Okay, here's the thing with THE FOLLOWING: It's like a really bad politician. It promised and it didn't deliver. And then it stood there and pretended that's what it promised all along. It didn't care about persons of colour, or female characters that didn't fit into the Mother-Slut-Bitch-Virgin pattern. Any character other than white-skinny-female*/white-male was gladly sacrificed for the greater good. And when I say the greater good, I mean man-pain.

THE FOLLOWING promised us/me a suspenseful show about a manipulative, neurotic, obsessive sociopath. Symbolism, creepy romance, some really intelligent and unexpected plot twists. That's what I expected when I saw the pilot. That's what a lot of people I talked to expected.

But THE FOLLOWING didn't deliver. It tried too hard to sell some idea of villainy and heroism, which didn't work out at all, that even when reviews popped up, they just tried harder instead of adjusting. Because THE FOLLOWING is a real bad politician.

Let's compare thee to a summer's day, THE FOLLOWING. You could have been the story of Abigail Hobbs' father, minus the cannibalism, plus an obsession with Poe and well, also a cult, but every single episode of NBC HANNIBAL surpassed you. You could have had a diverse cast, but even my sister's theatre class in Elementary school features more different people than you do. Quite honestly, I'm not sure why some people are surprised that a LOT of people think you suck.

No, seriously. When a show introduces a concept like this, with characters like Carrol or his followers, it should follow through. Not try and sell some weird idea of villainy and heroism that doesn't make any sense whatsoever anyway. (Yep, a guy who spends years on a masterplan surely didn't consider adding some, you know, plan Bs and Cs, and stuff.)

And I know the show used (very unsubtle) foreshadowing*², meaning that one could argue Carrol was always just a crazy person with some luck and education. But that's not excuse, because it just seemed like convenient writing to support the even more convenient bull of a plot that they created.

Overall, this season was a huge let down. Just thinking about it sends me into a fit of rage, because, heck, even if the pilot had already made it obvious how messed up this would end up being, the show still was a pretentious, mediocre-at-best idiocity.

* And yep, since the show might have passed the Bechdel test, which is a super big cause for celebration, it's obviously totally ridiculous and unfounded to criticise the writing of the female characters. Same with POCs, or LGBTAQ*s.

*² I mean, how could you not know when the entire writing seems to laugh in the faces of any of the reviewers who criticised mentioned foreshadowing?