Blogger disagreement: The Following

Leeard: This show is fun and I'm still watching it. Kevin Bacon is the best. The show isn't afraid to be violent when needed, and the result is suspenseful. Each episode plays like a movie thriller instead of TV. Sure, I end up predicting a lot of it. But there are so many twists that for every one I do predict, there's another that I don't.

The audience agrees: This show is better than Revolution, a show that recently got slammed by The Following in the ratings. This show has interesting flashbacks as well. Ryan caught Carroll the last time. The female cop was raised by an abusive cult. Ryan has an ex-girlfriend. Emma killed her own mom. It's all good stuff.

The show doesn't write itself into a corner. There are endless possibilities of what to do with the characters and new characters to introduce. Everyone can be either good or evil. There are tons of bad guys following the ultimate bad guy. And hey, if Carroll dies, who's to say the following won't keep going behind the first guy to step up and take his place?

Ern: Every week, I have to force myself to watch this show, and I'm constantly getting behind. When I finally turn on the computer to catch up, five minutes in, I'm already bored. The Following had a great, action-packed pilot, but then it ground to a halt. There are too many periphery baddies that I don't care about. I hardly even care about the main baddie. Getting reeeeal sick of him. He's such a whiner.

How long are they going to drag this out? I think my main problem with this show is that there is nothing going on beneath the surface. You have the shallow teases, the murder, the cops, the crazies...but there could be more than just basic plot trying to distract us from its stupidity by constantly throwing us twists. There could be character development, a romance I can actually give a hoot about, some sort of theme, personalities....

Remember when LOST's Locke and Ben were juxtaposed? Or Locke and Jack? They saw the world so differently and that was the driving point of the conflict. Not, "Oh, no, they kidnapped my woman!" There comes a time when silly isn't fun anymore. It's just boring. And can we get a female character who is not a) one of Carroll's minions, b) a victim, or c) dumb love interest Claire who will just go with bad guys whenever they mention Joey?!!?

It's all getting repetitive too. Crazy followers. Kidnapping. "Blah blah Poe blah nevermore." Claire being an idiot. Ryan messing up. Someone getting killed. Carroll foils them again! But they get a small victory when they stop Carroll's follower from killing 10/10 of the people they are trying to protect (the follower usually gets 4/10). If the show had more of a brain, it could think of a good middle instead of these cycles.