Braving the Vast Wasteland

In the face of all the boring television offerings, such as the reality trash and the political trash and the news trash, etc, etc, etc, I have been trying out the newer offerings, one of them being "The Following" starring one of my favorite actors, Kevin Bacon.  At first, it seemed promising, according to the previews.  Then, I watched the first episode . 

The series starts with a serial killer, Joe Carroll, who was caught by Kevin Bacon's character, FBI agent Ryan Hardy, and incarcerated several years ago. Now, Ryan is no longer with the FBI, but the killings have started again, and the M.O. is exactly like that of the still incarcerated killer.  So, Ryan is called in and has to find out what's going on.  So far, so good.

He soon realizes that the killer has quite a following (The Following, get it?) of wannabe serial killers and he has instructed them in how to do the killings.  His aim is to get revenge on Ryan, who at one time, had an affair with the killer's ex wife.By the end of the first episode, the killer's ex-wife has told the FBI that the killer's followers have kidnapped her and Joe's son. She wants Ryan to catch the kidnappers.

So, in the next three episodes,Ryan is led a merry chase by the kidnappers, as they keep on killing people and moving  the boy from one hiding place to another.  By this time, we can see how things are going to go.  Ryan is going to spend the whole season hunting for the boy AND his mother, who, by now,  has also been snatched.  Ryan has a pacemaker, which is known to the villains, and every time they get close to him, they zap him with a taser, which doesn't seem to do much damage except to addle him for a few minutes while they get away once again with the boy.

Everything happens in the dead of night, and nobody thinks to turn on a light, so it is very difficult to see the characters, which is pretty irritating. And, then there are the flashbacks, apropos of nothing that is currently happening.

And, then, at some point we realize that this is the way the show is going to continue, and we start to wonder if they have thought ahead to what they will do in the second season, which I seriously doubt will happen.  They can't possibly have year after year of Ryan going into his twilight years searching for a boy and his mother, who get older and older, until the boy is able to rescue himself and his mother.  So, if this year wraps up with the serial killers all in jail and the original killer dead of old age, will they introduce yet another killer with a following? Or, will the show become a pale imitation of the long-running series "The Fugitive?" 

 Needless to say, I won't be following "The Following).

Stay tuned.