Entry tags:
The Following pilot, Red John and The Mentalist....
The premises seemed…odd, for starter. A former FBI agent who tracks down a network of serial killers working for a serial killer on dead row, connected in a face-book like manner? Let’s be honest, at first, it would encourage, said like that.
Second: Kevin Williamson is completely behind this. And last time I saw something done by Mr. Williamson… well, horror is so not my thing, just knows that.
Third: I’m not such a Bacon enthusiastic. He doesn’t convince me, and, actually, even after having seen the pilot… he still doesn’t. Don’t take me wrong, maybe in the drama movies he is good, but such I am not a follower, I can’t say, but what I saw with him, he didn’t convince me. Comedy and sci-fi aren’t his thing, maybe because he has kind of a… I don’t know, I creepy vibe, I guess. But again, this is just my opinion.
But… I said, what the hell, why not. A couple of my shows are currently on hiatus, and few had ended. The Closer (with Bacon’s real life wife) is over, like Fringe; Major Crimes will return only later next summer/early autumn, the same with Haven and I didn’t get any Warehouse 13 middle season this year. So…. why not? Next week it will also air in Italy on pay TV (btw, I need to remember to recharge my card, or it will expire next week) and I am curious to hear what their voices will sound like and how it will be translated and doubled; I already fear disaster, since it will have to be done quickly and it normally means disaster. Also, lately a couple of studios have done terrible works, like with Season 4 of The Mentalist, with the co-stars (Wainwright, Lorelai, Summer) all sounding like kids, and with words….well, there was no meaning in dialogues, sometimes. Ugh.
Anyway, back on track: I gave it a try. Result? I can’t say yet things such as, it’s not that bad, or I like it, but it definitely got my attention, and a lifted eyebrow, because at a certain point I wondered if I was looking at a couple of mixed CBS shows instead of The following. In particular, the closer you get to the end, the more I thought I was looking at the season four finale of The Mentalist. Really.
Why?
Well…the killer. We have a serial killer, who kills only women, with a distinct signature (for Red John, it’s the cuts, for Carroll, he took their eyes away). Also, the killer, described as “ someone who shows an exertion of power, theatrics”, “charming”, (rings any bell?) is obsessed over literature (Red John has Blake, Carroll has the Romantic period, but mostly, it’s Poe his obsession). They both have a network, so to say, helping them out, people that “” (this is said by Bacon’s character about Carroll, but it could be true about Red John as well) and both the killers refer to said “network” as made of “friends”. There is similarity between the heroes, too: if the investigation for Bacon started because it was his duty, the responsibility for Sara’s death (the sole survivor until the pilot)., for Jane it was his family’s death. Both tragedies that the killers want to define their antagonist: Carroll sees Bacon as a “flawed, broken man looking for redemption, I ensured that by Killing Sara, the inciting incident, the hero’s call to action. It was for you” A bit like Red John did, and keeps doing, with Jane; like Red John, the main antagonist tries to get the main “hero” in his web, wanting him “To be my friend by defining his purpose”. Also, like Red John, Carroll likes to use the net for his purposes.
(Shout outs also for another CBS show, Criminal Minds: we weren’t even five minutes in The following, and a black guy and a woman introduced themselves as “BAU”….and by the way…gore? People from the production, look at Criminal Minds. Been there, done that.)
The shows also asks for a bit of…suspension of disbelief, let’s say. When Sara is kidnapped, no one looks for her because they keep saying that she was sleeping. I am sure is very veritable: the killer you sent to prison just escaped, it’s full of sirens outside, and you sleep…which, by the way, she wasn’t doing. She had been taken by the guys next door, a couple of fake guy send to live there by the killer to take her at the right time. (Also, now consultant (here the magic word again! TV is full of people consulting, yahoo !) when the girl is taken, seemed to be the only one with an idea of what one should do to find her, and the only answer he gets from the US Marshal is “I knew that crazy head of hours would be eventually back”….). Strange also that a serial killer on death row (dressing like Patrick Jane when he was a professor, by the way) would be given access to internet without supervision, and that only one of the characters noticed that Bacon’s character drinks tequila from the water bottle instead of, guess what, water…
So, yeah, lifted eyebrows, and we’ll see. I think that it’s something I could look at, but definitely not something I could get so deep into to start writing about it (even if the killer gives permission to Bacon to keeps sleeping with his own ex-wife). Even if there’s Shawn Ashmore, which I’ve always liked since his days as Iceman in the X-Men franchise. …
So, yeah, we’ll see.
