"I've been planning this for a long time."
Thus begins the creeptacular second episode of The Following, Kevin Williamson's action-packed, blood soaked cautionary meditation on the Internet, romantic literature, and the dangers of buying meat from street carts.
Jordy the crooked prison guard has no trouble convincing a sorority girl to let him into her house in the middle of the night, and before you can say "Lost in Your Eyes", she (along with several of her sleeping pals) has lost hers. I hope none of them was Sober Sister! Just another night at Bad Judgment University...
Meanwhile, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) and the Assorted Hunky Feds learn that Claire's apple-cheeked nanny Denise (Valorie Curry) is actually named Emma. GASP! What's more, they have prison security footage of Emma and the gay neighbors Will and Billy (possibly the worst-named gay couple in television history, but more on that in a sec), who are really named Paul (Adan Canto) and Jacob (Nico Tortorella).
Claire (Natalie Zea) asks if she could really be so stupid as to let one of her serial-killing ex-husband's henchwaifs into her home and her life. Well, look on e bright side: if you weren't, we wouldn't have a television show.
Emma, Paul and Jacob, meanwhile, have ensconced themselves in a gorgeous countryside mansion with Claire's unsuspecting kid. Turns out Will and Billy were not, in fact, a gay couple - but Paul is acting the cuckold anyway now that psychotic lovebirds Emma and Jacob are back together again. DEVELOPING.
We see in flashbacks how they met: Emma - with long hair, so this was before she was evil - met Joe Carroll (James 100%PureFoy) at a book signing back when she was just a shy flower whose slutty mom embarrassed her in public. Later, she cuts her hair (EVIL) and visits Joe in prison, where he tells her that he has someone he thinks she should meet. She goes on a blind date with Jacob, and before you can say Natural Born Killers, she's stabbing her mom over dinner and drinks.
Ain't love grand?
Hey, isn't that the bathroom at Fangtasia?
Back in Slightly Less Crazytown, Ryan and the Assorted Hunky Feds track down Emma's mom's address, and Ryan and Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) go to pay her a visit. Ryan breaks into the seemingly empty house (he lives OUTSIDE the law now, see?) and finds that it's clearly been used by some kind of Poe and Joe Carroll cult - the walls are covered with drawings and writing, and one room boasts a shelf of Poe masks. Oh - and one of them has a person attached to it! Yes, in a splendidly jarring scare, an as-yet-unidentified Follower in a rubber mask pulls a gun on Ryan and tells him that he shouldn't be there and that he's going to die, but just not now.
He bolts. I change my pantaloons.
I also want to point out that Ashmore's character's name is actually the name of another recognizeable actor: Michael Weston was the guy who played David Fisher's kidnapper in the infamous "That's My Dog" episode of Six Feet Under.
Just sayin'.
Meanwhile, there is a new agent on the case: no-nonsense Deborah Parker (Annie Parisse) was sent in to replace the Other Lady Agent, because she messed up and/or didn't test well with focus groups. I like Parker, so it's okay. She calls Ryan out on being a lush and cautions him not to use the word "cult". That is, until she sees the inside of the cult house - sorry, cult home - after which she admits that they're a cult and also that she's the head of the Alternative Religions unit, and cults are her specialty. Well isn't that convenient!
They also find Emma's mom in the wall of the attic - Ryan notes the similarity to Poe's The Black Cat and The Cask of Amontillado, which he adorably mispronounces. They also find Claire's picture among the names of dead Poe lady characters, and they run to her. Wait - weren't they already operating under the assumption that Joe was out to get Claire? Especially since he stole her kid and almost choked her to death in an interrogation room, like, ten minutes ago for having an affair with Ryan? (Which, to their credit, they did not consummate until after she filed for divorce.)
Claire cops a feel, for old time's sake
At this point why don't they just lock Claire somewhere safe so that they don't have to run across town every time they find a clue that puts her in danger... which happens AGAIN about five minutes later when they find blueprints of her house on the wall of the cult home?
Oh, and from this point on they can stop putting "2004" on the screen whenever they jump back in time - we'll know it's a flashback if Kevin Bacon has frosted tips.
Anyway. Sure enough, Jordy ambushes Claire IN HER OWN BEDROOM despite the fact that the place is crawling with cops and Assorted Hunky Feds. Despite appearing outwardly to be somewhat less that physically fit, Jordy manages to lower himself from the ceiling to take out an unsuspecting yet handsome cop who just completed the most half-assed room sweep I've ever seen. (Note that Michael Myers pulls the same trick in Williamson's Halloween H20 - second reference in two eps!)
It all ends with Ryan saving Claire (which Joe of course wanted, FOR THE BOOK) by shooting Jordy - but not killing him, which takes Joe off guard. I think next week Ryan might be able to pull some tidbit of info out of Jordy that Joe wasn't expecting, no?
Oh - and then a guy in a Poe mask walks up to a man at a hot dog cart in broad daylight, douses him with kerosene, and sets him on WHAT THE F*CK!?!
Okay, between this, Arrow, and Dexter, is "dousing people in gasoline and torching them" the new hot meme? And here I still haven't gotten around to "owling"!
What We Know
- There are eight or nine different sets of prints in the cult home - so there are at least a few more loonies (aside from Rick, the Poe mask guy) still at large
- For Carroll, there's a thin line between love and crushed windpipe
- Emma may be a total b, but she's also a heck of a nanny - nice room for the kid! She may be worth the added effort, considering how hard it is to find quality childcare these days.
What We Don't Know
- Why Parker gave Joe the book of Poe writings... is she just trying to play "good cop" or is she up to something else?
- Whether Rick is someone new or someone we've seen before, and whether the Street Meat Firebug is the same guy (as there were plenty of masks lying around)
- Everything else
Notably Dead
- Several sorority girls
- Emma's mom
- My appetite for hot dogs
Notably Gay
- Jury's still out on this one, but Paul seems a bit too interested in Jacob and Emma's reunion, no?
Notably Following
- Emma, Jacob, Paul, Ryan, Jordy, and at least a couple more
Can they keep pulling the rug out from under the characters (and sometimes us) every week like this? Will all the running back and forth to Claire's house prove prohibitively expensive with today's gas prices? And will Paul ever find love that isn't a babynapping, Maggie Grace-endangering, serial-killer-adjacent straight guy? Only time will tell.
I'd say that it earned a total of seven out of ten THAT'S SO RAVENs:
What'd you think?
