S02.E11: Freedom

[Tara Ariano]

Ryan and Mike suspect a cult leader may be on the rise after another deadly massacre; Joe confirms his new plans for the Korban cult.

[Sarah D. Bunting]

Here's what I wrote about it!

[morgankobi]

How is that number Mandy found even valid? Lily probably wouldn't want to be found by Joe, since she tried to kidnap/kill him and all. I would assume they dropped all their old cellphones back when they went in to hiding. The classified thing is Joe's old trick, not hers. Ehh, whatever...

I had to laugh when faux doctor was mowed down with a machine gun, there was pause, and then Weston checks her pulse. Poor Iceman.

[mertensia]

So Mandy's running to Lily? After casually strolling out of the compound? Nice trick by the way. Have the rest of the doubtfuls done the same?

Where does Lily get these "I'll die for Lily!" people?

[Winged Nike]

I think these were mercenaries that she hired - they kept mentioning her vast resources this episode due to her inheritance. I would assume hired guns also wouldn't be the type to talk and would rather die instead.

[marcee]

Make them stop shooting the crap out of knife wielders. Seriously, they have multiple extremities you can shoot with abandon!

[ramble]

Yea, the Freak Twins are back together. I thought they were going to make out there for a second when they reunited & I was back to being oddly conflicted wanting an actor to date himself as his twin on a show. Oh boo, there's mommy dearest. Lots of money & a stone, cold heart, but muddled motivation & a tragic amount of boring.

Joe stands confused & unfocused. He didn't even sound like he was able to believe the crap he was spewing. And the coming holy war with a mega church? Just yuck. I'm suspending my disbelief to imagine Joe as any sort of leader already & now the show is going to ask me to accept a pastor of a church calling him out as the antiChrist? C'mon! Make it a niche sect full of self-made doctrine or a non-Bible based theology & maybe I'll buy it. I guess they can go with narcissistic pastor who views himself as a god. Then we'll have an ego-off & blood will be spilled. It won't really matter because blood is spilled casually on this show all the time.

Claire why are you back? Why?! I'm over your part in this meandering, nonsensical storyline & would prefer that you stay away. Bland reporter lady is bland, but at least she's not you.

I complained last season that anytime they needed anything someone turned up as a follower. I find I'm missing that now. The only explanation I can come up with is that the Korban plot is dragging so badly.

Mandy, who started out interesting for a few minutes, has bottomed out. Go to Lily, die a stupid death, hitchhike across America, become the CEO of Kill Mommy, Inc., I don't really care. Although I give her credit for the fact she managed to sneak out of locked down cultville.

[Snookums]

I had so much to say I had to do a double! Here's part one:

Hello Nurse! Way to get almost shot and welcome to the Crapathon that is this week's The Following!

Okay, first off we've got Joe the Improvising Prophet's  Sunday School lesson on "stabbing your good friend is just like swimming in the ocean with your dead fiance' which is just like a hug from Jesus", with all the good looking shiny-haired Pinkwashers (seriously, did Micah run a shampoo factory?) sitting around and watching like they're learning to grow lima beans in a Styrofoam cup. I loved how Emma could hardly keep from snort-laughing through the whole thing, and how What's Her Stabby remained perfectly still under the sheet until Emma pulled it off and then started thrashing around and muffle screaming. Like it just now occurred to her that being tied spread eagle on a stainless steel table and gagged wasn't going to end well. April Fool's, Stabby Lady! (Who mops up the blood, by the by? Is that like an intern thing?)

But enough of that, here's a close up of Ryan Hardy Sex Face! APRIL FOOLS! Gumph, give me some lead in next time, show! The best part of sex with Ryan is that he doesn't turn off the TV news channel during the throes of passion so he can hear his hatepassion's name over and over again, which must make Carrie feel extra special. But she's an understanding gal who's really good at getting dressed in thirty seconds or less and is all hey this was fun! Let's do dinner but I'm gonna be busy 'til late with all the serial killings to report on so late night okay? Ryan's all, I'm still not sure how I actually know you but yeah, fine, and then she just bounces out the door into the arms of Mike and her two bodyguards, who have the most unenviable jobs in the NYPD right now, and just think about that for a second. Seriously, they've been standing in Ryan Hardy's hallway all fucking night, listening to the sounds of middle aged obsessive revenge driven barely sober Ryan Hardy going at it, without even a damn crossword. What the hell did they do to get busted down to that detail?

But never mind because Mike's here with the bad news that Max isn't going to be here this week (boo!) but the good news that there's seventy two cults with blood sacrifice affiliations within an hour's drive of NYC. Well okay, let's start checking those ouFUCKING WHAT? SEVENTY TWO? So basically Joe was spoiled for choice in finding bloodthirsty idiots who were just aching for the right sociopath to buy them a van and send them out on killing sprees? Was this proliferation of craziness something the authorities kept back burnering, like increasing the parks and rec budget???? How in the bloody name of misquoted Jesus are this many cults running around in this small an area??

But ours is not to reason why, ours is to hear, with heavy heart, that Lily Grey and her remaining Unmerry Prankster has decided to reinsert herself into the endless game of Hide and Seek and Murdering that is Ryan Hardy's life. Using the gazillions of dollars she's apparently carrying around in her Kate Spade bag because every single last asset she owns should not only be frozen but being set on fire in every town square in the world, and traveling totally incognito within the continental United States with her son who is the twin brother of a recently captured high profile murderer even though their pictures have been beamed to literally every last corner of planet Earth, penguins in Antarctica should recognize this pair, decides the very, very best way to rescue her son from the clutches of the NYPD is to stage a copycat Joe Carroll attack in a bakery filled with the last docile New Yorkers who weren't murdered in bookstores and get her presumably top notch black ops squad into the public hospital where her other son is being held. Okay. Why the fuck not, waste some more of my precious and finite life, show. Part of this is accomplished by stabbing a doctor by one of the killers who looks nothing like her but they're both vaguely Asian-y so good enough, right? Racism just works anywhere!

Claire's semi electrocuted her hair for her latest confrontation with WitSec about seeing Ryan. It looks like she made Facebook friends with one hot roller. The WitSec guys are all your son and mother are going to be locked up on a military base on the Goddamn moon if you insist upon going through with this asinine plan but fine if you want to go to New York I and this other high ranking member of the Marshalls who presumably has about ten thousand better things to do are going to personally escort you. Claire pauses but you know she's all YES.

See my next post for part two!

Edited April 2, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Annnnd Part Two!

So, while Ryan and Mike are ballet-stepping around blood puddles and being all "why this bakery" like it could possibly matter why this bakery it's probably their delicious popovers or whatever until Ryan becomes the only person in the world to notice the weekly schedule before it's too late to ask for Friday off and realizes there's two more victims then there should be, and it turns out this bakery not only has delicious popovers but is like half a block away from the public hospital where one of the highest profile murdersin recent history is being held. Not in a prison hospital in Kansas with hundreds of trigger happy National Guardsmen who have been popping Walter Mitty boners over imagining situations like this their entire adult lives at every last entrance, oh no. A public hospital in the middle of an urban center, filled with potential hostages and victims. It's like Ryan Hardy was made King For A Day and allowed to make all public policy regarding dangerous prisoners.

Okay, now we're back to the PInkwashers and Mandy's hearing that Joe's too busy playing prophet to be her replacement daddy and Emma is a bitch so she and her puffy little down jacket stomp off just as Neck Tattoo Guy whose name I have not the slightest intention of remembering comes in. He's a tad bit woggly over his friend's public knifing and Joe's just so not in the mood for this bullshit; seriously, he barely brings his B game to the petting and soothing routine before sending Neck Tat off and asking Emma if she'd mind awfully throwing the guy a bonding shag, thanks, doll, you're the best. Emma doesn't look too thrilled but hey, who wants to lose out on a chance of doing a guy on a triple bunk bed, snagging hairs in coil springs while remembering you didn't lock the door? Not this gal!

Back to the hospital and Oh God this goes on forever but there's lots of lockers and guns and tear gas that doesn't seem so much like actual tear gas as a "hey, could you just pretend, thanks" gas because the intake nurse doesn't even cough. But the Pro Trio all don big elaborate gas masks (that Fake Asian Doctor somehow managed to smuggle under her smock?) and get Luke the Puke out of his bed and onto a gurney (love the bit where he comes out with just a hankie over his face all OH MY GOD MOM COULDN'T SPRING FOR FOUR MASKS? before they put the nebulizer on him) and he's looking pretty spry for someone who took two bullets to the damn chest about a week ago. I guess he's like Gina and the bullets hit spots that are more suggestion the necessity. Blah blah blah RYAN AND MIKE ARE HERE! They do their "split up and search the dangerous areas alone" routine while the actual professionals do things like clear the hospital and manage to cap the ambulance driver member of the retrieval team. When members of actual law enforcement hear Ryan Hardy utter the dread words "I'm coming with you guys", it must be like having Death sit down to play chess with them.

Okay, whatever, more boring stuff with the Emma and Joe and some of the more blockheaded misreading of Christian Scripture I've heard in a while, megachurch preacher being an idiot and pulling a call out Red John thing, oh! Mandy gets all proactive and looks up a phone number on a Mac and packs her shit and goes! Mandy! You the girl! Get on with your tiny little bad self! Meanwhile Joe tells Emma that they're going to have some kind of professional slaughter match? I guess? with the preacher's megachurch and Emma's all excellent, for a second there I was worried you were just a selfish meglomaniac who was just winging it for a bunch of idiots!

Back to the hospital! The marshals having been gunned down with dispatch, Desk Nurse decides to indulge her suicidal side and pops up with no warning, but she gets a Ryan Hardy Shoot The Witness Before I Can Actually Get Anything From Him Or Her exemption because it's her job to exposit that she heard the murder squad sneaking Luke to the basement so they can escape. Onward, Ryan! And Mike! They both head, alone, down closed stairwells with tons of blind spots and ricochet-friendly metal and cement until Ryan reaches the dark creepy basement and does not radio up to have all the damn lights turned on and a squad sent down to do a sweep and clear and Mike decides to check IDs on a bunch of random medical personnel in a matching staircase. Uh oh! Asian Fake Doctor Killer Lady is one of them! Whatever will she do?

Well, we'll find out in a minute because check it out, Ryan found Luke! He's all pissy about touching the dirty floor but luckily we don't have to hear much about it because if there's one thing Ryan doesn't do, it's check his six, and voila! Australian Murder Guy!

In the meantime Asian Fake Doctor Killer Lady commits suicide by SWAT team member and Mike is so distraught he has to check to see if the bullet riddled body might still be breathing? No? Worst April Fool's prank ever, Asian Fake Doctor Killer Lady. WORST.

Ryan is beating up a man who has six inches, fifty pounds, and twenty years of youth on him after he hears the escape plan but Luke hears it too and manages to Tiny Tim his way up three flights of stairs and through a crowded market and get away, despite limping like an actor auditioning for Richard III and having only at most a ten second lead. Ryan's working day ends as they all do, staring anguished in the direction of his vanishing quarry while not calling for any backup. It's nice to have some consistency to hang onto, I guess.

Carrie pops in here to kiss Ryan and call him a hero and remind him of their dinner date. Ryan is all screaming "FUCK MY LIFE" inside but manages to smile and agree.

Mandy's hitching a ride with the only upper class white woman in the tristate area who isn't a cult member, but that doesn't suit her because she's borrowing the woman's cell within ten seconds to make a call. This will work out well, I can feel it.

Joe's doing something, I can't remember what, I don't care.

Ryan's home with Mike going over the usual blood soaked details of their typical day when knock knock knock! Both these men, who are pursuing and being pursued by some of the most derangedly ruthless humans on the planet, pop the door open without so much as a gun cock and hey it's luckily two WitSec guys who are there with the biggest damn April Fool's Prank in the history of ever! The second Mike sees them he gets panicky eyed and turns to Ryan, but only has enough time to say "I'm sorry" before in walks--Mr. Snufaluphagus! He is real! Hah, psych, it's just Claire. Her hair's found a good as it gets medium but from Ryan's stunned gaze, you can tell he's racing his presumably about to be back in the game malfunctioning pacemaker to figure out whether the Chinese he ordered for dinner will stretch to three. At least they'll have lots to talk about, huh? Can't wait 'til next week, if only to see Max's reaction to her uncle's suddenly fascinating love life.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Snookums

[marcee]

You are awesome. That was awesome. This show, not so much.

I find myself rooting for more Lily plans. She appears to be exponentially smarter and more capable than Joe at every turn. I'd much rather see her well-thought-out and financially-backed plans come to fruition over Joe's "wing it" approach. But, hey, either way, lots of shooting and panicked Bacon. And who doesn't like Bacon?

[Snookums]

He is a crunchy, salty treat.

[ramble]

I was going to add, "and high in protein", but there's really no way to not make that dirty in my mind. Maybe my blood doth need to be cleanseth.

[Yeldarbe]

When Ryan asked abou the message left behind and there wasn't one, Lily didn't really ping to me at all, but when they realized there were three people working and 5 taken to the hospital that was just way too smart to have anything to do with Joe.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Yeldarbe