‘The Following’ episode 3 preview: How Ryan Hardy and Joe Carroll met

On Monday night’s “The Following,” we will have an opportunity to find out some more valuable answers to a few key questions: including just why it took so long so many years ago for Ryan Hardy to end up catching Joe Carroll the first time.

Through a series of flashbacks, we are going to have an opportunity to see the first meeting between Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy’s characters, as Hardy actually visits Carroll first in what is just a fact-finding mission. He realizes that whoever is acting on these murders is doing so through a lens of literary self-importance, so who better to go to for advice on this subject that someone who is a master of this field?

Unfortunately, this first meeting between Ryan and Joe does not end up throwing much suspicion on the professor at all. Instead, we see just what made Joe such a terrifying villain in that he is a shrewd manipulator, and he knows almost exactly what to say in order to get under someone’s skin. Within a matter of just a few short minutes, he figures out exactly what is best to say about Hardy that will point out his biggest weakness: the fact that thanks largely to his job, he is forced into having to spend a great deal of time alone.

Thanks to this little comment, Carroll is able to easy the then-FBI agent to take a look into himself, and also find some sort of common ground with the man he is questioning. It’s a clever little trick, and it shows just how he was able to obtain so many followers even while sitting inside of a prison cell.

Are you loving the construction of this series so far? If you want to see some of the latest ratings news for “The Following,” you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: Fox