Recap: ‘The Following’ – ‘The Curse’

In all seriousness, “The Curse” is one of “The Following”‘s better episodes, but I have to agree with Claire — Joe’s writing is atrocious. If it weren’t for that little aside in tonight’s episode, I’d question the writers’ decision to include the manuscript. Well, okay. I question it anyway. But I question it a little less now that I know at least Claire hates Joe’s work, too.

“The Curse” is clearly one of the few episodes in “The Following’s” arc that was planned out right from the start — I feel like we’ve been waiting for this episode for weeks now, slogging through a few filler episodes that crammed in a kink club and a few more dead women for no clear reason. By comparison to those catastrophes “The Curse” is downright masterful — thematically consistent and even compelling, at times. For once, it feels like things are happening — plot devices that seem to push forward the creepiness, rather than continue treading water with empty horror and needless gore.

Nothing is very creepy, of course. But the episode is playing with a few of the major characters’ morality, revealing some of the tension between good and evil that drives the characters forward. I’m not convinced that a morality tale is really the best way to move forward a suspenseful plot, but it provides an avenue for the killers to get inside our heads, with their twisted logic. It also gives the killers to get a chance inside Ryan Hardy’s head, who is our Everyman stand-in, more or less.

The terrible book Joe is writing is his attempt to finish the chapter of the story with Ryan Hardy. But dude, Joe is stuck. He has writer’s block. Murderer-writer’s block. Because Ryan, his main character, is a dark, twisted personality whose motivations are very difficult to determine, apparently. I really did like how this storyline ended up, but I have to call shenanigans on the idea that Ryan is all that difficult to figure out. Joe already knows about his survivor’s guilt, and he has all kinds of intelligence from Molly, the nurse that sleeps with Ryan.

According to the exposition, though, Joe is unraveling. Along with the writers’ block, his followers are not as reliable as they were when they started out. Roderick is a wildcard, motivated by… something… to be randomly murderous and vicious; and as the FBI inches closer to finding the cult, Roderick’s weaknesses as a manager and the cult’s (obvious) vulnerability as a target are becoming more important. Joe’s not in a very good mood much of the time lately, and that apparently leads him to do something drastic — to go out in public himself to lock down the leak. (I have to say, the subplot this week about how exactly the FBI gets into the same space as the killers is very hard to follow. There’s a lot of running around in abandoned hallways, but more than that, I can’t tell you. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter much.)

The climax of “The Curse” is two separate but simultaneous confrontations — Jacob with Agent Parker, and Joe with Ryan, over a gagged and bound Agent Weston. It’s the type of showdown we’ve seen on television before, but I liked that both conversations are mini-dramas themselves, where each character is trying to manipulate the other. Ryan’s trying to draw out Joe to protect Mike, and Joe is trying to goad Ryan into admitting more details of his particular version of survivor’s guilt. Parker is trying to wheedle some humanity out of Jacob, and Jacob is trying to convince her that she’s in real danger.

“The Following” wants to be a show that plays with morality. It’s not subtle enough to get into the nuances of life and death, good and evil — but what it lacks in subtlety it makes up for with shlocky exposition and sound effects, which you know, can work if you’re in the right mindset. I didn’t love the flashback to Ryan’s father’s death, but I like knowing that he killed a guy with heroin as a teenager, because that’s kind of interesting. My problem is that it’s hard to get into this morally gray area when the “bad” characters who you are supposed to be interested in and sympathetic to act like they are unhinged, alien, or psychotic. This isn’t a war between good and evil, this is a battle between the clinically insane and the slightly less crazy.  If “The Following” can sort out who its evil characters are supposed to be, it might have a shot at getting coherent before the end of the season.

This is most obvious with Joe, who is the most inconsistently written character on the show. He’s by turns calculating, genius, ruthless, sympathetic, and loving. I think the idea is that because James Purefoy is a recognized actor, those hiccups will work themselves out. But lately it seems like Joe is just a random series of traits strung together. Who would have guessed that the misogynist murderer from the pilot would be writing a really bad book as a way to carry out his nefarious plan? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

Still, I’m taking a feather from David Sims at The A.V. Club and trying to keep a sense of humor in mind. Because as the season draws to a close, the ridiculous elements of “The Following” are getting more and more hilarious. Random, overwrought hooking up between Joe and Emma? Yes! Fistfight between Emma and Claire because Emma wants to be “friends”? Excellent! Jacob tearfully calling his dad? Awesome! Roderick wearing his uniform all the time for no reason? Why not?! The laughs just keep coming.

*** Is it just me, or is Agent Weston way unstable after coming out of the hospital?

*** Agent Parker is still the only character who feels real and relatable to me. And even she has some hilarious lines in this episode, like “I once got hit in the face with a bat and it hurt, dude, it hurt.” Okay, that wasn’t a real quote. But you get the idea.

*** I hear a heroin overdose is not such a bad way to die.