The Following: S01E01 - Pilot.

Well since I dropped Arrow and all...


The Following is a brand new 2013 TV show seemingly marketed exclusively around the fact that Kevin Bacon is in it. I'm guessing a lot of people have heard of this, have heard Kevin Bacon is in it, but does anyone actually know what this is about?

Well, whatever the hell this show is about, it got a pretty good reaction from critics. Largely due to the sheer amount of stuff The Following was able to get past censors. Sadly the writing hasn't had nearly as much praise as the shows violent or horror content.

So what the hell is it? The Following's pilot is about a former FBI agent come alcoholic who is brought in to consult after a serial killer he was famous for catching, and who subsequently retired him from duty, escapes from prison. What then unfurls is forty unrelenting minutes of brutality and twists, then when it all comes together, it's glorious...

Kevin Bacon isn't the only familiar face here either, I've often argued that TV will eventually overtake films and The Following really seems to confirm that, the sheer amount of talent in this pilot, of household names and famous a-listers is probably going to blow you away. It gives a certain quality to the acting you don't often see in television. The Following is so unrelentingly dark, this could have all fallen in on itself if lesser actors were the ones carrying it, but these guys nail it.

However, Sander Cohen was my favourite BioShock character, bare with me, this has a point. He was big, theatrical, utterly terrifying and still managed to stand out, even in the awesome city of Rapture and all the amazing things inhabited in it. The Following's attempt to create a Sander Cohenesque character seems really cool on paper, but as this is a dark and gritty crime drama, they wanted their Cohen to feel like someone who is actually real and all this ends up doing is muting all the best parts of his character. Joe Caroll, despite being a pretentious, art obsessed serial killer with a disturbing eye for detail in his kills...still manages to be oddly boring. And really, in shows like this, your villain is largely your most important character. Purefoy does the best job he can, don't get me wrong, but I don't see why the villain can't be campy, can't be more egotistical and enigmatic, to make him stand out in this otherwise dreary world.

Caroll isn't the only problematic character either. Shawn Ashmore, an actor who hasn't aged in almost two decades seemingly, plays wide-eyed student like character. He is this awkward blend of innocence and well versed agent, the character doesn't work anyway but in this context he seems even more poorly written. And  let's not even talk about Jeananne Goossen's character, I don't want to make a PMS joke and I do not support violence against women, but I spent every scene wishing I could reach into the screen and give her a smack, what an utterly annoying and utterly pointless waste of space. I have heard that she gets dropped from the rest of the series? Thank the Gods!

As for our lead, I thought both Ryan was a great character and I thought Bacon portrayed him fantastically. As for the heart thing... eh... you see, on the one hand I liked that they gave Ryan a set limit, this will, in theory, allow them to be really creative in the more intense, action focused moments. But under a weaker writer or lesser director, his heart problem has just as much of a chance to become a tool for copouts and false tension. And if it starts to lean towards that in later episodes, my interest in this show may quickly sour.

The Pilot was just as gory as it was hyped to be, The Following is utterly brutal. It is also impressively constructed as well, each kill is to the killer a work of art and it really looks it. Most of the time episode writers are known while the directors themselves go unknown however episode director Marcos Siega, who was worked on a vast body of TV work, shows some real talent in how gleefully twisted he stages everything, building tension fantastically. He really puts the horror back into your rather run of the mill procedural, villain of the week style story. This really helps him stand out, where often TV episode styles bleed into one another. And given how great all the acting is in this, I'm going to assume he's as great as directing a story as he is the characters that inhabit it.

What is also surprising is the tone of the pilot, even when the gore and violence stops, the general unrelenting darkness doesn't. Supernatural's general goofiness and genuinely funny writing offset the hyper violence, here we have none of that. This is a dark story dealing with dark things and it takes itself deathly seriously. I thought I'd just drop a warning of that, since I know it isn't for everyone.

Pacingwise, this will probably polarise audiences more than the gore will. The Following has a kickass central premise and is clearly eager to get there, so the pilot is fast. TV is often a medium of frustratingly slow storytelling, there are those that use their time to explore things in greater detail but most just find ways of stretching a 90 minute movie worth of plot over twenty two episodes and the pilot at least, is like 'fuck that'. Every scene adds something new, a character, a concept, a plotpoint, whatever, meaning that you actually need to pay attention or you'll get lost. As said, this didn't bother me too much as I'm largely fed up with how cripplingly slow TV often is, but I've seen more than a few people claiming the pilot was hard to follow. So there, you've been warned.

I have to ask, are real american police really that dramatic? In one scene midway through the episode the FBI take a small army with them to catch a prison guard. As they kick down his door, the first thing they do is chuck a flash bang inside before charging in with massive rifles slicing torch beams everywhere. I mean I don't know if this is standard procedure or what but it just seemed a little overkill as it always does in these kinds of programs. In the UK a couple of overweight forty year old's in rain macs go in with their torches from wilkos, armed at most with possibly a taser, when 'storming' a suspects home.

Everything about this pilot seems to do that little bit more, the acting, the direction, the production design - it's all of a much higher quality than we often see on our small screens. I hate pilots like this, I hope I'm wrong but usually when pilots are this perfect in basically every area, it grows into an otherwise mediocre or downright bad series. COUGHArrowCOUGH. Whatever the future may hold for The Following, I can at least tell you that this was an utterly fantastic episode of television, one of the finest I have seen in quite some time. And I can at least hold onto those weak characters with the hope that that space gives the show a chance to grow and get better, not stagnate and turn into a smellier turd with each week.

Pros;

• Great acting.
• Ryan's heart could make for some interesting future episode climaxes and conflict.
• Well directed.
• I liked the fast pace. 
• Just a general higher quality feel than your usual TV shows. 

Cons; 

• Some weak characters. 
• The heart thing could lead to some bullshit down the line.
• Even Nolan let the Joker have some fun.

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate 'The Following - Pilot'?