The Fox series “The Following” is essentially a cheap horror story tricked out with a laughable literary framework, and it likes to traffic in patterns and symbols, the more obvious the better.  Last season, when it was the highest-rated new show on the broadcast networks, it featured a lighthouse in its first episode and in its final episode. Both referred to the work of Edgar Allan Poe, whose books guide the actions of the show’s peevish professor, psychopath and serial killer, Joe Carroll (James Purefoy).  Not all patterns are so benign, though, and some reveal more of the true sensibility of the show and its creator, Kevin Williamson. (Stop reading here if you still plan to watch the first season.) The pilot episode featured two particularly grisly, degrading scenes of death, both involving women. An acolyte of Carroll’s, part of the improbably large and obedient cult that gives the series its name, stabbed herself in the eye with an ice pick; a subsequent shot focused on her bare legs twitching. Later, a highly sympathetic character whose safety had been guaranteed by the show’s tortured antihero, the former F.B.I. agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon), was discovered hanging upside down, both eyes gouged out.  In the Season 1 finale, Mr. Williamson killed off two more women, this time central characters whose likability had been cultivated across the season. The F.B.I. agent Debra Parker was kidnapped and buried alive. When her body was discovered, the fine actress Annie Parisse (or a stand-in) suffered the indignity of lying on the ground in the background of the scene, bound and smeared in dirt.  Then came the big finish: Carroll’s ex-wife and Hardy’s lover, Claire Matthews (Natalie Zea), whose safety had been one of the show’s central sources of suspense, was summarily dispatched, stabbed in the season’s final seconds. Last week, the show’s Season 2 premiere (stop reading here if you haven’t watched it) confirmed her death, though in a manner that seems to leave open the possibility that she’s in hiding somewhere.  Men die on “The Following” as well, in copious numbers, but their deaths tend to be more discreet and respectful, taking place quickly or off camera. Important male characters, like Hardy and his own acolyte, the young agent Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore), have a habit of recovering, Christlike, from grievous wounds.  Violence against women doesn’t, of itself, make a television show unworthy. Quite a few lauded cable series make a habit of it. But the elaborate nature of the misogyny masterminded by Carroll (who had killed 14 of his female students before the action even started), and the callous, manipulative disposal of characters we’ve been led to care about, are indicative of the slasher-film mentality that informs “The Following” more thoroughly than any other show on TV. (And probably explains its popularity.)  There are other things to keep you from engaging with the show, including its extreme implausibility. The size and efficiency of Carroll’s following would put many small armies to shame, and never have so many law-enforcement officers been so easily duped. There’s also the lazy B-movie predictability, the kind of thing Mr. Williamson once satirized in the “Scream” movies. The cop who doesn’t answer is dead. There’s someone behind you. You’re going to get hit by that cab.  It should be a pleasure to watch Mr. Bacon in his first starring TV role, but his character is no more three-dimensional than any of the others. (Another hallmark of the first season: There turned out to be no more compelling reason for all the mayhem than Carroll’s jealousy over Claire.) He’s wasting his skills on Ryan Hardy, and every so often, there’s a painful moment when he’s reduced to huffing and popping his eyes over the latest death.  Will any of this change in Season 2? The opening minutes of last week’s episode weren’t promising. After repeating the ending of Season 1, so that we could rewatch Hardy and Claire being stabbed, the show went right to its first killing: Hardy snapping a woman’s neck. Later, a newly introduced psycho killer danced with the corpse of his latest victim, another woman reduced to a piece of inanimate set dressing.  The new season of “The Following” does have at least one selling point. With several new female characters already — Hardy’s cop niece, a member of his addiction support group, a survivor of a subway massacre and yet another hard-bitten F.B.I. agent — you can start a pool on which will be the next to succumb to the show’s appetite for brutality.  A version of this article appears in print on January 27, 2014, on page C6 of the New York edition with the headline: Feeling Squeamish? Maybe You Shouldn’t Read Any Further. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
The second season of “The Following,” the Fox drama about a serial killer, picks up with the same kind of deaths seen in Season 1.