I’m hooked.  I’m all about The Following because we don’t know who has fallen under Joe Carroll’s twisted spell, his literary sequel to his first 14 female victims.  Ryan Hardy is now the center of this story and he’s still able to play Carroll’s game by sometimes being one step ahead of the brilliant Carroll.

Episode two focuses the kidnapping of Carroll’s son from his mother, Jordy, the serial killer apprentice, and his first kills,  and more background on the two fake gays and the nanny who are following Carroll.  The police are always two steps behind a man who is incarcerated, but Hardy manages the see the pieces of the puzzle.  There is a new agent on the scene who claims to be a cult specialist, but we don’t know where her loyalties lie because she visit Carroll in prison and without saying a word to the murderer, she hands him a book of Edgar Alan Poe’s work.  Is this a sign that she is also under his influence and could play a more sinister role against Hardy?

One thing I forgot to mention in the last review was the going back and forth in years.  We retrieve much of the backstory not through only exposition, but also through a non-linear story that goes back to when Carroll was murdering or just after he was arrested.  I much rather have the story play out this way because just by exposition alone takes away from darkness of the story.  Fox has yet to let up on the brutality of story’s nature and so far I’m grateful for that.  We explore Anna (or Emma) and her past.  She is an awkward child who grew up disturbed because of her degrading mother.  Carroll’s influence was easy on this one.

I can’t way for episode three and I look forward in dissecting more of The Following.