Where Have All the Good Serial Killers Gone?

            I have long been a fan of serial killers in general.  Not like a groupie, more like a case study.  This is why I went to school for, and have my Master’s Degree in, Forensic Psychology (not that it’s doing me any good) and I tend to gravitate toward television shows or movies that have a more macabre element to them, especially if they feature a serial killer.  I was an ardent Criminal Minds fan for years until I lost interest in “villain of the week” style television dramas (thanks to shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad). 

            Luckily, a new breed of television show has emerged on the networks (I don’t have cable, don’t judge me) that was sure to whet my appetite for an overarching story as well as a look into the minds of the sick and twisted.  Enter Fox’s The Following and NBC’s Hannibal.  We will look at each of these separately as they both bring something a little different to the table.

            First, because it has been on for longer, and is in fact winding down its season, we will start with The Following.  Take a Charles Manson type master manipulator, played very convincingly in his stoic psychopathy by James Purefoy, and add in more of a killer instinct.  Where Manson would rather have others do the killing, Purefoy’s Joe Carroll doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty.  Plus, there’s Kevin Bacon and the guy that played Iceman in the X-Men movies.  I’m not a huge Kevin Bacon fan but he does an admirable job here as Ryan Hardy, the FBI agent that initially put Carroll away (who then proceeded to write a book about it and develop a drinking problem).

            Despite a lukewarm reception by many critics (that I read anyway) The Following has garnered quite the, for lack of a better term, following.  The viewing numbers were exceptional in the beginning of the season and prompted a second season pickup before this one was even halfway through.  I have to say, based on my desire to see a good, cable-quality show on network television, I tuned in as well, hoping this would fill the void.  I know this show got a lot of flak for the amount of violence and overall shock value that it used, but I didn’t mind it as it all felt like part of the plot to some extent. 

            The first few episodes were solid.  Though there were many moments that seemed like they were created just because the writers thought that they had to (Hardy’s drinking problem, his relationship with the ex of the guy he put away, his tough cop attitude, etc.) Bacon sold it pretty well.  As we got further into the series and started to peel more layers off the onion, we got to see that those plot contrivances didn’t stop there.  Now it went from just idiosyncrasies of the characters to downright stupidity of the characters to further a plot that felt too short for a fifteen episode season.  Watching the show, especially now (twelve episodes in) I find myself asking why the characters are so dumb.  Natalie Zea plays Joe Carroll’s ex-wife, and you may remember her as Timothy Olyphant’s ex-wife in Justified.  For all the dumb shit she does in Justified, it’s magnified here.  She is used as a pawn to move things along because she either a) can’t stay put when she is told to, or b) has her own agenda that coincides with screwing up an FBI investigation.  Here’s the kicker, Carroll’s wife, like Carroll, is a college professor!  To be that smart (supposedly) and do such dumb things is an unforgivable sin in terms of the writing.  “She’s just trying to get to her son” you may say.  To which I will point out that she is putting her faith and trust in known killers and criminals to bring her to him, when she can instead work with the FBI.  If she’s going to sacrifice herself like that, at least lead them to the psycho’s compound.  But of course that would end the story after about seven or eight weeks, and we can’t do that. 

            Not only that, but each of the FBI agents seem unable to use common sense.  They think when it is convenient for them to do so, but generally spend their time doing something dumb to move the plot along.  The writers had to get the FBI agents into a house with Carroll but also kill possible informants that would make a big reveal before episode fifteen.  No problem, have the agents get there first and have the informants pinned, then gradually have the agents splinter off to check the basement and find better cell phone reception so that the informants are picked off by Carroll and his henchman.  Upon noticing that someone is in the house with them, instead of waiting with the informant (the last one alive by this point) and shooting whoever comes in the door, they go out into the dark basement and try to hunt the intruder down, not only leaving themselves exposed, but also the informant (who subsequently is killed and Iceman gets captured). 

            The thing that really killed me this last episode was Carroll’s monologue of why he likes being a serial murderer.  I know that he was trying to create a common ground with Hardy over the amount of death each has been exposed to while trying to elevate himself a bit.  However, no serial killer that I have studied likes killing because he likes killing.  For most it is a means of establishing dominance or power, to take control of their own lives, or at least a part of it.  If a serial killer can control when someone else lives or dies, it helps to give them a greater sense of purpose as well as establishing an outlet for any rage or aggression they may have toward someone else (their mothers for example).  The fact that Carroll likes killing and death just because he “likes” it, even if it is a lie, seems like something that would never come out of the mouth of a serial murderer and therefore makes everything else seem fairly unbelievable in comparison.  Any interest I had in the character of Joe Carroll disappeared at that point.  I want a serial killer that kills because he wants revenge or he wants power, someone with an underlying cause.  Shit, Criminal Minds was able to establish that and they rarely ever had the same “villain” for more than one episode.  The Following has one for a full season (at least) and all we get is that he “likes” death?

            I could overlook all of these stupid moves for weeks because I wondered where the story was going to go, I was mildly interested in how it was going to work itself out.  I don’t think I really cared for the characters much, but I was interested in the endgame for at least the two leads.  Now, twelve weeks in, I don’t care anymore.  I’ve had enough of watching a forty-five minute episode (or whatever the runtime is) every week and nothing really happening.  We get a snippet of a plot point, a minor reveal here and there, but nothing substantial enough for me to even care about.  People come in and out and are quickly murdered or severely maimed, used as cattle to further a shell of a plot.  Before this week’s episode, I figured that despite how dumb it was all turning out to be, I would finish out the season, see where everything went, and just avoid any subsequent seasons.  Now I’m not even going to do that.  I’m done.  The fact that the writing is so ridiculous and doesn’t take advantage of actors like Bacon and Purefoy, who really do a great job in their respective roles of turd polishing, has chased me off. 

            Now that I have laid The Following to rest, let’s turn to NBC’s Hannibal.  I have seen a lot of critical acclaim for this show already, even though it is merely one episode old.  I’m not sure if I saw the same show that everyone else did, because unlike The Following that was able to hook me at first before going stupid on me, Hannibal starts out that way.  First of all, the actors are nowhere near the caliber of Bacon and Purefoy.  This is fine, it would be hard to replicate those performances.  The problem is that each actor, the one playing Lecter and the one playing the FBI agent (though he’s not an agent because he can’t be an agent because he has Asperger’s – more on this in a second) both have trouble speaking.  They muddle through their lines which makes them sound at best uninterested as actors, at worst unintelligent as characters.  I realize that the FBI agent is British and Lecter is played by a Danish actor (I believe it’s Danish, it’s European either way), but the main question I have is, why?  Why not get an American actor that could be a convincing Lecter while also being able to adequately deliver the lines?  While the British actor should be able to enunciate clearly, he just can’t as an individual apparently.  Unless that’s how he is playing the character, which if that’s the case, I have no time for that.  That’s the thing, any plot within this show is stunted because I often find myself wondering what these guys are saying and why I’m supposed to care. 

            Okay, the acting is sub-par, but I have a feeling that’s because NBC is bleeding money and they couldn’t afford any actual “star”.  Stars can be made if they have good writing though.  It just so happens that the writing here is some of the worst I have seen in a while.  First off, let’s delve into the FBI Agent with Asperger’s.  He literally tells us that he is a consultant or some such nonsense because he cannot pass the test, being on the spectrum and all, even though he has some sort of weird psychic power that helps him reconstruct crimes.  That is fine in and of itself and would set up for a traditional Cop-Non Cop matchup that is common in television (Castle, The Mentalist, etc.).  This would be an interesting thing to watch, especially if you balance it correctly.  However, the writers forego that completely. 

            Hannibal Lecter is a psychiatrist, not a lawman by any stretch of the imagination.  Yet he is drafted to help catch a serial killer (while being one himself).  This would be a good show if he was matched up with a cop, something that is common in tele…oh wait, we already did that.

            Do you see what I’m getting at?  They took two different premises that may have been passable and put them together into one terrible show.  Here’s the thing that really gets me.  They give the guy with Asperger’s a gun?  He can’t pass the test to become an agent, but they give him a gun anyway?  And he apparently knows how to use it because he shoots someone with it at the end of the first episode (I’d say spoiler alert but if you haven’t seen it yet I’d caution you not to).  This is nothing against individuals on the Autism spectrum, most of them are just as capable, if not more so than anyone else.  However, if the show goes out of its way to tell us that he is on the spectrum and can’t be an agent, don’t just hand him a gun and think we won’t notice.  Not only that, but you have teamed up two individuals that are not FBI agents and sent them out to do the FBI’s bidding.  Do you realize how stupid that is?  There is no way that would ever get through the higher-ups in the Bureau.  At this point it is just vigilante justice.  How do they have any power or jurisdiction?  They go through private records, they enter a house, they shoot a guy!  They are not agents!  It would be different if they did all that with an agent there with them, but there was no one to be seen.  They got paired up and sent off into the world to apparently wreak havoc.

            Then, in the biggest, dumbest fanservice ever, you see slow motion images of Lecter eating.  We are supposed to assume that because it’s Hannibal Lecter, that he is eating people and not pork tenderloin, which is what it looks like.  Okay, I’ll bite, that’s kind of creepy.  I don’t need to see it more than once an episode though.  If I do, then it starts to become a gimmick, and gimmick writing is dumb, much like the rest of the script.

            I am not sure why it is so hard to make a serial killer show that is interesting.  Hell, look at the real lives of serial killers and tell me they aren’t compelling.  If I was on a board at HBO or AMC I would jump at the chance to do a late 1800’s period piece on H. H. Holmes and the Chicago world’s fair.  Shit, if you take the Mad Men time period and put it on the west coast, throw in a couple co-eds, you could easily have an Edmund Kemper story.  Or make it more of a mobile story and you could do the Ted Bundy story.  So many possibilities!   At least, I would as long as it wasn’t written by the same writers that have had a hand in The Following and Hannibal.  Network television needs to do better.  They can’t let all of the good writers go to cable because they can use the word “shit” or show a little side-boob.  It’s time to start making quality television and stop settling for crap.  They could have had two hits that pushed network televisions boundaries to compete with cable, but instead they left a bunch of monkeys alone in a room with a couple typewriters.