Sometimes,
I, as a writer, see a situation that I want to talk about. Though I toil in the
dank basement of anonymity, publishing stories and writing screenplays that
never seem to score any traction other than family and friends, I still believe
in my writing and my understanding of story and what readers/viewers want to
read and see. It's always shocking to me when other writers set themselves up
to fail in the story department. Sometimes, I like to point out where things
went wrong and how they could have been improved, because griping without
offering solutions is basically just whining. The Following is one of the few
shows I've watched religiously over the last few years. The other shows I
watch, and it's a small list, include Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and
The Last Ship (I'm just too busy with my own writing to seriously invest any
more time than that into TV.). While The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are both
going strong. I knew as soon as I watched the first season of The Last Ship that
it would be doomed following season two. Just wait and see, it'll be cancelled
this year. Now when I first started watching The Following, I saw the potential
for some legs there, but the show's writers and creators made some fatal errors
following a fantastic and unforgettable season one.
A few years ago, I latched onto the
series "The Following," a deliciously brutal, sometimes hilariously insane
series about a federal agent named Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) who is tracking
down a serial killer (James Purefoy) who has developed a large group of like-minded
psychopaths. As I watched the series, I was struck by the literary references,
the creativity, and the pure joy of everyone involved. Ryan Hardy's passion as
a crimestopper was only rivaled by the passion with which James Purefoy
embodied the quirky, charismatic character of Joe Carroll. It was great TV...
and after a certain point, I knew it was doomed.
That point came in the second
season. After the inaugural season of the series, Kevin Williamson, the
somewhat maligned writer of the Scream series and the truly atrocious Teaching
Mrs. Tingle, had a variety of directions he could have taken the series in. He
went the easy route, and damned his show in the process. Instead of crafting
something new with the second series, he essentially took season one, dragged
it out, added more bad guys, and went from there. The depth of the first season
was gone, replaced by mindless violence and characters that never truly reached
their potential.
Here's how The Following could have
worked as a long-lived TV series. First off, each season should have been a
contained hunt for a brand new cult. Season one should have been about catching
Joe Carroll, and it was. Season two should have been about an entirely new
cult, completely separate from the one in season one. This offers several
things to the viewer. The first thing it offers is the promise that you're
never going to be seeing the same thing over and over again. The second thing
it offers is discussion among the shows fans about which season is better. Discussion
is a great thing. Around the water cooler, on social media, in your favorite
dive bar... you want people talking about your show in ways that are more than
just "It's cool." Secondly, they needed to ditch Ryan Hardy's drinking
problem. His internal problems with drinking and women were a hindrance to the
show. Watching his reporter girlfriend get torched in a van at the beginning of
season three was not a sad thing... but a freeing one. Plus, it was a cliché
from the start. At this point, the moment I meet anyone in law enforcement, I
just assume they have a drinking problem. Thanks, TV.
The problem with what the show's
creators did with season two and season three is this: They got stuck in a rut
and fell in love with the bad guys. This created a sense that nothing was ever
going to get resolved. Oh, you killed a bad guy? Guess again. They miraculously
survived. Why? Because James Purefoy was so great as Joe Carroll, they couldn't
bring themselves to permanently remove him from the universe. This continued
with lesser characters as well.
Instead of introducing a new cult,
just as creative as Joe Carroll's Edgar Allen Poe inspired cult, they gave us
more psychopaths and more Joe Carroll, thus breaking the unspoken contract
between the viewer and the show's creators. Breaking this contract damages the
realism the world that Ryan Hardy operates in. Finality is a great thing.
Finality keeps viewers engaged. They don't want to miss anything because when
they come back, the entire world could have changed. No one, anywhere, has ever
said, "Oh, I'm glad they killed that character off, and then brought them
back." Comic book writers could learn a lot from this concept. In killing
and bringing back characters, you basically say, "Don't bother emotionally
investing in this because what you see might not be real."
Had they left Joe Carroll dead at
the end of the season, and introduced an entirely new cult, not just another
psychopath, then this show could have really had some legs. Imagine Ryan Hardy
taking down a cult that worked in a Wal-Mart or a punk rock cut inspired by the
lyrics of the Sex Pistols or a cult of Tea Party extremists. The possibilities
are endless. Sadly, on The Following, the possibilities were not endless, and
this is why the show has been cancelled.
Of course, anyone that watched the
show had a feeling that this would be coming. They spent so much time building
up Joe Carroll and Ryan Hardy's relationship, that Joe Carroll became a focus
of the show. Spoiler Alert: When they executed Joe Carroll, they basically put
a nail in the coffin of the show. Why would fans keep watching? They didn't,
and now the show is cancelled because of a lack of foresight. If they had just
left Carroll dead at the end of season one, and went in a creative direction
with a new cult, this series could have lasted for years. Oh well, I own season
one and two, and they're worth watching from time to time, especially season
one, which might be some of the best TV I've ever seen.
If you enjoyed this article, you'll probably enjoy my books. Check out This Rotten World by clicking the link: http://www.amazon.com/This-Rotten-World-Part-One-ebook/dp/B00QWVD12K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431198405&sr=8-1&keywords=this+rotten+world
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