Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: A | 23 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT All in the Family
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.10.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Just when you think a show like The Following is devoid of family values, it goes and gives you this heavily familial picture. Joe finds his way to a suburban paradise, Lily reunites with her "children," and Ryan and Max team up for real.
But first, we must tackle Joe's little moment of suburban bliss. He and Mandy make their way to a gorgeous home and after a little schlocky trickery, we find that the homeowner, Jana, is one of Joe's followers. She's got Roderick's files and a go-bag of IDs, credit cards, and cash for him ready to go and she's about as miffed about Joe being late to meet her as a mom whose kid only ate half of his dinosaur mac and cheese. Joe eventually calls the twins' "Joe phone" and heads off to meet them, but before he does so, Jana packs the cutest little road trip grocery bag possible and even pulls down Mandy's short skirt like the conservative housewife she's pretending to be.
Of course, the two surprises in this little detour are that Mandy is clearly confused about how Joe views murder (she thinks Joe is killing everyone who sees him alive, not just the ones who threaten him) and that (thanks to a later scene) Jana is apparently Agent Mendez's ex-wife who quit the FBI for her. Everything is connected.
Even Lily's weird family is connected. The FBI finds no record of her having children, so it appears she unofficially adopts "children" (or as she calls them "like-minded people") and makes them her family. In addition to Luke and Mark, we meet two young men and a young woman. Giselle (the twins' cohort) is in the city tying up the loose end that is David, Lily's old colleague who was stabbed at the Met – and boy does she tie him up tight with a wire right around his neck.
Emma is not so fond of this "family" despite Lily's attempts to bond with her, yet when Joe calls she still tells him it's safe to meet up with them (and if their secret conference about her is any indication, it's not). Then again, she really has little other choice. Joe returns and his little minion Emma returns to his arms in an emotional fit while he calms her and asserts that he's back.
It's actually a happier ending than what Ryan gets. After he discovers David's body before the FBI gets there, he lingers around like an idiot and gets arrested for obstruction. Like Mike, who begged Max to save Ryan by pulling him away from his Joe investigation earlier in the episode, Mendez is focused on Ryan's safety when she speaks to him at FBI headquarters. They have to let him go and he goes right to Max, who picked up the task of following David's killer (Giselle) when Ryan was detained.
Max has chased her to outside of Grand Central Station, but before Ryan can get there, Giselle clocks Max in front of a crowd of tourists and escapes into the station. Max and Ryan pursue her into the station, where Giselle decks Ryan, forcing him to pull his gun out. She yells about his gun and Ryan is taken down by bystanders as Giselle escapes. But it's not over: Max hops onto the train when Ryan was busy and the look of terror on his face says it all because he's been beating us over the head with the "everyone I love gets hurt" narrative. But in case you need it: his niece is the only family he has and she just threw herself into the belly of the beast. So all that bellyaching was for something after all: Ryan really can't keep the people he loves out of trouble.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Just when you think a show like The Following is devoid of family values, it goes and gives you this heavily familial picture. Joe finds his way to a suburban paradise, Lily reunites with her "children," and Ryan and Max team up for real.
But first, we must tackle Joe’s little moment of suburban bliss. Joe and Mandy appear to be spying on a single mother and moments later, it seems Joe has stolen her baby. In reality, Joe’s an old friend of the single mother who’s thrilled to see him alive, but really, we should have seen that coming.
Over at Ryan’s, Max is mothering him again while he takes a relatively long time to get the part where he reveals that Lily is clearly drawing Joe out. Ryan buries the lede by talking about why he’s removing himself from the investigation. Again, he says that he gets too close to people and they die (oh my GAWD, we get it, dude). He wants Max out too because he’s afraid she’ll get caught. But this wouldn’t be much of a plot if she sat down and said, "Alright, Uncle," so she refuses. Ryan argues that he wants to protect her because she’s his only family, but she’s a tough cookie and she’s rather concerned about protecting Ryan herself.
The FBI, as usual, is way behind on the follower trail. They interrogate Emma’s friend, but she knows nothing. They know Lily’s a billionaire with foreign accounts and no record of birthing the creepy twins, but nothing else. And they know that David -- the guy Luke stabbed when the twins attacked Lily at the Met -- probably knows something, but that gets them nowhere because David thinks Lily is innocent and lawyers up.
While the feds scramble, Lily reaches her chateau with her twins. She lectures Luke for killing Carlos because it doesn’t give Joe a sense of stability…wow. So they’re basically just really well-organized, well-funded stalkers. Lily also sent Giselle into Manhattan to "take care of David." He’s not with them, but she doesn’t want the FBI talking to him. And since Giselle’s been jonesing to kill someone, we can bet that’s what "take care of" means.
At the chateau, Lily reunites with her "children," which are various young people including two young French guys and a French girl. "You kids. You bring me so much joy," she says like a picture-perfect June Cleaver. She then tries to include Emma, who’s standing off to the side like the punk cliché the costume department dressed her as, but Emma resists no matter how many times Lily says "You’re so, so welcome." She says that Emma is probably overwhelmed but that she’s so welcome. Emma just scowls, probably because this is the freakiest murderous set of Leave it To Beaver folks she’s ever seen.