The Following – Trust Me S2 Ep 3

Well, well, well. They threw us a few twisty turns, didn’t they?

It doesn’t surprise me that Mendez got a court order to track Ryan, or monitor his online activity. I was a bit surprised that she simply let him go, though. Ryan looked like he was expecting her to ask him for more information. Frankly, I was too.

Giselle tends to Luke’s “official Ryan Hardy gunshot wound” while Mark continues reading “The Havenport Tragedy”. How nonchalant can you get? Even when both Mark and Luke’s faces show up on TV news, Mark just blows it off.

At Emma’s safehouse, her phone rings. It’s Carlos, who tells her to come alone, and gives her an address. Giselle teases Mark about having a crush on Emma. Luke doesn’t look happy about this turn of events.

Ryan goes to see Lily Gray and apologizes again.  She tells him not to, again. I’m glad we won’t be seeing any more of that, it was starting to get a tad old.

Meanwhile, with Judy and Mandy, Joe is back to his old self. “I would hate it if anything were to happen to either of you.” Is that a threat? Why yes, yes it is.

Just before the commercial break, Ryan gets home, and finds his place broken into. He grabs his gun, goes into his “secret room,” and…  it’s Mikey. Good think Ryan doesn’t have a happy trigger finger or Mike would have been a goner for sure.

We get back to find that Mike is mad at Ryan for holding back. No surprise there. He equates Ryan’s refusal to share his info with the FBI to helping Joe’s followers. Ryan comes clean, and tells Mike about someone who went missing right before Joe escaped. Turns out this guy was Joe’s half brother. Ryan says his belief that Joe is alive is a crazy conspiracy theory, but he is basing it on this information – and the fact that someone had to switch out the DNA so that the half brother’s DNA would match Joey’s. But he’s got that covered too. The warehouse where the DNA was kept was broken into about the same time. Mike has to go, but he says he won’t tell Mendez about Ryan’s little room. He just needs to be able to trust Ryan from now on. Ryan nods reluctantly. Maybe these two will get it back together yet.

Emma goes to meet Carlos, and ends up at what looks like the same abandoned building they sent Ryan to last week. Mark approaches Emma and she pulls a knife. I found it fitting that Mark said “it’s nice to meet you” to Emma, even as she held that knife on him. These guys are just plain weird.

Back at HQ, two agents have found Emma on archived footage, and they all watch (including Weston and Mendez) as the cameras follow her to her safe house. They have an address, and Mendez calls for the SWAT team to get out there. Guess she doesn’t want to take any chances on any of them getting away.

Mandy begs Joe not to leave, but “sweat pea, I have to go”.  Doesn’t he look so sad, and sincere? Actually, I believe he really is sincere. It’s all part of being a psychopath, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

Judy asks to have a word with Joe. She wants to know where he’s going to go. He says he isn’t sure, and it’s probably better that she didn’t know. He turns away – and she tries to shoot him, but the gun is empty. Joe starts to choke her. Mandy runs out and begs him to stop and, surprisingly, he lets Judy go. Maybe Mandy is like a daughter, to replace his son, Joey?

We return from the commercial break to find Emma chatting with Mark. Mark says Roderick had plants to switch the DNA samples so Joe could fake his death. Emma’s upset that Joe never told her. He tells Emma to come with him, because they’re going to find Joe  She asks if she should be afraid, and Mark asks if she feels fear because he has a hard time experiencing it himself. She blinks, and says ok, I’ll go with you. I guess it takes a psychopath to know a psychopath.

Emma meets Luke, Carlos and Giselle. They see a news report of the SWAT raid. Luke says that her date with Mark saved her life. Too true. She doesn’t exactly look broken up over the death of five of her six cohorts, does she?

Joe restrains Judy with lots of duct tape (insert joke; if it moves, and shouldn’t, use duct tape). She says he’s going to try to make it look like the Reverend killed her and then took off, but no one would buy it. Logical assumption, yes? Joe reminds her that the Reverend wasn’t so godly as he appeared, and the police would find that out quickly enough. Well, that’s probably true too. He then  goes to look for his knife, which he left sitting next to Judy. Perhaps on purpose? Judy tells Mandy to take it and kill Joe. Mandy struggles with the decision as Joe stands there and looks at her, waiting for her to choose. She chooses to kill her mother instead. Joe looks impressed; Mandy has just proven her loyalty to him in spades. A la Emma killing Jacob, she apologizes to her mama, but she can’t let Joe go. A new Follower! (Did I call this one or what?)

There was an interesting, if brief, conversation about why Luke should keep Emma around. Poor Carlos.  I guess Luke prefers even numbers so there’s still four of them and not five.

So here comes the big ending. Ryan tells Mike “Trust me,” – hence the title of the episode – and gets Mike to show him the archived footage of Lily waiting for the subway train. Ryan points out  that Lily didn’t get on the express train, even though she said she was in a hurry. It seems that the bad guys always make a mistake eventually. After a wild foot chase, Ryan loses her, but we know where she is – she’s calmly getting into a car – and Luke is driving. He asks what happened, and she says just drive, dear. His response? “Yes mother, of course.” Mother? Really? Or “adopted” mother? Can’t wait to hear the explanation for this one. I have to admit that I’m disappointed. I had really hoped Lily would be good for Ryan, not one of the bad guys. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all.

 

Our closing montage starts in the dark, with Joe pouring gasoline all over the house.

Then we see Mark and Emma dragging Carlos’s body into the bathroom. Luke or Lily calls; Giselle says they’re onto us, we have to go.

Cut to Mike, Ryan, and Mendez. She wants him to cooperate, but Ryan leaves, saying “You don’t want me here.” It appears that Ryan is back to feeling guilty for everything, as if he were the reason it all happened. I suppose, in a sense, you could say that. Joe and his followers do seem to go out of their way to involve Ryan in their little games. Still, it’s not his fault that they choose to play this deadly games in the first place. Hopefully Ryan will realize this soon so he can get back to work finding Joe.

How sweet; Mandy  wants to say a prayer for mama before they burn the place down. Joe has done a real number on this kid. Joe lights a match and tosses it, and they watch as the flames rush toward and into the house.

Ryan goes back into his “room” and starts looking for what it was he missed about Lily Gray being a Follower. Frustrated, he angrily throws stuff from his desk. Not sure that’s going to help any, but hopefully he feels a bit better. Maybe Max will clean it up and sort it out, even though Ryan says she’s out of it now.

We get a quick shot of Lily smiling. Does she know just how upset Ryan is going to be over this? She probably has a good idea. She read his book, looked him up online, basically studying the man from every angle. Creepy. Maybe she really is the twin’s mother.

Joe and Mandy watch the flames a bit longer, then they get into the reverend’s car and drive away, leaving the conflagration behind them. Okay, so the Reverend and his car are missing, so maybe he killed Judy and took off. But then, what happened to “Darryl” and Mandy? Will the police think the Reverend killed them too?

Our final moments show Ryan as he spots something on the floor. It’s a picture of Joe’s ex-wife, and his former lover, Claire. He sinks down to sit on the floor and holds it up to stare at it.I’ll be interested to see if he goes back to drinking out of guilt, or if he will become even more determined to stop Joe and his Followers. I hope for the latter, of course, but only the writer’s know where they’re going with this.