I really liked the premise of the show and the first 2 episodes had me hooked. The way things are going, I'll probably call it quits after the season finale.
Its already been mentioned in this thread but its worth reiterating: the amount of reality the writers expect us to suspend to follow the story is almost insulting considering this is suposed to be a "realistic" crime thriller. And this is coming from someone who is a big fan of action movies where you almost always have to turn your brain off to enjoy. I actually enjoyed Taken 2 and seen it 3 times! When it comes to TV shows that drag on over months and years, I expect a little more refinement. I don't expect this to be completely accurate but come on!
My first beef with the show is the fact that Carroll was able to recruit his followers so easily from his cell. The prison guard was forgivable but you expect us to believe that a high profile serial killer is receiving visits from people with unsavory backgrounds multiple times? Not only that, but now you expect us to believe that they can explicitly plan out their murderous rampage during visitation and not expect us to ask why weren't their conversations recorded as is normally done for every other prisoner in every maximum security prison in this country? It becomes a little too much.
Honestly, I could let this ridiculous recruiting background story go if the story development was well done but it's not. The writing is so poor that I can't really get into the show. They're using the same formula over and over again. Carroll begins some phase of his plan, FBI finds out, Ryan closes in, then some unexpected person reveals themselves as a follower of Carroll and the bad guys get away. Rinse and repeat. We're 6 episodes deep and we seen this formula at least 3 times already. Then to add insult to injury, the character development is so forced that you don't really care about any of the characters. When you're not connecting with the characters, it takes most of the suspense out of the show which is the crux that's holding this show up.
With all that said, Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy are amazing actors. If it wasn't for those two, this show would probably be remembered amongst the worst television shows in the history of the world. If Fox is serious about this show, they need to scrap their writers at the end of the season and give it another shot.