THE FOLLOWING S2 Premiere

The Following season 2 premiere review

Did you catch the "preview" premiere of the second season of The Following, starring Kevin Bacon?  I did.  But this second season premiere, sorry, "preview," as Fox called it, didn't quite feel the same as the first season. Did it for you?

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS of a sorts below.

The latest episode of The Following showed us the closing moments from the first season finale where Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) and Clair Matthews (Natalie Zea) were attacked by yet another follower of Joe Carroll's (James Purefoy).

The attack put them both in the hospital with Clair dying.

In the year that followed the attack, Ryan fell off the wagon, but also went on an obsessive spree of tracking Joe Carroll followers.

Then on the anniversary of Joe's death, followers stage a public attack on a train.  This gets the feds back on the case and they call in Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) and Ryan.

But Ryan says he's over it and doesn't want to be part of the investigation.

All while Ryan is trying to keep his obsessive search secret from law enforcement.

And we learn, by the end of the episode, that, of course, Joe Carroll is alive.

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When the first season of The Following ended, I wondered how they would carry on the story.  And as it stans, it seems like they pulled off another Hollywood story ending by having him escaping the explosion in the boat house.

Ryan is aware he's alive.

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The episode felt like a movie, aired on film, so it had an interesting feel.  But the episode had a different feel to it.

Last season we were presented with a tense, mysterious slew of events.  Carroll's followers always seeming to be one step ahead of everyone.

But now, the few followers that have survived last season, are off balance, and there are two new brothers that seem to be controlling a different faction of followers.

I do not know if they're all connected or not.

But as is stands, I'm worried.  Last season had me wide-eyed and waiting for the next event.

But now, with Ryan hiding his fixation from the cops (for now), I'm not fond of the direction the character has taken.  Srre, it might be understandable, that under the pressure of the loss of Claire, Ryan has snapped.  But this isn't the character I came to enjoy last season.

Hopefully, he'll revert back.  But we'll see what they have in store for us.

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