say too many, Joe, now a prisoner, and later the spiritual guidance of Ryan, as the two dream of each other as friends, and even later on as a vision that is there for Ryan hitting rock bottom in his struggle with alcoholism and there for his reemergence. Mark, who takes on a split persona of his brother Luke(died the previous season), Dr Strauss( the teacher of Joe and many other killers), Theo(a student of Strauss, whom is a master hacker with many identities throughout the country and total sociopath, with the only person he shows love for is his sister Penny), Kyle & Daisy(two more Strauss students), Neil(a man who specializes is removing spines and torture, such as fitting victims into a box), and Duncan(who has a whole cemetery with ears dangling from trees), as well as two crooked FBI agents.

The show is highly contrived but it is fun, all the characters are engaging and the blood is splattered everywhere.