Bad time for bloody ‘Following’

Grisly new series revels in brutality

EDITOR’S NOTE: Frazier Moore wrote this column shortly after the Dec. 14 massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn.

By Frazier Moore

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

I got a look at the first episode of “The Following,” Fox’s upcoming crime thriller, a few weeks ago. Its level of graphic violence left me disgusted and dismayed. But with plenty of time to spare before its Jan. 21 premiere, I set it aside, resolving to give the show another chance while wondering if I was just having a bad day.

More of “The Following” arrived from Fox last Friday, a really bad day. But I made time to watch those additional three episodes, between heartbroken stretches viewing coverage of the shootings in Connecticut.

Yes, I was hyper-sensitized to the senseless real-life violence and bloodlust plaguing this country as I screened the series’ dramatized savagery.

But my reaction to “The Following” was no more pronounced than weeks earlier. My opinion was the same: “The Following” is a showcase for gratuitous carnage and cruelty that might best be described as pornographic.

Of course, maybe porn is the sweet spot for any broadcast network struggling to launch a series that will be noticed in an ever-more-crowded media marketplace. No doubt about it, “The Following” will be hard to overlook.

To be fair, there’s much to like about the show. It has a fine cast, in particular Annie Parisse (“Law & Order”) , Natalie Zea (“Justified”) and James Purefoy (“Rome”). And who doesn’t love Kevin Bacon, making his entry into series television? Plus, it was created by Kevin Williamson, known for the horror films “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and the TV series “The Vampire Diaries,” but also for “Dawson’s Creek.”

Never mind all that.

The premise is a rickety contrivance. Bacon plays Ryan Hardy, a former FBI agent pulled out of retirement to track down a serial killer he nabbed years before but who escapes from prison in the gory opening scene.

Joe Carroll (Purefoy) was a charismatic English professor and novelist with a taste for Edgar Allen Poe and grisly performance art. He was convicted a decade ago for the murder of 14 young women at the university where he taught.

Little is left to the imagination on “The Following,” which fetishizes butchery almost as much as its arch-villain.

But the bulk of the brutality is delegated by Carroll to a legion of psycho-disciples — that is, his Following. These ghastly Santa’s Helpers infiltrate the world, poised to do their master’s murderous bidding.

Why do they follow him? It’s “the pathology of today’s Internet-techno-bred minds,” explains Debra Parker (Parisse), an FBI cult specialist. “Enter a handsome, charismatic man who can touch them, make them feel their lives for the first time. He conditions them: The only way to truly live is to kill. Or some crap like that.”

Well, she said it. And that seems to be the show’s lone, hackneyed message.

Poe’s famous catchphrase, “Never more,” is repeatedly invoked in the series. “Never more” is what I’d say about the show.

But maybe other viewers will just love “The Following.” And maybe rival networks will soon be scrambling to further up the ante with savage dramas of their own.

Bring ‘em on! I don’t automatically condemn TV violence. Series like “Breaking Bad,” “The Walking Dead” and stomach-churning “Dexter” regularly bust taboos. But they put violence in the service of a larger storytelling mission, not just gory sensation. “The Following” demonstrates no such responsibility.