Ravens Don’t Tweet

I Give Up on Edgar Allan Poe in Primetime 


March 5, 2013 — The pitch for the FOX drama The Following got me immediately: A serial killer cult led by a literature professor obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe sets out to make an art form of murder. And it starred Kevin Bacon and was created by Kevin Williamson, the guy who wrote Scream and, um, Dawson’s Creek. Heck, I was so excited, that I decided to live-tweet it starting with the second episode. I’d never live-tweeted a show in Twitter’s life. Factoring heavily into the decision, I’d been alone in my house for six days at that time and was fully stocked on port.

From the first episode, it was just a horrible, hammy show. The dialogue was terrible, the characters were annoying and inconstant. The plot was basically a mechanism to kill time until the last three minutes of each episode. And the Poe references were explained every…single…goddamned…time.

Still, I stuck with The Following through the first seven of its 15 episodes, mostly because I was enjoying the whole live-tweeting deal but also because I got a perverse pleasure out of seeing Poe treated in such a mainstream way. But I can’t do it anymore. Below is the proof that I got as far as I did. Hopefully, I can at least put it all toward leaving Purgatory after I die.

Episode 1:

Episode 2:


Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6:

Episode 7: